Ralph Cudworth

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Treatments of deification among “Anglicans” in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries stand out as noteworthy for contemporary discussions of the doctrine for four interconnected reasons. First, in these figures one witnesses a sustained articulation of deification in the West, countering the prevalent perception of deification as an exclusively Eastern Christian doctrine. Second, these figures draw their views of deification from patristic figures of both East and West, and more fundamentally from scripture, demonstrating that, for early Anglicans, the doctrine is not of a particularly Eastern provenance. Third, for Richard Hooker and a number of Cambridge Platonists, deification does not supplant justification (as some contemporary advocates of deification are eager to do), but rather coordinates with justification and sanctification in a coherent soteriological vision. Fourth, for Anglicans deification has an uncommon ecclesiological importance, as the doctrine plays a central role in distinguishing the English Church from Roman Catholic and “Puritan” alternatives.

A propósito de la ola desmonumentalizadora en América y el mag-netismo de la figura de Cristóbal Colón para el cuestionamiento de la me-moria colonial, el presente texto ofrece una reflexión que se apoya en no-ciones  clave  del  debate  como  patrimonio,  memoria,  iconoclasia,  archivo  y  repertorio. Asimismo, se examina la influencia de nuestra realidad digital contemporánea en el fenómeno de la impugnación histórica. Dado que la materialidad del monumento ofrece distintas capas de temporalidad, se plan-tea la posibilidad de convertir el pedestal en escenario de intervención como estrategia óptima de activación de la memoria crítica, lejos de la reverencia o de la violencia.

In his 1705 writing Considerations sur les Principes de Vie, et sur les Natures Plastiques, par l'Auteur du Système de l'Harmonie preétablie, Leibniz discards Cudworth's conception of plastic natures. 1 Instead, he proposes his own reinterpretation of the idea regarding the presence in matter of several plastic principles. Such a reinterpretation assumes the form of a qualification of the plastic natures as 'material': Ainsi je n'ay pas besoin de recourir avec M. Cudworth à certaines Natures Plastiques immaterielles […]. J'en puis dire, Non mi bisogna, e non mi basta, par cette raison même de la preformation et d'un organisme à l'infini, qui me fournit des natures plastiques materielles propres à ce qu'on demande; au lieu que les principes plastiques immaterielles sont aussi peu necessaires, qu'ils sont peu capables d'y satisfaire. 2

This chapter examines the reception of the Meditations in early modern Europe, focusing primary on the period from the first publication of the Meditations in 1559 to the end of the eighteenth century. In particular it discusses the way in which the text was read as either a generic source of ancient moral maxims or a serious work of Stoic philosophy.

La química tal y como la conocemos hoy es un sistema de prácticas científicas estables y experimentales que se enseñan de la misma manera en la mayoría de los países. Es heredera de una multitud de oficios que coinciden en el objetivo de transformar y crear nuevas sustancias. Aquí se discute el límite material de la sustancia química mediante el ejemplo del carbono, y en particular del experimento de difracción del C 60. Con ello se intentará precisar el concepto de sustancia química y su relevancia en la discusión filosófica actual. Palabras clave: sistema de prácticas científicas; difracción del C 60 ; filosofía de la química; tecnociencia Abstract: Chemistry, as we know it today, is a system of scientific, experimental practices, stabilized and taught in the same way in most countries. It is the inheritor of several trades whose objective is to transform and create new substances. I discuss here the material limit of the chemical substance, exemplified by carbon, and particularly by the C 60 diffraction experiment. I thus intend to clarify the concept of chemical substance and its relevance in the current philosophical discussion.

Message from the Guest Editor Dear Colleagues, This Special Issue aims to take stock of philosophical theology at this historical moment through both original constructive papers and review articles reflecting on the field. In either case, papers should situate their work within the field of philosophical theology as the author understands it. Broad questions include:

We point out how some Christian-Muslim comparative philosophies of religion may be enhanced with certain translations or interpretations of Christianity: a modalist view of the trinity and a high Christology. While perhaps of only limited significance, we argue in more detail that a comparison of two leading philosophers, one Islamic, the other Christian, can bring to light a shared philosophy of innate ideas or nativism, grounding moral and theological views of goodness and the divine

