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Cudworth and Seventeenth-Century Theories of Consciousness

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The Uses of Antiquity

Part of the book series: Australasian Studies in History and Philosophy of Science ((AUST,volume 10))

Abstract

One of the few things that most philosophers working within various traditions agree about is that the notion of consciousness is a key, or fundamental notion, both in epistemology and in any theory of the self. Discussions of consciousness as we know them began in earnest in the late seventeenth/early eighteenth century — largely under the influence of Cartesianism. This at least is the acknowledged historical source of present-day contributions to the theory of consciousness. In this paper I am concerned with another treatment of the notion of consciousness in early modern philosophy, the importance of which has not been sufficiently recognized by scholars, namely the treatment of the issue by the Cambridge Platonist Ralph Cudworth (1617–1688); and I shall examine and evaluate Cudworth’s contribution by way of considering it in the context of seventeenth century thought.1 Now, some might argue that it is rather misleading to speak, as I do in the title of this paper, of seventeenth century theories of consciousness, for, so it might be said, even though Cartesians and some other philosophers may have raised a number of issues which are relevant to a theory of consciousness, there really were no worked out theories of consciousness in the seventeenth century.

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Notes

  1. K. J. Grau, for example (Die Entwicklung des Bewusstseinsbegriffs im 17. und 18. Jahrhundert, Halle 1916), does not discuss Cudworth at all. B. L. Mijuskovic (The Achilles of Rationalist Arguments, The Hague 1974) addresses the issue of ‘the unity of consciousness in the 17th and 18th centuries’ and discusses the Cambridge Platonists John Smith and, briefly, Ralph Cudworth (pp. 67–70) in that context. However, what Mijuskovic discusses under this title is the argument that a simple, immaterial soul is required to bind our thoughts together. Mijuskovic does not enquire into the concept of consciousness itself and how it may be distinguished from other, related concepts. I have made some remarks on Cudworth’s notion of consciousness in my German book, Lockes Theorie der Personalen Identitaet, Bonn (1983). This paper is a heavily revised and expanded version of those remarks.

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  2. Christian Wolff, Vernuenftige Gedanken von den Kraeften des menschlichen Verstandes und ihrem richtigen Gebrauche in Erkenntnis der Wahrheit, Halle (1713), I, par. 1: ‘Ich sage aber, dass wir etwas empfinden, wenn wir uns desselben als uns gegenwaertig bewust sind’. See especially Wolff’s Vernuenftige Gedanken von Gott, der Welt und der Seele des Menschen, auch allen Dingen ueberhaupt, Halle (1719), par. 194; in par. 731–736 the noun ‘Bewustseyn’ is used: ‘Also hebet die voellige Dunckelheit das Bewustseyn auf’ (par. 731). For further discussion of issues relating to consciousness see also Wolff’s Psychologia Rationalis, Frankfurt/Leipzig (1728), and Psychologia Empirica, Frankfurt/Leipzig (1732).

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  3. Two Dissertations concerning Sense, and the Imagination. With an Essay on Consciousness, London (1728). The work has been wrongly ascribed to a certain Zachary Mayne who had died in 1694. There is a recent edition of the Essay on Consciousness which contains an important introduction and notes (as well as a German translation of the work) by the editor: Reinhard Brandt (ed.), Pseudo-Mayne: Ueber das Bewusstsein 1728, Hamburg (1983).

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  4. The controversy took place from 1706 to 1708 and was initiated by Henry Dodwell’s An Epistolary Discourse, proving, from the Scriptures and the first Fathers, that the Soul is a Principle naturally Mortal, London (1706).

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  43. 26b See Wilhelm Halbfass, Descartes’ Frage nach der Existenz der Welt, Meisenheim am Glan (1968), p. 92.

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  69. The best discussions of Leibniz’ notion of consciousness are those by Robert McRae, Leibniz: Perception, Apperception, and Thought, Toronto and Buffalo (1976), and by

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Authors
  1. Udo Thiel
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  1. Department of Traditional and Modern Philosophy, University of Sydney, Australia

    Stephen Gaukroger

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Thiel, U. (1991). Cudworth and Seventeenth-Century Theories of Consciousness. In: Gaukroger, S. (eds) The Uses of Antiquity. Australasian Studies in History and Philosophy of Science, vol 10. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-011-3412-5_4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-011-3412-5_4

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