Re-visioning Cambridge Platonism

十七世纪的一群哲学家/神学家，被称为剑桥柏拉图主义者，是我们当代自主、宽容和权利文化的重要来源。这场运动以其宽容、坚持科学与宗教的兼容性以及对人性的乐观主义而闻名，被视为西方道德哲学中的“哥白尼式革命”：可以说是向世俗伦理转变的关键一步，甚至可能提供了一种世俗世界观。她们对康威、马沙姆、麦考利和沃斯通克拉夫特等女性思想家的开创性影响，以及她们通过英国异见传统对女权话语发展的重大影响，才刚刚开始得到重视。关键的美学概念“无私的快乐”可以追溯到剑桥柏拉图主义的影响，从他们那里我们衍生出了基本的哲学术语，如“唯物主义”、“一神论”、“宗教哲学”和“笛卡尔主义”。然而，由于学术上的误解，缺乏可获取的教科书，以及对其主要作品的良好评论版本，剑桥柏拉图主义者的工作一直被严重忽视。这个跨学科项目的中心目标是通过汇集主要的英国和海外研究人员以及从事剑桥柏拉图主义研究的早期职业学者来解决这一忽视问题，以推进对这一关键智力运动的研究，并帮助提高学术界内外的知名度。这些讨论将在一系列的三个研讨会上进行，每个项目的贡献者将提交一篇论文。这些论文的修订本将作为一本书出版。项目的贡献者将是英国、北美和欧洲大陆的学者，以及主要文化机构的代表。学术贡献者将来自哲学、神学/宗教研究和英国文学等学科。该项目涵盖的主题将包括剑桥柏拉图主义的形成和来源，他们的主要哲学和宗教思想，以及他们在以下领域的接受：(1)美学；(2)道德;（三）早期现代女性写作；（四）世俗化和无神论的起源。该项目还旨在帮助整合早期职业研究人员，并巩固和扩大英国/海外研究联系——包括通过促进与两个研究兴趣与我们重叠的欧洲大陆项目的联系——以弥补剑桥柏拉图主义外语奖学金的边缘化。讲习班还将作为讨论未来研究计划的论坛，为更大的、后网络的一揽子研究工作奠定基础，特别是出版其中心著作的批评版本、一本书篇幅的重新评价和一本哲学资料书。该项目还将通过将网络与主要文化机构结合起来，促进公众对这一重要运动的理解，从而在社区中出现哲学/思想史。具体而言，该项目将通过以下方式，努力使公众更加意识到它们与妇女平等和宗教/世俗等重要社会问题的相关性，以及它们对美学的影响：(1)在英国广播公司第4电台“妇女时间”上的一次广播谈话，以及在剑桥和伦敦举行的两次关于剑桥柏拉图主义伦理作为妇女权利话语来源的重要性的公开谈话；(2)在2013年马姆斯伯里哲学节和2013年剑桥思想节上做两次关于剑桥柏拉图主义与世俗化的演讲；(3)参加BBC国际广播节目《剑桥柏拉图主义对英国浪漫主义诗歌影响论坛》的广播谈话；(4)在哲学杂志上发表文章。

The seventeenth century group of philosophers/theologians known as the Cambridge Platonists are an important source of our contemporary culture of autonomy, toleration, and rights. This movement, distinguished in its time for toleration, insistence on the compatibility of science and religion, and its optimism about human nature, has been seen as a 'Copernican revolution' in Western moral philosophy: arguably a key step in the shift to a secular ethics, indeed perhaps even furnishing a secular worldview. Their seminal influence on women thinkers such as Conway, Masham, Macauley, and Wollstonecraft, and their momentous impact via the British Dissenting tradition on the development of the discourse of women's rights has just started to be appreciated. The key aesthetic notion of 'disinterested pleasure' can be traced back to Cambridge Platonist influence, and from them we have derived basic philosophical terms such as 'materialism', 'monotheism', 'philosophy of religion', and 'Cartesianism'.The work of the Cambridge Platonists, however, has been gravely neglected due to a combination of scholarly misapprehensions, a lack of accessible textbooks, and good critical editions of their major works.The central aim of this interdisciplinary project is to begin addressing this neglect by bringing together the major established UK and overseas researchers as well as early career academics who work on Cambridge Platonism to advance research on and help raise the profile of this pivotal intellectual movement in and beyond academia. These discussions will take place at a series of three workshops where each contributor to the project will present a paper. Revised versions of these papers will be published as a book.Project contributors will be academics based in the UK, North America, and mainland Europe, as well as representatives of key cultural agencies. Academic contributors will be drawn from the disciplines of Philosophy, Theology/Religious Studies, and English Literature. Topics covered by the project will include the formation and sources of Cambridge Platonism, their key philosophical and religious ideas, and their reception in the areas of (i) aesthetics; (ii) ethics; (iii) early-modern women's writing; (iv) secularisation and the origins of atheism.The project additionally aims to help integrate early career researchers, and to consolidate and extend UK/overseas research links - including through fostering links with two mainland European projects whose research interests overlap with ours - in order to remedy the marginalisation of foreign-language Cambridge Platonism scholarship.The workshops will also prepare the groundwork for a larger, post-network research package by acting as a forum for the discussion of future research plans, in particular the publication of critical editions of their central works, a major book-length reappraisal, and a philosophical sourcebook.The project will also foster the public understanding of this important movement, and thereby the presence of philosophy/intellectual history in the community, by aligning the network with key cultural agencies. In particular, the project will endeavour to make the public more aware of their relevance to the important social issues of women's equality and religion/secularity, as well as their influence on aesthetics, through (1) a radio talk on BBC Radio 4 Women's Hour and two public talks in Cambridge and London on the significance of Cambridge Platonist ethics as a source of women's rights discourse; (2) two talks on Cambridge Platonism and secularisation at the Philosophy Festival 2013, Malmesbury, and Cambridge Festival of Ideas 2013; (3) a radio talk on BBC World Service programme The Forum on Cambridge Platonist influence on Romantic English Poetry; and (4) articles in philosophy magazines.