Henry More

Henry More

Henry More ( Latinized Henricus More ; born October 12, 1614 in Grantham , Lincolnshire , † September 1, 1687 in Cambridge ) was an English philosopher and poet. He was a Fellow at the prestigious Christ's College of Cambridge University and belonged to the group of Cambridge Platonists ( "Cambridge school").

Life

Henry More was born in October 1614. He was the youngest of the numerous children of Alexander More, an influential, wealthy citizen of Grantham, who was elected mayor there several times. After attending the Grammar School in Grantham, Henry received a three-year education at Eton College . In Eton he came into conflict with the Calvinist faith of his parents. In particular, he found the doctrine of “double predestination ” (predestination of the not chosen to go to hell before they were born) unacceptable . Following his training in Eton, he began his university studies in Cambridge; on December 31, 1631 he was accepted into Christ's College, one of the most prestigious colleges at the university. This college remained the place of his ministry from then until his death. He spent a total of 56 years there as a student and then as a fellow. In his studies, as was still common at the time, the scholastic Aristotelianism , which was developed in the late Middle Ages, played a central role, and he learned the art of disputation associated with it. In addition to the works of Aristotle , he studied the teachings of the humanists Girolamo Cardano and Julius Caesar Scaliger , but they disappointed him; he found it partly inaccurate or doubtful, partly trivial.

In 1635 he became a Bachelor of Arts . In the following years he turned to Platonism , especially Neoplatonism ; he read the Enneades of the ancient Neoplatonist Plotinus and the Theologia Platonica of the humanist Marsilio Ficino , the most famous Neoplatonist of the Renaissance . In 1639 he obtained the degree of Master of Arts . In 1641 he was elected a Fellow at Christ's College. Only philosophy (including natural philosophy , which included natural science) and theology were taught in this college , and the fellows were required to be celibate. More was able to devote himself mainly to his writing activities there. He had a close friendly relationship with Lady Anne Conway , who was his enthusiastic student. He often visited her at Ragley Hall, Warwickshire .

Around the middle of the 17th century, More was the most prominent Platonist in England. Platonism was strengthened in Christ's College by Ralph Cudworth , who took over the function of master (head) there in 1654 , and by More's student George Rust. The Cambridge Platonists emphasized the compatibility of reason and religion and were liberal on confessional issues. Hence, they aroused offense in strictly dogmatic circles. More did not openly take sides in the violent religious conflicts of his epoch, which were also fought politically and militarily, although he was a staunch Anglican and opponent of Calvinism and his sympathy was on the side of the royalists.

After a peaceful, relatively uneventful life, he died on September 1, 1687 and was buried in the chapel of Christ's College, where his grave can still be seen today.

The title page of the second volume of the edition of More's Philosophical Works published in London in 1679

Works and teaching

More has left an extensive philosophical, theological and poetic work, some of which is written in English and some in Latin. With the Latin scripts as well as Latin translations of the works originally published in English, he addresses an international scholarly audience. His main concern is the exposition and justification of his Christian Platonism, especially the doctrine of the immortality of the soul , and the (often polemical) defense of his convictions against the proponents of mechanistic , materialistic and atheistic worldviews.

Early philosophical poems

In 1640 he wrote his first work, the extensive poem Psychozoia, or The Life of the Soul , in which he presented his Neoplatonic doctrine of the soul , in which he also processed personal spiritual experience. Together with three other poems that also deal with the essence of the soul, he published it in 1642 under the title Psychodia Platonica, or a Platonicall Song of the Soul ; a second, expanded edition of the collection of poems appears in 1647 under the title Philosophicall poems . In his philosophical poetry, More particularly deals with immortality, which he consistently regards as an individual. For him the main characteristic of the soul is its unified, indivisible and indestructible individuality; He rejects the idea of ​​a dissolution of individual existence by merging into something larger, more general. He is convinced of the pre-existence of the soul before the creation of the body. The Psychodia Platonica is significantly influenced by the Theologia Platonica Marsilio Ficinos.

