This chapter provides a basic introduction to Cambridge Platonism and its four central figures: Benjamin Whichcote (1609–83), Ralph Cudworth (1617–88), John Smith (c. 1618–52) and Henry More (c. 1614–87). Beginning with brief biographies of the Cambridge Platonists and an outline of the Civil War background to their intellectual development, the chapter then moves to a consideration of the contested nature of Cambridge Platonism in contemporary scholarship. Were Whichcote, More, Cudworth and Smith aligned enough biographically and intellectually to warrant grouping them together as architects of a shared philosophical school of thought? After reviewing several recent arguments to the contrary, the main argument of the book is laid out: Anthony Tuckney’s 1651 correspondence with Whichcote contains important evidence that Whichcote, Cudworth, Smith and More were known to their Cambridge contemporaries as proponents of a distinctive set of philosophical positions clearly inspired by Platonism.

This chapter considers whether and in what way Whichcote, More, Cudworth and Smith can be called ‘Platonists’. Was Platonism a part of the story they told about themselves, or that their contemporaries told about them, or is it simply an anachronistic label invented by modern scholarship? I argue that ‘Platonism’ was a live intellectual category in the Cambridge Platonists’ seventeenth-century philosophical and theological context and denoted a particular set of doctrinal positions which were associated with ancient Platonism, such as the primacy of God’s goodness over his will. The chapter also investigates evidence of a surge of interest in ancient and Renaissance Platonism at Cambridge in the latter half of the 1630s, centred at Emmanuel College, which included John Sadler, Peter Sterry and Laurence Sarson and also coincides with Henry More’s discovery of Platonism, and Cudworth’s early Platonic letters to John Stoughton. It is argued that these developments provide important context for the origins of Cambridge Platonism, and illuminate the ways in which Whichcote, More, Cudworth and Smith’s intellectual development was shaped by engagement with Platonic texts and ideas.

The scepticism of the period from roughly 1645 to 1680 prompted philosophers’ attempts to rethink theology and moral and civil philosophy in their search for ideas concerning the common and the public good. Ralph Cudworth’s effort to overcome the challenges posed by fragmentation in religion and politics and to develop a philosophy helpful in uniting society, but not at the expense of liberty, demonstrate that Neoplatonism was an important force during that period. In a sceptical era, John Selden contributed to particularism in natural law. A discussion of Sir Robert Filmer’s life and key political ideas together with the principles of political economy he espoused follows. Given the disintegration of moral theology in that period, the commercialization of societal ties seems to have been unstoppable. Against the Macphersonian critique of possessive individualism, the chapter puts forward the opening argument that both Hobbes and Locke sought to tame the harsh society characterized by the use of credit they saw before them and that they chose to do so by means of political philosophy and natural law.