Primary Sources

Manuscript sources

• Cudworth, Ralph, Three Treatises on “Liberty and Necessity”, London, British Library, Additional MSS 4978–4982. (Scholar)
• Newton, Isaac, “Out of Cudworth”, Los Angeles, CA, William Andrews Clark Memorial Library MS, fN563Z. [“Out of Cudworth” available online] (Scholar)

Printed sources

Works by Cudworth

• [TISU], 1678, The True Intellectual System of the Universe, London: Richard Royston. All quotations are taken from this first edition, with spelling and punctuation modernised. [TISU 1678 available online]
  • 1706, A Confutation of the Reason and Philosophy of Atheism being an Abridgement or an Improvement of what Dr Cudworth Offered in his ‘True Intellectual System’, Thomas Wise (ed.), London, reprinted 1732. (Scholar)
  • 1733, Radulphi Cudworthi systema intellectualis hujus universi (Latin translation), Johan Lorenz Mosheim (trans.), Jena, 1733. Reprinted Leiden, 1773. [TISU 1733 available online] (Scholar)
  • 1743, The True Intellectual System of the Universe, Thomas Birch (ed.), reprinted 1820, 1839, American edition, Andover, Gould & Newman; New York, 1837–38). (Scholar)
  • 1823, 1824, Sistema intellettuale dell'universo di R. Cudwort [sic] (Italian translation), Marchese Luigi Benedetti (trans.), Pavia.
  • 1829, The Works of Ralph Cudworth … A new edition, with references to the several quotations in the Intellectual System, and a life of the author, Thomas Birch (ed.), Oxford: D. A. Talboys.
  • 1845, The True Intellectual System of the Universe, J. Harrison (ed.) (with notes from Mosheim’s translation), London: Thomas Tegg. (Scholar)
  • 1964, The True Intellectual System of the Universe, London; facsimile reprint Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt: Friedrich Frommann.
• [TEIM], A Treatise Concerning Eternal and Immutable Morality. Quotations are from the 1996 edition.
  • 1731, A Treatise Concerning Eternal and Immutable Morality, Edward Chandler (ed.), London.
  • 1733, Latin translation included in TISU 1733.
  • 1743, included in TISU 1743.
  • 1995, Traité de morale et Traité du libre arbitre, introduction, traduction et notes par Jean-Louis Breteau, Paris.
  • 1996, A Treatise Concerning Eternal and Immutable Morality with A Treatise of Freewill, Sarah Hutton (ed.), Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. doi:10.1017/CBO9781139166720
• [FW], Of Freewill. Quotations are from the 1996 edition edition printed with TEIM 1996.
  • 1838, A Treatise of Freewill, J. Allen (ed.), London.
  • 1996, included in TEIM 1996.
• Raphael, D. D. (ed.), 1969, British Moralists, 1650–1800. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 119–53. (Scholar)
• Schneewind, J. B. (ed.), 2003, Moral Philosophy from Montaigne to Kant. An anthology., Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 275–292 (Scholar)

Works by Others

• Diderot, Denis, Encyclopédie, Art. “Plastique”. (Scholar)
• Le Clerc, Jean (ed.), 1703 and 1706, Bibliotheque choisie.
• Locke, John, 1693 [1989], Some Thoughts Concerning Education, London: A. and J. Churchill. Modern edition, John W. Yolton and Jean S. Yolton (eds), Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989. (Scholar)
• Price, Richard, 1758, A Review of the Principal Questions and Difficulties in Morals, London: A. Millar. (Scholar)
• Ray, John, 1691 The Wisdom of God in the Works of Creation, London. (Scholar)