Confrontation with Cartesianism

From the late 1940s, More dealt intensively with Cartesianism (the philosophy of René Descartes ). First of all, he welcomes the new approach, as he likes Descartes' dualistic separation of material and immaterial reality. 1648–49 he exchanges letters with Descartes, in which he also addresses his differences of opinion with the French thinker. In contrast to Descartes, he does not limit the property of spatial expansion to matter, but also assigns it to spirit, which he understands as a separate dimension. He regards space as absolute, homogeneous, immaterial and infinite; by ascribing properties to it as divine, he brings it closer to the deity. For him the whole universe is filled with God; to that extent God also has expansion. Nor does he accept Descartes' view that animals are soulless machines. It was not until 1665 that he clearly turned away from Cartesianism, above all because he disliked the fact that atheistic systems also emerged on the basis of Cartesian thought.

In 1671, in his Enchiridion metaphysicum (“Handbook of Metaphysics”) , he explains his anti-mechanistic point of view and his turning away from Cartesianism, which has now become radical.

Differentiation from the crush

In 1650 More got into a conflict with another Platonist, Thomas Vaughan, who was more interested in magic and theurgy , and whom he accused of distorting Platonism. He attacks Vaughan in a memoir that causes controversy. As a supporter of a rationalist-oriented Platonism, More combats the tendency to “fantasy and enthusiasm”, which he attributes to the opponent. In 1656 he published his relevant writings in a volume entitled Enthusiasmus triumphatus . His fight against “enthusiasm” (enthusiasm) is also directed against Christian movements such as the familists and Quakerism , since he believes that their attitude expresses a disregard for reason, which ultimately leads to atheism. On the other hand, More enthusiastically reports on his own intense spiritual experiences and tries to find a balance in his judgment of the Quakers. He also counts the ideas of Jakob Boehme , whom he accuses of irrationalism in his work Philosophiae Teutonicae Censura (1670), as a suspicious area of ​​enthusiasm ; on the other hand, he defends Böhme against attacks by his church opponents.

Fight against dogmatism

On another front, More has to defend himself against accusations of heresy because of his demand for a rational comprehensibility of the contents of faith and his rejection of religious dogmatism . He shares the opinion with the other Cambridge Platonists that a broad spectrum of religious views can be accepted within Christianity and that there should be freedom of conscience in this regard. They are therefore ridiculed by their strictly denominational opponents as Latitude men ("Latitudinarians", advocates of the broad). More explains his position in the treatise An Explanation of the Grand Mystery of Godliness (1660) and in his defense treatise The Apology of Dr. Henry More (1664). Joseph Beaumont, Master of the Peterhouse at Cambridge University, replied in a reply in 1665.

More's rejection of all forms of dogmatism is also expressed in his pamphlets against Catholicism ( A Modest Inquiry into the Mystery of Iniquity , 1664; An Antidote against Idolatry , 1672–1673). He considers Catholicism to be superstitious, intolerant and - because of the worship of saints and relics - idolatrous.

More presents his alternative to dogmatic worldviews in his Divine Dialogues , published in 1668 . There are five dialogues on different, mainly theological questions. In it he tries to prove his overall religious interpretation of reality to be coherent. The Divine Dialogues are intended for a wider philosophically interested audience.

Fight against atheism

More's main philosophical opponent is Thomas Hobbes . He argues against Hobbes in detail in his treatise The Immortality of the Soul , published in 1659 , which contains the most comprehensive exposition of his philosophical system. Above all, he opposes Hobbes' determinism and the denial of the existence of incorporeal substances. His radical counter-position to Hobbes' view, it can an immaterial substance does not enter after, as the concept of substance would require physicality is the adoption of a "Spirit of Nature" ( Spirit of Nature ). By this he understands an immaterial and not equipped with consciousness, but spatially extended intermediate instance, mediating between God and matter. He assumes that the spirit of nature pervades all matter and orders it in the sense of divine providence.

