Douglas Hedley | University of Cambridge (original) (raw)
Papers by Douglas Hedley
International journal of the Platonic tradition, Sep 7, 2022
British Academy eBooks, Jan 27, 2022
Samuel Parker (1640 – 1688), Fellow of the Royal Society, in his learned A free and impartial ce... more Samuel Parker (1640 – 1688), Fellow of the Royal Society, in his learned A free and impartial censure of the Platonick philosophie (1667) seemed to be defending the experimentalism of the Society from the metaphysical speculations of the Cambridge Platonists. This paper explores the argument of this text and considers why it was composed. The focus of Parker’s critique is on those aspects which at the time were considered the hallmark of Platonism (and opposite to the theoretical rigour of the new experimental science), such as, for example, the Platonists’ belief in a Plotinian ‘Spirit of Nature’, their use of the imagination in philosophy, and Plato’s debt to the tradition of the Cabbala.
International Archives of the History of Ideas Archives internationales d'histoire des idées, 2019
International Archives of the History of Ideas Archives internationales d'histoire des idées
L'article expose et discute l'un des plus importants livres recents dans le domaine de la... more L'article expose et discute l'un des plus importants livres recents dans le domaine de la philosophie de la religion : Perceiving God : The Epistemology of Religious Experience de William Alston. Parmi les principaux problemes souleves par la these de Alston - une defense analytique de l'experience mystique de la perception de Dieu - la question de savoir si la notion de perception doit etre prise litteralement ou comme une metaphore est fondamentale. A cet egard, l'article insiste sur l'ambiguite de la conception d'Alston. Dans la mesure aussi ou la perception est concue par Alston en termes de pratique etablie, n 'est-il pas possible de montrer que son analyse de la perception divine ne correspond qu'imparfaitement aux moments historiques ou elle a joue un role theologique important, particulierement dans la lignee platonicienne?
Why should we read Plato’s Parmenides today? It does not possess the dramatic charm of the Sympos... more Why should we read Plato’s Parmenides today? It does not possess the dramatic charm of the Symposium or the Phaedrus, the somber power of the Phaedo or the Apology, or the evident relevance to contemporary concerns of the Th eaetetus or the Republic. It is, furthermore, a deeply puzzling and aporetic dialogue—a reductio ad absurdum of Eleatic thought in which some of the most paradigmatic Platonic tenets are challenged and problems are left unresolved. The twentieth-century interpretations of Ryle, Owen, and Vlastos have reinforced an ancient view of the dialogue as a set of logical exercises in dialectic or a “dialectical business” (negotium dialecticum).2 In this essay, however, I wish to reflect upon that most vigorous strand in occidental culture that has maintained that the Parmenides of Plato is perhaps the pivotal document of Western metaphysics. The legacy of Parmenides of Elea as interpreted by Plato is of momentous significance for the history of thought, even if we accept...
Aries, 2018
This essay examines Henry More's engagement with Jacob Böhme and compares the sympathetic critiqu... more This essay examines Henry More's engagement with Jacob Böhme and compares the sympathetic critique of Böhme with More's much more negative evaluation of Spinoza. More directs his criticism of Böhme at the similarities between Spinoza and Böhme: their materialism and confusion of God and world. The present essay suggests, however, that the perception of shared Platonism informs More's more favourable approach to the Silesian. The problem of what "Platonism" means in this context is thus also addressed. Böhme's writings were valued by More because of a shared metaphysics that rejected both radical dualism and pantheism, and the Platonic theology of the goodness of God and the freedom of man, together with the rejection of predestination. Spinoza, on the other hand, is rejected because of his radical determinism, his denial of any substantial distinction between good and evil, and the transcendent being of the divine.
Oxford Scholarship Online, 2017
Chapter 13 takes as its theme the deep roots in the Platonic tradition of Coleridge’s view of con... more Chapter 13 takes as its theme the deep roots in the Platonic tradition of Coleridge’s view of contemplation as the experience of nóēsis, for Plato the highest form of epistēmē, being the knowledge of ‘Ideas’ beyond diánoia (discursive and conceptual understanding). Coleridge’s theory of the symbol only makes sense within this metaphysical-theological context. Plotinus’s decisive contribution within Coleridge’s metaphysics is often overlooked. Contemplation, for Plotinus, is connected to Gift. Contemplation is always a return to the ‘Giving’ of the One (rooted in Plato’s ‘unbegrudging’ Goodness of the demiurge, Timaeus 29), and this process of gift and return is mirrored throughout different levels of reality. Like the Cambridge Platonists before him, Coleridge furnished this contemplative return with a Trinitarian articulation. Coleridge’s own contemplative theology is especially inspired by the revival of neo-Platonism in German idealism.