One could begin any historical survey of philosophical positions on the relation between the mental and the physical by reviewing positions before Descartes.. One could, for example, profitably begin by examining the views of Plato, Aristotle, Aquinas or any number of other thinkers. What one cannot do, however, is begin by looking at philosophical positions which have come after Descartes. Why is this? Not simply because Descartes gives us a classic statement of the problems involved, not simply because he represents a particular position which people still argue for an against (though both of these is true) but also because, to a large extent, his work has set the framework of Cartesian categories and so perpetuate the very problem they claim to resolve. Thus Erwin Straus exaggerated only a little when he said that "The ideas of Descartes have become so much a part of everybody's thought in Europe that later centuries took credit for the discoveries prepared or made by Descartes. Just because European thought was so deeply suffused with Cartesianism, those who came later were unaware of repeating the great thinker, they were ignorant of the sources on which they depended." Descartes' views are thus not simply of concern to those interested in the history of ideas and so no apology is needed for a continuing interest in his work. However, if the central thrust of Baker and Morris' ambitious and closely argued work is true, the foregoing claim for his continued relevance should be made with some reservation. At best, the relation between this 'Cartesian' heritage and Descartes' own views is not straightforward and, in fact, may be largely nebulous. Baker and Morris' main contention is that the 'Cartesianism' with which we have become so familiar is something of a changeling and 'has much of the character of a projection of distinctively more modern ideas on to an early seventeenth-century thinker'. Close textual analysis reveals that this changeling, what the authors dub the Cartesian Legend, is a strained interpretation of his work which requires Descartes to hold positions at odds with the general direction of his thought. Central to the Cartesian Legend, of course, is the view that Descartes was a Cartesian Dualist. Not so, say Baker and Morris: it is possible to read Descartes in a way such that he did not think that thoughts constitute an inner realm of mental objects, that this inner realm is apprehended by a quasi-perceptual faculty called 'introspection', that its deliverances are indubitable, that the body is an insentient machine, that the mental and the physical are causally (and thereby externally and contingently) related, and that he did not use the term 'thought' to embrace all 'states of consciousness'. They propose an alternative, more sympathetic, reading in which Descartes' Dualism is presented as more refined, of its time, and consistent with the general principles governing his own metaphysical, logical, ethical, and theological thought.

In 1846, naturalist Louis Agassiz took Harvard College by storm with his idealist approach to nature. In his initial lectures, repeated in New York the following year, Agassiz announced, ''We have that within ourselves which assures us of participation in the Divine Nature and it is a particular characteristic of man to be able to rise in that way above material Nature, and to understand intellectual existences.'' He then made it clear that by intellectual existences he meant a divine plan of creation. ''What naturalists intend when they speak of what they call 'types'. .. may be easily understood by comparison. We all know that architects construct our dwellings according to plans conceived by them before the erection of the edifice.'' 1 There is no doubt that Agassiz valued the careful collection of observational data. ''It has only been step by step that man has acquired an insight into this plan.'' 2 But his empiricism, if that is the right term, was entirely subordinate to apprehension of divine ideas, which alone deserved to be called science. In one recent account, The Metaphysical Club, which contains an excellent discussion of Agassiz's American career, author Louis Menand accurately describes this dual emphasis on observation and intuition. But Menand leaves unstated the problem of An earlier version of this paper was read at the 2002 Congress of the History of the Philosophy of Science Working Group, in Montreal, June 21-23. I am indebted to those who commented on the paper there and especially to George A. Reisch who made a number of helpful recommendations. 1 Louis Agassiz, An introduction to the study of natural history, in a series of lectures delivered in the Hall of the

In this paper I investigate where the boundaries of conscious mental life lie in Cavendish’s theory, and why. Cavendish argues for a wholly material yet wholly thinking universe. She claims that all matter is capable of “self-knowledge” and “perception” (OEP, p. 138), so that every part of nature “must have its own knowledge and perception, according to its own particular nature” (OEP, p. 141). It is unclear, however, whether the universal capacity of matter to know and perceive also implies the presence of consciousness. I show that Cavendish’s use of the notions of “self-knowledge” and “perception” implies the attribution of consciousness to all bodies. I identify one condition under which the ubiquitous presence of consciousness is intuitively required in Cavendish’s system: namely the presence of intentional agency in every part of nature, which Cavendish conceives as necessary, alongside the capacity of self-motion, to account for the orderly behavior of any body.

