Benjamin Whichcote

Benjamin Whichcote (1609-83) was a British philosopher and liberal theologian in the established church and friend of the philosopher John Locke. Whichcote is usually considered to be the founding father of Cambridge Platonism, which spawned a group of mid-17th century Cambridge philosophers who attempted to reconcile Christian ethics with Renaissance humanism, religion with early modern science, and faith with rationality.^[1]^^[2]^ Whichcote and the Cambridge Platonists were opponents of those who held to orthodox Calvinism, specifically the doctrines of predestination and total depravity.^[3]^

Notes

1. ? Britannica entry on Cambridge Platonists
2. ? Separate excerpt from Britannica entry on Cambridge Platonists
3. ? The scientific intellectual: the psychological & sociological origins of modern science. Lewis Samuel Feuer. Transaction Publishers, 1992. pp 44-45.

Further reading

• The Works of the Learned Benjamin Whichcote (1751)
• The Cambridge Platonists: Being Selections from the Writings of Benjamin Whichcote, John Smith (1901)
• The Cambridge Platonists in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.