La question de l'athéisme au 17e siecle, 2004
Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplement, 2011
Despisers of religion throughout the centuries have poured scorn upon the idea of sacrifice, whic... more Despisers of religion throughout the centuries have poured scorn upon the idea of sacrifice, which they have targeted as an index of the irrational and wicked in religious practice. Lucretius saw the sacrifice of Iphigenia as an instance of the evils perpetrated by religion. But even religious reformers like Xenophanes or Empedocles rail against ‘bloody sacrifice’. What kind of God can demand sacrifice? Yet the language of sacrifice persists in a secular world. Nor does its secularised form seem much more appealing. One need only think of the appalling and grotesque cult of sacrifice in numerous totalitarian regimes of the twentieth century. The perversion of the Jihad in radical Islam in contemporary Europe would provide another sombre instance. Throughout Europe in the last few years we have seen the revival of a classical Enlightenment atheism, a movement that, far removed from Nietzsche's pathos for the Death of God, pursues a vigorous and relentless policy of Écrasez l'...
Socinianism and Arminianism, 2005
PERSONS OF SUBSTANCE AND THE CAMBRIDGE CONNECTION: SOME ROOTS AND RAMIFICATIONS OF THE TRINITARIA... more PERSONS OF SUBSTANCE AND THE CAMBRIDGE CONNECTION: SOME ROOTS AND RAMIFICATIONS OF THE TRINITARIAN CONTROVERSY IN SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY ENGLAND Douglas Hedley William S. Babcock, while discussing the relative eclipse of the doctrine of the ...
Cambridge History of Christianity
Rationalism, Platonism and God, 2007
This chapter comments on John Cottingham’s chapter on Platonism in Rene Descartes’ cosmology, met... more This chapter comments on John Cottingham’s chapter on Platonism in Rene Descartes’ cosmology, metaphysics, and moral theory. It explains the concept of implicit Platonism as consisting in certain Platonic or Neoplatonic notions, such as the notion of Ideas or Archetypes in the mind of God, and suggests that there is nothing Platonic in Descartes’ philosophy beyond such widely accepted ideas. It also questions Cottingham’s assumption that Platonism does not contain within itself the means of reconciling the controlling and contemplative mindsets.
Oxford Handbooks Online, 2013
The Oxford Handbook of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, 2012
This article examines the work of Samuel Taylor Coleridge relevant to theology. It explains that ... more This article examines the work of Samuel Taylor Coleridge relevant to theology. It explains that despite being mostly known in literature, Coleridge was primarily a theologian, and that he was serious in his theology. Coleridge investigated the questions of the status of Scripture, doctrines of the Fall, justification and sanctification, and the personality and infinity of God. He believed that theology requires philosophical explication, and his theology was deeply metaphysical.
The Journal of Theological Studies, 2005
The major problems in contemporary theology were forged in the furnace of Enlightenment scepticis... more The major problems in contemporary theology were forged in the furnace of Enlightenment scepticism: miracles; the historical warrant of the Gospels; the ethical nature of God and his responsibility for human wickedness or natural evil. However different from the more insular and ...
International journal for the Study of the Christian Church, 2009
This article pursues the perhaps surprising interest of the Savoyard polemicist and counter-revol... more This article pursues the perhaps surprising interest of the Savoyard polemicist and counter-revolutionary philosopher Joseph de Maistre for the early work of the Cambridge Platonist Ralph Cudworth. I argue that their shared Platonism and fascination for the imagery of the Temple of the Hebrews helps explain this unlikely alliance. I refer to the innovative work of Margaret Barker on Temple imagery in Christian theology to elucidate the biblical dimension of the theory of correspondences employed by both men.
International journal of the Platonic tradition, Sep 7, 2022
British Academy eBooks, Jan 27, 2022
Samuel Parker (1640 – 1688), Fellow of the Royal Society, in his learned A free and impartial ce... more Samuel Parker (1640 – 1688), Fellow of the Royal Society, in his learned A free and impartial censure of the Platonick philosophie (1667) seemed to be defending the experimentalism of the Society from the metaphysical speculations of the Cambridge Platonists. This paper explores the argument of this text and considers why it was composed. The focus of Parker’s critique is on those aspects which at the time were considered the hallmark of Platonism (and opposite to the theoretical rigour of the new experimental science), such as, for example, the Platonists’ belief in a Plotinian ‘Spirit of Nature’, their use of the imagination in philosophy, and Plato’s debt to the tradition of the Cabbala.
