Abstract

STROK, Natalia. A Monster with four Heads that Devour Each Other: Materialism and Plastic Nature in Ralph Cudworth. Diánoia [online]. 2019, vol.64, n.83, pp.209-227.  Epub Apr 13, 2020. ISSN 0185-2450.  https://doi.org/10.22201/iifs.18704913e.2019.83.1593.

In this paper I examine the association between the concepts of “materialism” and “atheism” in Ralph Cudworth’s The True Intellectual System of the Universe, and the metaphysical consequences that the Englishman establishes for those trends. Cudworth offers an exhaustive classification of possible atheisms in order to show their mistakes, and in this way he participates in the origination of categories which eventually will be considered as historiographical. I present then the concept of “Plastic Nature” and the ontological order that Cudworth thinks to be the correct one, and which exhibits the Platonic influence and the subordination of the material to the immaterial. Thus, in his metaphysics Cudworth maintains a dualism insofar as he does not reject the existence of matter but the wrong use that atheists make of it.

Keywords : Cambridge Platonism; atheism; matter; ontological scale; providence.

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