More, Henry (1614–1687)

MORE, HENRY (1614–1687)

MORE, HENRY (1614–1687), English philosopher. Henry More was the most prolific of the group of seventeenth-century thinkers known as the Cambridge Platonists. Born in Grantham, Lincolnshire, he was educated at Eton College and Christ's College, Cambridge, where he was elected fellow in 1641. Despite living through one of the most turbulent periods in English history, More retained his fellowship at Christ's during the English Civil War, Interregnum (1648–1660), and Restoration, devoting himself to a life of scholarship and publishing many works of philosophy and theology.

In his day More came to be regarded as one of England's leading contemporary philosophers. One of the first proponents of Cartesianism, he attacked Thomas Hobbes and Baruch Spinoza and was an enthusiast for the new science of Galileo and the Royal Society. His own philosophy owes much to Plato and Plotinus and is largely dedicated to the defense of religious belief against the twin forces of skepticism and atheism. Central to it is his philosophy of spirit, which underpins his arguments for demonstrating the existence and providential nature of God. More accounted for the operations of nature through his hypothesis of the Spirit of Nature or principium hylarchicum, analogous to Plato's world soul (anima mundi). His Platonism, first evident in his earliest writings, his Philosophical Poems (1647), was developed more fully in his Of the Immortality of the Soul (1659) and Enchiridion Metaphysicum (1671; Manual of metaphysics), in which he propounds the idea for which he is probably best known today: his concept of infinite space.

After repudiating predestinarian Calvinism in his youth, More subscribed to a tolerant Christianity that influenced the latitudinarian movement, which took a tolerant stance on doctrinal matters within the Church of England. Although he conformed at the Restoration (1660), he was nevertheless regarded as heterodox in High Church circles, principally on account of his adherence to Origen's doctrine of the preexistence of the soul. In his later years More was much preoccupied with the study of biblical prophecy and the Cabala, sharing this last interest with Franciscus Mercurius von Helmont (1579–1644) and the German scholar Christian Knorr von Rosenroth (1636–1689).

More's most famous pupil was Anne Conway (1631–1679), who owed her introduction to philosophy to him. Among those who came under his influence were the clergyman Joseph Glanvill (1636–1680), the philosopher John Norris (1657–1711), and the naturalist John Ray (1627–1705). He was also known to Isaac Newton and to Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz.

See also Cabala ; Calvinism ; Cambridge Platonists ; Cartesianism ; Philosophy .

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Primary Sources

More, Henry. A Collection of Several Philosophical Writings. Cambridge, U.K., 1662. Reprinted 1978.

——. H. Mori Cantabrigiensis Opera Omnia. London, 1675–1679. Latin translation of all More's theological and philosophical works.

Nicolson, Marjorie H., ed. Conway Letters: The Correspondence of Anne, Viscountess Conway, Henry More and Their Friends, 1642–84. Revised by Sarah Hutton. Oxford, 1992. Important for biography and context.

Secondary Sources

Cassirer, Ernst. The Platonic Renaissance in England. Translated by James P. Pettegrove. Austin, 1953.

Hall, Rupert. Henry More: Magic, Religion and Experiment. Oxford, 1990. Biography with emphasis on history of science.

Hutton, Sarah, ed. Henry More, 1614–1687: Tercentenary Studies. Dordrecht, Netherlands, 1990. Articles providing the fullest coverage of the range of More's interests. Best bibliography of More.

Koyré, Alexandre. From the Closed World to the Infinite Universe. Baltimore, 1957. More, Newton, and infinite space.

Sarah Hutton