International Archives of the History of Ideas Archives internationales d'histoire des idées, 2019
International Archives of the History of Ideas Archives internationales d'histoire des idées
L'article expose et discute l'un des plus importants livres recents dans le domaine de la... more L'article expose et discute l'un des plus importants livres recents dans le domaine de la philosophie de la religion : Perceiving God : The Epistemology of Religious Experience de William Alston. Parmi les principaux problemes souleves par la these de Alston - une defense analytique de l'experience mystique de la perception de Dieu - la question de savoir si la notion de perception doit etre prise litteralement ou comme une metaphore est fondamentale. A cet egard, l'article insiste sur l'ambiguite de la conception d'Alston. Dans la mesure aussi ou la perception est concue par Alston en termes de pratique etablie, n 'est-il pas possible de montrer que son analyse de la perception divine ne correspond qu'imparfaitement aux moments historiques ou elle a joue un role theologique important, particulierement dans la lignee platonicienne?
Why should we read Plato’s Parmenides today? It does not possess the dramatic charm of the Sympos... more Why should we read Plato’s Parmenides today? It does not possess the dramatic charm of the Symposium or the Phaedrus, the somber power of the Phaedo or the Apology, or the evident relevance to contemporary concerns of the Th eaetetus or the Republic. It is, furthermore, a deeply puzzling and aporetic dialogue—a reductio ad absurdum of Eleatic thought in which some of the most paradigmatic Platonic tenets are challenged and problems are left unresolved. The twentieth-century interpretations of Ryle, Owen, and Vlastos have reinforced an ancient view of the dialogue as a set of logical exercises in dialectic or a “dialectical business” (negotium dialecticum).2 In this essay, however, I wish to reflect upon that most vigorous strand in occidental culture that has maintained that the Parmenides of Plato is perhaps the pivotal document of Western metaphysics. The legacy of Parmenides of Elea as interpreted by Plato is of momentous significance for the history of thought, even if we accept...
Aries, 2018
This essay examines Henry More's engagement with Jacob Böhme and compares the sympathetic critiqu... more This essay examines Henry More's engagement with Jacob Böhme and compares the sympathetic critique of Böhme with More's much more negative evaluation of Spinoza. More directs his criticism of Böhme at the similarities between Spinoza and Böhme: their materialism and confusion of God and world. The present essay suggests, however, that the perception of shared Platonism informs More's more favourable approach to the Silesian. The problem of what "Platonism" means in this context is thus also addressed. Böhme's writings were valued by More because of a shared metaphysics that rejected both radical dualism and pantheism, and the Platonic theology of the goodness of God and the freedom of man, together with the rejection of predestination. Spinoza, on the other hand, is rejected because of his radical determinism, his denial of any substantial distinction between good and evil, and the transcendent being of the divine.
Oxford Scholarship Online, 2017
Chapter 13 takes as its theme the deep roots in the Platonic tradition of Coleridge’s view of con... more Chapter 13 takes as its theme the deep roots in the Platonic tradition of Coleridge’s view of contemplation as the experience of nóēsis, for Plato the highest form of epistēmē, being the knowledge of ‘Ideas’ beyond diánoia (discursive and conceptual understanding). Coleridge’s theory of the symbol only makes sense within this metaphysical-theological context. Plotinus’s decisive contribution within Coleridge’s metaphysics is often overlooked. Contemplation, for Plotinus, is connected to Gift. Contemplation is always a return to the ‘Giving’ of the One (rooted in Plato’s ‘unbegrudging’ Goodness of the demiurge, Timaeus 29), and this process of gift and return is mirrored throughout different levels of reality. Like the Cambridge Platonists before him, Coleridge furnished this contemplative return with a Trinitarian articulation. Coleridge’s own contemplative theology is especially inspired by the revival of neo-Platonism in German idealism.
