Philosophy, Science, and Religion in England, 1640-1700 (review)

BOOR REVIEWS 141 matters correctly. This perspectivist account is Pascal's morality ofjudgrnent or morality of the heart. It involves the intuitive mind and eventually some religious viewpoint . Carraud fails to distinguish this "bottom-up" thesis from social custom theory and so, I think, misinterprets Pascal's ethics as relativist and negative. There is, however, much else in the text that I would certainly endorse. The book is highly recommended. KEITH ARNOLD Universityof Ottawa Richard Kroll, Richard Ashcraft, and Perez Zagorin, editors. Philosophy,Science,and Religion in England, z64o-z7oo. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 199a. Pp. xv + 287. NP. Latitudinarianism is the central theme of this collection of essays, which were originally presented at a conference held in the spring of 1987 under the rubric "Latitudinarianism , Science, and Society." Few topics in seventeenth-century English thought have been as vaguely and as variously treated by scholars as has the topic of latitudinarianism . The wide variety of topics with which these essays deal helps to explain why: instead of forming a cohesive group with certain well-defined tenets, the latitudinarians both reflected and reacted to--and often as individuals rather than as a group--the entire spectrum of rapid cultural, intellectual, political, and theological changes which occurred in seventeenth-century England. In his introduction, Richard Kroll includes an excellent section on the historiography of latitudinarianism which effectively provides the background for the essays which follow. Kroll concludes his introduction with an essay in which he argues that the latitudinarians' concern with the issue of language reveals not only a concern with theological and scientific issues, hut also a "prescription" for social behavior, most particularly the need for conformity to the state-established Anglican church. The essays which follow are divided into two parts: "The Cambridge Platonists: Philosophy at Mid-Century," and "The Restoration Setdement." In the first part, Allison P. Coudert argues that More's belief in the perfectability of man accounts for his initial attraction to the Kabhalah and to Quakerism, while Joseph M. Levine and Sarah Hutton contribute studies concerning the relationship of the Cambridge Platonists to the pmca theo/og/a of the pagan philosophers. Alan Gabbey shows how the Cambridge Platonists' postulation of a "plastick nature" avoids mechanism in the natural world, and argues convincingly that this "plastick nature" is analogous to free will in human beings. Finally, Perez Zagorin compares Cudworth and Hobbes on "Is" and "Ought," arguing that Hobbes's theory of civil law is not as consistently relativistic as Cudworth (and posterity)judged it to be. The essays in Part Two, particularly, undermine some commonly held interpretations of the latitudinarians. Richard Ashcraft reexamines the often-mentioned relationship between the latitudinarians' rational theology and their religious toleration, arguing that if one looks beyond the language involved to the actions advocated it was, 142 JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY 32:1 JANUARY ~994 instead, the arguments of the nonconformists concerning rationality which led to a theory of the inviolability of conscience. In another essay on latitudinarianism and reason, G. A. J. Rogers argues that both the latitudinarians and John Locke utilized arguments concerning the limits of reason in the context of theology, hut that whereas the latitudinarians used such arguments to justify orthodoxy and adherence to the state church, Locke used them to justify toleration. And John Marshall, also emphasizing differences between Locke and the latitudinarians (while recognizing that there were many shared beliefs and attitudes), emphasizes that Locke parted ways with the latitudinarians where such doctrines as original sin, Christ's Satisfaction, and the Trinity were concerned. The remaining two essays address the claim ofJ. R. Jacob that the latitudinarians adopted the new natural philosophy because it was perceived to support a particular politico-economical ideology. MargaretJ. Osier traces the intellectual origins of Robert Boyle's philosophy of nature to the continental philosophers (especiaUy Gassendi), arguing persuasively that the fact that Boyle's corpuscularianism had "deep historical roots" and involved "ideas articulated earlier in the century in a different country and a vastly different political climate" does much to weaken Jacob's claim "that particular ideological concerns played a primary role in the formation of Boyle's thought" 078-79). Michael Hunter addresses the...