The Cambridge Platonists and Early Modern Philosophy

'In this new book, Samuel Kaldas takes further the growing demonstration that the Cambridge Platonists were intellectual pioneers and not laggards. They were neither marginal at the time, nor in the later history of modern philosophy and theology, of which they were partial architects. Usefully describing the differences between its key exponents, Kaldas nonetheless shows how what they had in common was the sustaining of a Renaissance Christian Platonic tradition within English Protestantism, including an ethics of sympathy and generosity,  in antithesis to Calvinist doctrines of an arbitrary and tyrannical God. This sustaining allowed theology to stay close to philosophy in a manner that resonates later on through variants of Pietism and Romanticism to the debates of our own era.' Catherine Pickstock, University of Cambridge 'That brilliant generation of philosophers and theologians whom we collectively call the Cambridge Platonists arrived at a golden moment in the history of British thought-arguably its high meridian-and yet their achievements are little appreciated and even less studied in the aftermath of the ascendancy of the analytic tradition. They deserve immeasurably more attention and serious study than they typically receive, and Samuel Kaldas's book is an exemplary attempt to correct the oversight.' David Bentley Hart, University of Notre Dame 'Dr Kaldas expounds the historical context in which a group of Cambridge intellectuals challenged the foundations of 17th Century Reformed Theology – especially such doctrines as double predestination, and the unconstrained authority of God to demand whatever He pleased. A very valuable resource for scholars and philosophers alike.' Stephen R. L. Clark, University of Liverpool