Most comparisons between Berkeley and Hobbes begin by highlighting their differences in metaphysics. On the one hand, Berkeley argues that the concept of matter is unintelligible because matter is supposed by its adherents to exist apart from what we sense (i.e. our ideas); and, since we cannot think of anything (including matter) other than in terms we understand (i.e. as objects of thought), nothing that is truly independent of thought is intelligible. On the other hand, Hobbes assumes that only material objects are intelligible because they alone are sensible objects of experience; since we cannot think of anything (including minds and their acts) other than in terms of the material things we sensibly experience, nothing that is truly independent of matter is intelligible. The disagreement between Berkeley and Hobbes about the existence of matter thus depends on how they differ fundamentally on what they mean in saying that something is ‘sensible’ (i.e. meaningful). It is surpris...

is not a canonical author but was engaged in his own time discussions. In this paper I intend to offer a sketch of Cudworth's conception of human mind and its relationship to freewill and responsibility in comparison to non-human animal case, because that would allow a different approach between human and non-human beings. In order to do that, I will look not only in his main book, The True Intellectual System of the Universe (1678), but mostly in his posthumously published work, Treatise Concerning Eternal and Immutable Morality (1731) and Treatise of Freewill (1838).

The Cambridge Platonists are modern thinkers and the context of seventeenthcentury Cambridge science is an inalienable and decisive part of their thought. Cudworth's interest in ancient theology, however, seems to conflict with the progressive aspect of his philosophy. The problem of the nature, however, of this 'Platonism' is unavoidable. Even in his complex and recondite ancient theology Cudworth is motivated by philosophical considerations, and his legacy among philosophers in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries should not be overlooked. In particular we will draw on the scholarship of the German Egyptologist Jan Assmann in order to reassess the significance of Cudworth's theory of religion for later philosophical developments.

En el presente artículo se analiza el lugar de la percepción sensible en la propuesta gnoseológica de Ralph Cudworth (1617-1688), principalmente en su Tratado sobre la eterna e inmutable moralidad. Si bien aquella no es considerada conocimiento verdadero, mostraré que aporta algún tipo de información sobre el mundo natural que nos rodea, por lo cual sostengo que produce algún tipo de “sabiduría” práctica para desenvolverse correctamente en el mundo en un nivel físico. Para esto presentaré de modo general su metafísica dualista en The true intellectual system, y distinguiré las características propias de la sensación, por una parte, y del conocimiento intelectual, por otra, en el Tratado.
This article analyzes the place of sensible perception in the epistemological proposal of Ralph Cudworth (1617-1688), mainly in his Treatise Concerning Eternal and Immutable Morality. Although that is not considered true knowledge, I will show that it provides some kind of information about the natural world and of that which surrounds us,
whereby I maintain that it produces some kind of practical "wisdom" for our correct movement in the world, at a physical level. In order to accomplish this, I will present in a general way his dualistic metaphysics in his The True Intellectual System, and I will distinguish the characteristics of sensation, on the one hand, and of intellectual knowledge, on the other, in the Treatise.

This article first explains the classical version of the Divine command ethics in both Christian and Islamic traditions, and then by pointing out its coherency, at least in appearance, with Divine sovereignty and absolute power, it tries to show why this idea is not accepted by a significant number of the Christian and Muslim theologians. William Wainwright answers this question by using Ralph Cudworth's objections to Divine command ethics. In total, he considers seven objections and criticisms as the main reasons for Christian theologians' turning away from the theory. By presenting these seven objections, which are mainly taken from Ralph Cudworth's book, we try to find similar examples in the Islamic tradition and compare them with Wainwrights' arguments. Some of these objections can be seen in both Christian and Islamic traditions of moral rationalism. But some of them, despite the similarity in content, have different formulations. Also, some objections are specific to Christian or Islamic theology. Last but not least, there are intra-religious objections based on revelations in Islam and Christianity against the theory of Divine command, which is not the subject of my discussion in this article.

Dans The True Intellectual System of the Universe (1678), Ralph Cudworth entend ruiner toutes les formes d’athéisme, en particulier, l’athéisme qu’il associe à l’atomisme de type démocritéen. Descartes semble, de ce point de vue, bien peu susceptible d’être visé par la critique du théologien de Cambridge. En dépit de l’union dans ses Principia philosophiae (1644) entre une métaphysique immatérialiste et une physique mécaniste, il en constitue cependant une cible majeure. L’antifinalisme des explications physiques des Principia est interprété par Cudworth comme révélateur d’une doctrine imparfaite de la substance incorporelle, dont il tient pour responsable, en dernier recours, le primat accordé dans la métaphysique cartésienne au Cogito en tant que pensée consciente de son actualité.

