Henry More was an English philosopher who was often presented as an elusive and contradictory figure.
Background
More was born on October 12, 1614 in Grantham, Lincolnshire, England, United Kingdom. He was the youngest child of Alexander More, a fairly prosperous gentleman and several times mayor of Grantham. Both his father and his mother, he tells us, were " earnest followers of Calvin, " but he himself " could never swallow that hard doctrine. "
Education
In 1631 he was admitted at Christ's College, Cambridge, about the time Milton was leaving it.
He took his bachelor's degree in 1635, his master's degree in 1639, and immediately afterwards was chosen fellow of his college.
He would not accept the mastership of his college, to which, it is understood, he would have been preferred in 1654, when Cudworth was appointed.
Career
In theology More was a moderate latitudinarian, known for piety and an almost saintly nature.
The central point is the primacy of spirit over matter.
Both doctrines were soon greatly moderated, as his bent for philosophy (including natural philosophy) reasserted itself.
The first part of this three-part work is primarily an elaboration of the ontological argument as found in Descartes.
This section provided the structure and core John Ray’s Wisdom of God Manifested in the Works of Creation, and thus considerably influenced the subsequent tradition of scientifically elaborated teleological arguments.
Two points should be noted, however.
The emphasis is, rather, on the usefulness to man or other creatures of various features of nature, and on phenomena which show the working of immaterial substances, such as an unintelligent “spirit of nature” which can be invoked to account for botches in nature as well as for phenomena (such as gravity and the formation of animals) which cannot be explained mechanically.
The relation between this “spirit of nature” and the intelligent Designer remains unclear, but just showing the reality of spiritual agents is what More really cares about.
These direct empirical evidences of the activities of spirits should convince those on whom the arguments of the first two sections are lost. More’s opposition to mechanism eventually led him to a repudiation (in large part) of Descartes and a sad skirmish with Robert Boyle.
In his early enthusiasm he had been instrumental in introducing Cartesian philosophy to England; but an unsatisfactory correspondence with Descartes, further reflection on his metaphysical principles, and observationof the path taken by Spinoza and other Cartesians convinced More that there were great dangers in Cartesianism.
More was persuaded that to be, a thing must be somewhere; Descartes’s identification of matter with extension thus seemed to exclude spirits (including God) from reality.
Therefore, in The Immortality of the Soul (1659) and Enchiridion metaphysicum (1671) More argued at length that spirits are extended.
The defining characteristic of body is not extension but impenetrability and physical divisibility (“discerpibility”); spirits, More deduced, are by definition “indiscerpible” and capable of penetrating themselves, other spirits, and matter.
He adds that bodies are passive and spirits are capable of initiating activity.
If spirits are extended, God in particular is (infinitely) extended.
It defies summary. More consistently argued that gravity, magnetism, and various of Boyle’s experimental results in hydro-statics could not be accounted for mechanistically.
In the Enchiridion metaphysicum he treated the latter point in detail, attempting with physical as well as metaphysical arguments to refute Boyle’s inter-pretation of his own experiments.
More was rather hurt but eager to maintain their friendship.
His interest was genuine, but he was himself no virtuoso.
His main contributions lay in introducing generations of students to Descartes, in lending to the Royal Society the prestige of his great reputation for learning and piety, and (arguably) in his influence upon Newton.
The nature and extent of that influence are hard to assess.
It appears that More and Newton were well acquainted and perhaps close.
More left Newton a funeral ring; a letter survives in which he good-humoredly reports to a friend that Newton stubbornly clings to a misinterpretation of a passage in the Apocalypse, which More thought he had corrected; Newton informs a correspondent that he had “engaged Dr More to be of” a “Philosophick Meeting” then proposed at Cambridge.
E. A. Burtt and A. Koyré have argued powerfully that More influenced Newton’s views on space and on such matters as the (immaterial) cause of gravity.
Certainly there are interesting parallels; other evidence for or against direct influence is, unfortunately, scarce.
Religion
More became doctor of divinity in 1660 and was elected fellow of the Royal Society on 25 May 1664.
He wrote extensively against sectarians and enthusiasts, for their uncharitable doctrinal wrangling and their depreciation of reason in religion, and against the Roman Catholic Church, on the usual contemporary grounds.
Views
He concerned himself particularly with the interpretation of prophetic and apocalyptic Scriptures. In the history of philosophy More is counted among the Cambridge Platonists.
His “Platonism” was rather vague and highly eclectic; its basic themes were those of the middle Platonists and Neoplatonists, and he found them in a great variety of ancient thinkers, including Democritus, Hermes Trismegistus, and Moses.
Dissatisfaction with the scholastic fare of his undergraduate studies led More to turn briefly to the ascetic-mystical side of Neoplatonism: true knowledge requires spiritual purification, and devotion is more important than learning.
Personality
From youth to age he describes himself as gifted with a buoyant temper.
His own thoughts were to him a never-ending source of pleasurable excitement.