Rediscovering the Philosophy of Ralph Cudworth
Monday June 3, 2024 - Tuesday June 4, 2024
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Join us for two days of talks on the philosophy of Ralph Cudworth (1618-1688), an English philosopher and clergyman who defies classification within customary categories of the history of philosophy. Steeped in ancient philosophy, he kept abreast of contemporary philosophy and science, sharing the anti-scholastic agenda of thinkers like Bacon, Hobbes, and Descartes. Cudworth is usually regarded a Cambridge Platonist. His written output was substantial, but much of it remained unpublished, and his philosophical system is incomplete. Broadly, his philosophy combines Platonist ethics and metaphysics with an atomist natural philosophy.
Schedule
Monday, June 3, 2024
| 9:30–10:00 | Arrival (Coffee and Refreshments) |
| Monday Morning | |
| 10:00–11:30 | Stewart Duncan (Buffalo), “Cudworth as a Critic of Spinoza” |
| 11:30–11:45 | Break |
| 11:45–1:15 | Anna Corrias (Cambridge), “‘The Ancientest of all the Poets’ or ‘a Mere Romantick Allegory’? Ralph Cudworth on Orphic Metaphysics and Theology” |
| 1:15–2:45 | Lunch |
| Monday Afternoon | |
| 2:45–4:15 | Fabrizio Baldassarri (Ca’ Foscari, Venice/Indiana), “Life as Vegetation; or Plant Life in Cudworth, Grew, and Locke” |
| 4:15–4:30 | Break |
| 4:30–6:00 | François Duchesneau (Montréal), “Cudworth’s ‘Plastic Nature’ as a Physiological Concept” |
| 7:00– | Conference Dinner |
Tuesday, June 4, 2024
| 10:30–11:00 | Arrival (Coffee and Refreshments) |
| Tuesday Morning | |
| 11:00–12:30 | Sarah Hutton (York), “‘The Very Constitution of the Leviathan’: Brute and Human in Cudworthian Psychology” |
| 12:30–2:00 | Lunch |
| Tuesday Afternoon | |
| 2:00–3:30 | Vili Lähteenmäki (Oulu), “Cudworth on Knowing One’s Acts, Contents, and Capacities of Thinking” |
| 3:30–3:45 | Break |
| 3:45–5:15 | Samuel Rickless (California, San Diego), “Cudworth and Locke on Freewill and Akrasia” |
| 6:30– | Conference Dinner |
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