En este artículo me propongo comprender
la necesidad la unión entre alma
y cuerpo en la jerarquía de seres que
propone Ralph Cudowrth en The True
Intellectual System (1678). Así se apreciarán
los distintos tipos de cuerpo y las
diversas configuraciones de la sustancia
inmaterial, que mostrará distintos grados
de consciencia que se pueden adquirir y
la armonía que rige en la metafísica de
nuestro filósofo. Por último, intentaré
dar cuenta de consecuencias en el plano
político en el marco de su filosofía.

This is a revised version of a paper presented at the APA Eastern Division's 115th annual meeting in New York on Monday January 07, 2019. It was presented at session 2O Author Meets Critics: Michael Jacovides, Locke’s Image of the World. The session chair was Antonia LoLordo (University of Virginia), the critics were Robert Pasnau (University of Colorado Boulder) and Kathryn Tabb (Columbia University), and the author was Michael Jacovides (Purdue University).

Contribution to Stoicism Today online symposium addressing the question of whether Stoicism leads to passive withdrawal from challenges-or whether this is a misconception. Online symposium published as a series during April 2022. Right: William James in Brazil, 1865 (Wikipedia) 'Why [may] people think that Stoicism leads to a passivity and withdrawal from things, rather than an active, prudent engagement with them?' This post will attempt to locate aspects of the historical background, while affirming, in conclusion, a view of Stoicism as social, active, and enduringly illuminating. First, one element of the misconception has a long pedigree. The Stoic term 'constancy,' current in English through the Early Modern age, was derived from the Latin constantia, best known from Seneca, whose De Constantia Sapientis ("On the Constancy of the Wise Man") remained a highly influential text for the Enlightenment. Yet through the hostile lens of controversy, Stoic 'constancy' was readily and regularly distorted into 'passivity,' in a way we can recognise today.

This paper maintains that Swinburne’s argument that the body is not essential to who I am is vulnerable to a similar objection to that put forward by Arnauld against Descartes: how do I know that my self-identification furnishes a complete and adequate account of the essential “me,” sufficient to show I could really continue to exist even were the body to be destroyed? The paper goes on to criticize Swinburne’s “hyper-Cartesian” position, that we are simply “souls who control bodies,” and thus only contingently human. This denial of our essential humanity compares unfavorably with Descartes’s own more intuitively attractive view that the human being is a genuine entity in its own right.

Most comparisons between Berkeley and Hobbes begin by highlighting their differences in metaphysics. On the one hand, Berkeley argues that the concept of matter is unintelligible because matter is supposed by its adherents to exist apart from what we sense (i.e. our ideas); and, since we cannot think of anything (including matter) other than in terms we understand (i.e. as objects of thought), nothing that is truly independent of thought is intelligible. On the other hand, Hobbes assumes that only material objects are intelligible because they alone are sensible objects of experience; since we cannot think of anything (including minds and their acts) other than in terms of the material things we sensibly experience, nothing that is truly independent of matter is intelligible. The disagreement between Berkeley and Hobbes about the existence of matter thus depends on how they differ fundamentally on what they mean in saying that something is ‘sensible’ (i.e. meaningful). It is surpris...

With the notion of advancing a modern Stoic environmental ethical framework, we explore the philosophy's call to "living according to Nature", as derived from ancient Stoic theology. We do this by evaluating the orthodox (ancient) viewpoint and the contemporary criticisms levelled against it. We reflect on the atheistic interpretations of Stoicism and their associated call to "live according to the facts". We consider the limitations that this call has when applied to societal, and particularly non-human matters. We do not undertake this research with the aim of determining which view of Stoic theology is right or wrong. However, we contest one of the assumptions of the heterodox approach, namely that the Stoic worldview is incompatible with modern scientific thinking. Indeed, we demonstrate how Stoic theology, far from being outdated or irrelevant, is actually refreshingly contemporary in that it provides the tools, scope and urgency with which to deliver a far more considerate ethical framework for the 21st century. Finally, we suggest where Stoic theology can help practitioners to reframe and respond to environmental challenges, which we argue forms part of their cosmopolitan obligation to take care of themselves, others and the Earth as a whole.