More expresses his criticism of Spinoza , whom he considers an atheist, in 1677 in the Epistola altera ad VC (against Spinoza's Tractatus theologico-politicus ) and in 1678 in the Demonstrationis duarum propositionum ... confutatio (against Spinoza's ethics ).

ethics

In 1668, More laid out his ethics in the Enchiridion ethicum ("Handbook of Ethics"). In this book he examined the relationship between happiness and virtue. He divides the virtues into primary and secondary. In the passions he sees natural givens which as such from his point of view must be of divine origin and must therefore be good; natural law cannot contradict the will of God. Since the passions thus have the same divine origin as reason, they cannot essentially contradict it. More describes the good as something pleasant and pleasing that harmonizes with human consciousness. However, this description is not meant to be a definition, as he does not consider everything pleasant and pleasing to be good. He regards the fundamental ethical principles as not derivable; he is convinced that they are innate in humans and comparable to mathematical axioms .

Pre-existence of the soul

In his later years, More revisits the preexistence of the soul, which has been part of his philosophical convictions from the start. He traces the different fates of people back to the different dispositions of the pre-existing souls (which existed before the body was formed). Depending on the sometimes bad tendencies that they already showed, the souls receive different bodies and thus different conditions of existence and fates. With this concept, More wants to solve the problem of theodicy and justify his assumption of a just and benevolent divine control of the world.

Text editions and translations

Complete edition

• Henry More: Opera omnia . Volume 1 ( Opera theologica ), Volume 2 ( Opera philosophica , 2 volumes), Olms, Hildesheim 1966 (reprint of the London edition 1674–1679; incomplete)

Partial collection

• Flora Isabel Mackinnon (Ed.): Philosophical Writings of Henry More . Kessinger, Belle Fourche 2007, ISBN 978-1-4325-8847-2 (reprint of the first edition New York 1925)

Individual philosophical writings

• Alexander Jacob (Ed.): Henry More. The Immortality of the Soul . Nijhoff, Dordrecht 1987, ISBN 90-247-3512-2
• Alexander Jacob (Ed.): Henry More's Refutation of Spinoza . Olms, Hildesheim 1991, ISBN 3-48709498-3 (Mores Confutatio , Latin text based on the complete edition and English translation by the editor)
• Henry More: Enchiridion ethicum. The English Translation of 1690 , trans. Edward Southwell, Facsimile Text Society, New York 1930 (reprint of the London 1690 edition of an English translation of the Latin Enchiridion ethicum )

Poems

• Alexander Balloch Grosart (ed.): The Complete Poems of Henry More (1614–1687) . Olms, Hildesheim 1969 (reprint of Blackburn 1878 edition)

Letters

• Marjorie Hope Nicolson and Sarah Hutton (Eds.): The Conway Letters. The Correspondence of Anne, Viscountess Conway, Henry More, and their Friends 1642–1684 . 2nd edition, Clarendon Press, Oxford 1992, ISBN 0-19-824876-8

source

• Richard Ward: The Life of Henry More. Parts 1 and 2 , ed. Sarah Hutton et al. a., Kluwer, Dordrecht 2000, ISBN 0-7923-6097-4

literature

Overview representations

• Sarah Hutton : More, Henry. In: Oxford Dictionary of National Biography , Vol. 39, Oxford University Press, Oxford 2004, ISBN 0-19-861389-X , pp. 47-50
• Graham Alan John Rogers: The Cambridge Platonists . In: Jean-Pierre Schobinger (Ed.): Outline of the history of philosophy . The Philosophy of the 17th Century , Volume 3: England , 1st half volume, Schwabe, Basel 1988, ISBN 3-7965-0872-3 , pp. 240–290, here: 255–267
• Franz Wöhrer:  More, Henry. In: Biographisch-Bibliographisches Kirchenlexikon (BBKL). Volume 6, Bautz, Herzberg 1993, ISBN 3-88309-044-1 , Sp. 109-111.