La question de l'athéisme au 17e siecle, 2004
Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplement, 2011
Despisers of religion throughout the centuries have poured scorn upon the idea of sacrifice, whic... more Despisers of religion throughout the centuries have poured scorn upon the idea of sacrifice, which they have targeted as an index of the irrational and wicked in religious practice. Lucretius saw the sacrifice of Iphigenia as an instance of the evils perpetrated by religion. But even religious reformers like Xenophanes or Empedocles rail against ‘bloody sacrifice’. What kind of God can demand sacrifice? Yet the language of sacrifice persists in a secular world. Nor does its secularised form seem much more appealing. One need only think of the appalling and grotesque cult of sacrifice in numerous totalitarian regimes of the twentieth century. The perversion of the Jihad in radical Islam in contemporary Europe would provide another sombre instance. Throughout Europe in the last few years we have seen the revival of a classical Enlightenment atheism, a movement that, far removed from Nietzsche's pathos for the Death of God, pursues a vigorous and relentless policy of Écrasez l'...
Socinianism and Arminianism, 2005
PERSONS OF SUBSTANCE AND THE CAMBRIDGE CONNECTION: SOME ROOTS AND RAMIFICATIONS OF THE TRINITARIA... more PERSONS OF SUBSTANCE AND THE CAMBRIDGE CONNECTION: SOME ROOTS AND RAMIFICATIONS OF THE TRINITARIAN CONTROVERSY IN SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY ENGLAND Douglas Hedley William S. Babcock, while discussing the relative eclipse of the doctrine of the ...
Cambridge History of Christianity
Rationalism, Platonism and God, 2007
This chapter comments on John Cottingham’s chapter on Platonism in Rene Descartes’ cosmology, met... more This chapter comments on John Cottingham’s chapter on Platonism in Rene Descartes’ cosmology, metaphysics, and moral theory. It explains the concept of implicit Platonism as consisting in certain Platonic or Neoplatonic notions, such as the notion of Ideas or Archetypes in the mind of God, and suggests that there is nothing Platonic in Descartes’ philosophy beyond such widely accepted ideas. It also questions Cottingham’s assumption that Platonism does not contain within itself the means of reconciling the controlling and contemplative mindsets.
Oxford Handbooks Online, 2013
The Oxford Handbook of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, 2012
This article examines the work of Samuel Taylor Coleridge relevant to theology. It explains that ... more This article examines the work of Samuel Taylor Coleridge relevant to theology. It explains that despite being mostly known in literature, Coleridge was primarily a theologian, and that he was serious in his theology. Coleridge investigated the questions of the status of Scripture, doctrines of the Fall, justification and sanctification, and the personality and infinity of God. He believed that theology requires philosophical explication, and his theology was deeply metaphysical.
The Journal of Theological Studies, 2005
The major problems in contemporary theology were forged in the furnace of Enlightenment scepticis... more The major problems in contemporary theology were forged in the furnace of Enlightenment scepticism: miracles; the historical warrant of the Gospels; the ethical nature of God and his responsibility for human wickedness or natural evil. However different from the more insular and ...
International journal for the Study of the Christian Church, 2009
This article pursues the perhaps surprising interest of the Savoyard polemicist and counter-revol... more This article pursues the perhaps surprising interest of the Savoyard polemicist and counter-revolutionary philosopher Joseph de Maistre for the early work of the Cambridge Platonist Ralph Cudworth. I argue that their shared Platonism and fascination for the imagery of the Temple of the Hebrews helps explain this unlikely alliance. I refer to the innovative work of Margaret Barker on Temple imagery in Christian theology to elucidate the biblical dimension of the theory of correspondences employed by both men.
The Conference is based in a single theological idea “God: Every day and Everywhere” which will b... more The Conference is based in a single theological idea “God: Every day and Everywhere” which will be explored in the works of four great theologians: Aristotle who can be regarded as the founder of scientific theology (his great theology treatise was later entitled Metaphysics), the definitive Latin Christian Church Father, Augustine, the most philosophically profound of the Late Medieval Mystical Guides, Meister Eckhart, and an Anglican theologian, poet, and novelist of the first half of the 20th century Charles Williams. “God: Every day and Everywhere” is not, as it must first appear, a blasphemous pantheism making the God who dwells in Inaccessible Light banal. The conception ruling the conference is that if you rise to the fundamental metaphysical idea, or anti-idea, of a theological system you will find there the structure of all reality and thus through it discern God every day and everywhere.
The materials here are for the papers of Eli Diamond, “The trinitarian structure of Aristotle’s living God and its mortal imitations”, Wayne Hankey, Augustine’s Trinitarian Cosmos, Evan King, Eckhart’s Grund
Time, Eternity and the Friends of God in Eckhart and Tauler, Patrick Graham. Contemporary Islamic Theology, Dr Douglas Hedley, Charles Williams Theoanthropos.