Les Éléments de théologie de Proclus constituent un monument philosophique radicalement singulier tant par son architecture propre que par la façon dont la tradition l'a revisité. Ordonnant, sous une forme géométrique, les principes de la métaphysique néoplatonicienne, ils ont à la fois constitué celle-ci en système et opéré comme le principal relais de sa transmission aux pensées byzantine, arabe, et occidentale. Ce sont ces effets d'héritage et d'adaptation que les textes ici réunis visent à évaluer. Du Liber de causis à Hegel en passant par Thomas d'Aquin, Dietrich de Freiberg, Giordano Bruno, les Platoniciens de Cambridge et Leibniz, se reconstitue ainsi une « grande chaîne des êtres », réarticulée par la chaîne des raisons, et à chaque fois revivifiée par celle de la transmission.

The aim of this chapter is, first, to analyse the specific articulation, in Plotinus, of the notions of self-knowledge, self-consciousness, and interiority. It is, more precisely, to show how the conceptual relations we have inherited from the ‘Cartesian moment’—between self-knowledge and self-consciousness, but also between self and substance, or between self and identity—are actually dissociated in Plotinus ‘philosophy. Insofar as he accepts an immediate reflexivity, Plotinus cannot be enlisted for the ancient thought of the self. But because he does not confer on self-knowledge the value of a principle, he cannot be enlisted either for the modern philosophies of consciousness and the subject. Nonetheless, Plotinus’ philosophy of the self was a direct source of inspiration for a Modern, the Cambridge Platonist Ralph Cudworth, who finds in it a basis to criticize some fundamental aspects of Descartes’ thought. The chapter therefore also evaluates this legacy.

As we know it today, chemistry is a system of scientific practices, experimental, stabilized and taught in the same way in most countries. Chemistry is inheritor of several trades which objective is to transform and create new substances. The material limit of the chemical substance is being discussed here, exemplified by carbon, particularly from the C 60 diffraction experiment. Such arguments are intended to clarify the concept of chemical substance and its relevance in the current philosophical discussion.

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Roman Stoicism is typically read as a therapeutic philosophy that is centered around the care of
the self and presented in the form of a self-help manual. Closer examination reveals a less
reassuring and more challenging side to the school’s teachings, one that provokes ethical reflection
at the limits of the self’s intactness and coherence. The self is less an object of inquiry than
the by-product of a complex set of experiences in the face of nature and society and across any
number of flashpoints, from one’s own or others’ beliefs, actions, values, and relationships to the
difficulty of sizing up one’s place in the universe. The pressures of natural and ethical reflection
put intuitive conceptions of the self at considerable risk. The Roman Stoic self proves to be
vulnerable, contingent, unbounded, relational, and opaque—in short, a rich matrix of problems
that point beyond the individual self and anticipate contemporary critiques of the self.
KEYWORDS: self, third-person, Lucretius, L. Annaeus Seneca, Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius,
Epicureanism, Stoicism, natural philosophy, ethics, contemporary critical theory

Resumen: En este artículo me propongo mostrar que en el universo armónico que propone Ralph Cudworth (1617-1688), destacado miembro del grupo de los Platónicos de Cambridge del siglo XVII, la sustancia inmaterial cumple un rol fundamental. Ella no se halla separada de la sustancia material y recibe distintos nombres de acuerdo a las funciones que desarrolla, en tanto es la única fuerza vital en la creación, fundada en la naturaleza divina. Es decir, la naturaleza plástica (plastic nature) y las almas no son más que distintos nombres para esa única sustancia inmaterial en el universo creado. Esto refleja una concepción dualista diferente al dualismo cartesiano, que tendrá consecuencias a nivel físico. Por eso, en primer lugar, presentaré la metafísica de Cudworth, para luego detenerme en la sustancia inmaterial. Para esto utilizaré su obra principal The True Intellectual System of the Universe (1678) y sus dos escritos de publicación póstuma: Treatise concerning eternal and immutable Morality (1731) y Treatise on Freewill (1838).

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En el presente artículo estudio la asociación entre los conceptos de “materialismo” y “ateísmo” en The True Intellectual System of the Universe de Ralph Cudworth y las consecuencias metafísicas que el inglés encuentra en esas corrientes. El inglés ofrece una clasificación exhaustiva de los posibles ateísmos para mostrar sus errores y participar en la gestación de categorías que a la larga se considerarán historiográficas. En un segundo momento, presento el concepto de “naturaleza plástica” y el orden ontológico que Cudworth ofrece como el correcto, en el cual se aprecia la influencia platónica y la subordinación de lo material a lo inmaterial. Así, en su metafísica, Cudworth sostiene un dualismo porque no rechaza la existencia de la materia, sino la utilización errónea que hacen de ella los ateos.