Investigations

• Robert Crocker: Henry More, 1614-1687. A Biography of the Cambridge Platonist . Kluwer, Dordrecht 2003, ISBN 1-4020-1502-X
• Rupert Hall : Henry More. Magic, Religion and Experiment. Blackwell, Oxford 1990
• Serge Hutin: Henry More. Essai sur les doctrines théosophiques chez les Platoniciens de Cambridge . Olms, Hildesheim 1966
• Sarah Hutton (Ed.): Henry More (1614–1687). Tercentenary Studies . Kluwer, Dordrecht 1990, ISBN 978-0-7923-0095-3
• David Leech: The Hammer of the Cartesians. Henry More's Philosophy of Spirit and the Origins of Modern Atheism. Peeters, Louvain 2013
• Wilhelm Oberdieck: Henry More and the question of God in the seventeenth century . Ernst Oberdieck, Göttingen 1985, ISBN 3-925391-00-2
• Jasper Reid: The Metaphysics of Henry More , Kluwer, Dordrecht 2012

Web links

• Literature by and about Henry More in the catalog of the German National Library
• John Henry:  Entry in Edward N. Zalta (Ed.): Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy .

Remarks

1. ^ Wilhelm Oberdieck: Henry More and the question of God in the seventeenth century , Göttingen 1985, pp. 17-19; Robert Crocker: Henry More, 1614-1687. A Biography of the Cambridge Platonist , Dordrecht 2003, pp. 1 f.
2. ^ Wilhelm Oberdieck: Henry More and the question of God in the seventeenth century , Göttingen 1985, pp. 9-11.
3. ^ Stefan Weyer: The Cambridge Platonists , Frankfurt a. M. 1993, p. 94 and note 384.
4. ^ Wilhelm Oberdieck: Henry More and the question of God in the seventeenth century , Göttingen 1985, p. 98.
5. ↑ Craig A. Staudenbaur: Galileo, Ficino, and Henry More's Psychathanasia . In: Journal of the History of Ideas 29, 1968, pp. 565-578; Alexander Jacob: Henry More's Psychodia Platonica and its relationship to Marsilio Ficino's Theologia Platonica . In: Journal of the History of Ideas 46, 1985, pp. 503-522.
6. ↑ Wilhelm Oberdieck: Henry More and the question of God in the seventeenth century , Göttingen 1985, pp. 77–79; Jasper Reid: Henry More on Material and Spiritual Extension . In: Dialogue 42, 2003, pp. 531-558.
7. ↑ On More's concept of space, see Mirko Sladek: Fragments of the Hermetic Philosophy in the Natural Philosophy of Modern Times , Frankfurt a. M. 1984, pp. 117-124; Serge Hutin: Henry More , Hildesheim 1966, pp. 98-103, 116-126; Jasper W. Reid: The Evolution of Henry More's Theory of Divine Absolute Space . In: Journal of the History of Philosophy 45, 2007, pp. 79-102.
8. ↑ Serge Hutin: Henry More , Hildesheim 1966, p. 98.
9. ↑ Alexander Jacob (Ed.): Henry More. The Immortality of the Soul , Dordrecht 1987, p. VII; Robert Crocker: Henry More, 1614-1687. A Biography of the Cambridge Platonist , Dordrecht 2003, p. 147.
10. ↑ Serge Hutin: Henry More , Hildesheim 1966, pp. 49-55; Frederic B. Burnham: The More-Vaughan Controversy: The Revolt against Philosophical Enthusiasm . In: Journal of the History of Ideas 35, 1974, pp. 33-49.
11. ^ Robert Crocker: Henry More, 1614–1687. A Biography of the Cambridge Platonist , Dordrecht 2003, pp. 144 f.
12. ↑ Serge Hutin: Henry More , Hildesheim 1966, p. 167.
13. ↑ Serge Hutin: Henry More , Hildesheim 1966, pp. 153–157; Robert Crocker: Henry More, 1614-1687. A Biography of the Cambridge Platonist , Dordrecht 2003, p. 111 ff.