In translating the surviving works of Epictetus, Elizabeth Carter (1717-1806) had to confront the Stoic attitude to suicide - a legal crime in England, as well as a sin under Christianity, in a period of national anxiety around the suicide rate. Carter's adroit handling of the issue helped ensure the instant and lasting success of her work.

This paper, with slight editing changes, has appeared in Stoicism Today, September 25 2021.

INTRODUCTION-HISTORIOGRAPHY OF SUBVERSIVE IDEAS With regard to David Hume's Natural History of Religion (1757), Frank Manuel writes, in The Eighteenth Century Confronts the Gods (1967): Between the rationalist apologiae for the truths of revealed religion current in eighteenth-century England and a naturalistic interpretation of religious experience there was no great divide. The act of apology itself involved a momentous leap-objectifying the problem-and once this gap had been bridged the reduction of religious mystery to mere anthropology could not be long delayed. 1 The attempt to defend Christian revelation on 'rationalist' grounds, he writes, ultimately backfired. Thinkers in late seventeenth-and early eighteenth-century Britain developed theories of religion that, for Manuel, rendered Christian revelation theologically unnecessary, a priori, and historically improbable, a posteriori. That is, apologists for natural religion made such a strong case for its universality and sufficiency that any specific revelation, including Christian revelation manifested in the Bible, became superfluous. At the same time, historical investigations of early religion elaborated accounts of 'priestcraft' by which false claims to divine revelation were invented. Theological writings in defense of Christian doctrine were co-opted by radical deists who stripped away revelation in their account of true religious belief that derived from unaided human reason. Seemingly inevitably, this ended in Hume's account of religious belief as a product of human passions-the reduction of Mystery to mere anthropology. 2

Smith's celebrated "man of system" passage gives a context in which philosopher and legislator come together, TMS, vi ii ¶ 42. 2 "The reasonings of philosophy, it may be said, though they may confound and perplex the understanding, can never break down the necessary connection which Nature has established between causes and their effects. The causes which naturally excite our desires and aversions, our hopes and fears, our joys and sorrows, would no doubt, notwithstanding all the reasonings of Stoicism, produce upon each individual, according to the degree of his actual sensibility, their proper and necessary effects. The judgments of the man within the breast, however, might be a good deal affected by those reasonings, and that great inmate might be taught by them to attempt to overawe all our private, partial, and selfish affections into a more or less perfect tranquillity. To direct the judgments of this inmate is the great purpose of all systems of morality. That the Stoical philosophy had very great influence upon the character and conduct of its followers, cannot be 4 "... most people thought, if the gods took to dialectic, they would adopt no other system of than that of Chrysippus." (Diogenes Laertius vii § 180). "[O]ften said to be the greatest logician of ancient times. Chrysippus was regarded as the second founder of Stoicism; according to an old saying, 'If there had been no Chrysippus, there would have been no Stoa.' ... It seems likely that Chrysippus was responsible for the final organization of Stoic logic into a calculus." Mates (1953, p. 7).

Stoic philosophy has been charged with an inconsistency insofar as its deterministic worldview appears to conflict with its advocacy of various methods of self-discipline aiming at self-improvement. It is, some claim, self-contradictory to hold persons responsible for adhering to counsel regarding their behavior and attitude if forces beyond their control ultimately determine that their behavior and attitude will not conform to counsel. In this paper, I argue that this complaint is misguided. Though several Stoic philosophers attempted to reconcile their determinism with some conception of free will, I contend that the Stoics should have (or at least could have) rejected the doctrine of free will while defending Stoic counsel and its efficacy for producing a well-ordered mind, virtuous character, and a life of harmony with Nature.

Nature, according to Cavendish, has "an Infinite Natural power, that is, a power to produce infinite effects in her own self, by infinite changes of Motions" (OEP II.XIV: 220). While Cavendish mentions powers with respect to human beings, medicines, occasional causes, and other entities, these powers are really just the power of self-moving matter to cause changes in the world. This paper examines why Cavendish attributes the power self-motion to matter, what this power is, how it arose, how it is enacted, and its limitations. In doing so, I discuss her views on causation, perception, and motion, and argue that motion is not reducible to change in mereological facts.