Secondary sources

• Allen, Keith, 2013, “Cudworth on Mind, Body, and Plastic Nature: Cudworth on Mind, Body, and Plastic Nature”, Philosophy Compass, 8(4): 337–347. doi:10.1111/phc3.12026 (Scholar)
• Aspelin, Gunnar, 1943, “Ralph Cudworth’s Interpretation of Greek Philosophy. A Study in the History of English Philosophical Ideas”, Gôteborgs Hôgskolas Arsskrift, 49, 1–47. (Scholar)
• Bergemann, Lutz, 2012, Ralph Cudworth: System aus Transformation: zur Naturphilosophie der Cambridge Platonists und ihrer Methode, Berlin; Boston : De Gruyter. (Scholar)
• Cassirer, Ernst, 1932, Die Platonische Renaissance in England und di Schule von Cambridge, Leipzig and Berlin: B. G. Teubner. English translation by James P. Pettigrove: The Platonic Renaissance in England, Edinburgh: Thomas Nelson and Sons, 1953. (Scholar)
• Carter, Benjamin, 2011, “The little commonwealth of man”: the Trinitarian Origins of the Ethical and Political Philosophy of Ralph Cudworth, Leuven: Peeters. (Scholar)
• –––, 2014, “Ralph Cudworth”, in Early Modern Philosophy of Religion: The History of Western Philosophy of Religion, Volume 3, Graham Oppy and N. N. Trakakis (eds), London: Routledge, 113–125. (Scholar)
• Chappell, Vere, 2005, “Self–Determination”, in Christia Mercer and Eileen O'Neill (eds.), Early Modern Philosophy: Mind, Matter, and Metaphysics, Oxford: Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/0195177606.003.0009 (Scholar)
• Cunning, David, 2003, “Systematic Divergences in Malebranche and Cudworth”, Journal of the History of Philosophy, 41(3): 343–363. doi:10.1353/hph.2003.0026 (Scholar)
• Darwall, Stephen, 1995, The British Moralists and the Internal “Ought”, 1640–1740, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. (Scholar)
• Della Monica, Luigi, 2008, “Il Concetto di Amore nel Pensiero Religioso di Ralph Cudworth”, Rivista di Filosofia Neo-Scolastica, 100(4): 505–535. (Scholar)
• Esquisabel, Oscar M. and María Griselda Gaiada, 2015, “Le libre arbitre et «le paradoxe des facultés». Suárez, Hobbes et Leibniz selon le jugement de Cudworth”, Studia Leibnitiana, 47(2): 162–185. (Scholar)
• Giglioni, Guido, 1995, “Automata Compared Boyle, Leibniz and the Debate on the Notion of Life and Mind”, British Journal for the History of Philosophy, 3(2): 249–278. doi:10.1080/09608789508570917 (Scholar)
• Gill, Michael B., 2004, “Rationalism, Sentimentalism, and Ralph Cudworth”, Hume Studies, 30(1): 149–181. doi:10.1353/hms.2011.0243 (Scholar)
• Gysi, Lydia, 1962, Platonism and Cartesianism in the Philosophy of Ralph Cudworth, Bern: Herbert Lang. (Scholar)
• Gregory, Tullio, 1967, “Studi sull'atomismo del seicento: III Cudworth e l’atomismo”, Giornale critico della filosofia italiana, 46: 528–541. (Scholar)
• Hunter, William B., 1950, “The Seventeenth Century Doctrine of Plastic Nature”, Harvard Theological Review, 43(3): 197–213. doi:10.1017/s0017816000024512 (Scholar)
• Hutton, Sarah, 1997, “Classicism and Baroque. A Note on J.L. Mosheim’s Footnotes to Cudworth’s True Intellectual System of the Universe”, in Johann Lorenz Mosheim. (1693–1755), Martin Mulsow (ed.), Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 211–227. (Scholar)
• –––, 1999, “Aristotle and the Cambridge Platonists: the case of Cudworth”, in Conversations with Aristotle, Constance Blackwell and Sachiko Kusukawa (eds), Aldershot: Ashgate, 337–349. (Scholar)
• –––, 2001, “Ethics, Power and Action in Cudworth”, in Dal Necessario al Possibile. Determinismo e libertà nel pensiero anglo-olandese del XVII secolo, Luisa Simonutti (ed.), Milan: F. Angeli, 81–97. (Scholar)
• –––, 2008, “Some Thoughts concerning Ralph Cudworth”, in Studies on Locke: Sources, Contemporaries and Legacy, Sarah Hutton and Paul Schuurman (eds), Dordrecht: Springer, 143–158. doi:10.1007/978-1-4020-8325-9_9 (Scholar)
• –––, 2012, “From Cudworth to Hume: Cambridge Platonism and the Scottish Enlightenment”, Canadian Journal of Philosophy, 42(S1): 8–26. doi:10.1080/00455091.2012.981009 (Scholar)
• –––, 2017, “Salving the Phenomena of Mind: Energy, Hegemonikon, and Sympathy in Cudworth”, British Journal for the History of Philosophy, 25(3): 465–486. doi:10.1080/09608788.2016.1185601 (Scholar)
• –––, 2019a, “Ralph Cudworth’s Sermon before the House of Commons in Theological and Political Context”, in Origenes Cantabrigiensis: Ralph Cudworth, Predigt vor dem Unterhaus und andere Schriften (Adamantiana, 11), Alfons Fürst and Christian Hengstermann (eds), Münster: Aschendorff Verlag. 35–49. (Scholar)
• –––, 2019b, “Ralph Cudworth: Plastic Nature, Cognition and the Cognizable World”, in Causation and Cognition in Early Modern Philosophy, Dominik Perler and Sebastian Bender (eds), London and New York: Routledge, 105–122. (Scholar)
• –––, 2021, “‘Plastick powers’ and the Power of Sympathy in Cudworth and More: the Spirit of Nature and Plastic Nature”, Powers (Oxford Philosophical Concepts), Julia Jorati (ed.), Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press, 189–213. (Scholar)
• –––, forthcoming 2021, “Re-inventing the Vegetable Soul”, in Vegetable Powers: Endowing Bodily Life from Antiquity to the Early Modern Period, Fabrizio Baldassari and Andreas Blank (eds), Dordrecht: Springer. (Scholar)
• Irwin, Terence, 2008, The Development of Ethics: Volume 2, From Suarez to Rousseau, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Chapter 40. (Scholar)
• Jacquot, Jean, 1964, “Le platonisme de Ralph Cudworth”, Revue philosophique de la France et de l’Etranger, 154: 29–44. (Scholar)
• Janet, Paul, 1848, De plastica naturæ vita (Plastic life of nature) quæ a Cudwortho in systemate intellectuali celebratur, Facultati Parisiensi hanc thesim proponebat, Paris: Joubert. (Scholar)
• –––, 1860, Essai sur le médiateur plastique de Cudworth, Paris: Ladrange. (Scholar)
• Kaldas, Samuel M., 2019, “Reason, Sentiment, and Autonomy in the Moral Philosophy of Ralph Cudworth”, History of Philosophy Quarterly, 36(2): 161–180. (Scholar)
• Lähteenmäki, Vili, 2010, “Cudworth on Types of Consciousness”, British Journal for the History of Philosophy, 18(1): 9–34. doi:10.1080/09608780903422206 (Scholar)
• Leech, David, 2017, “Cudworth on Superintellectual Instinct as Inclination to the Good”, British Journal for the History of Philosophy, 25(5): 954–970. doi:10.1080/09608788.2017.1330188 (Scholar)
• Leisinger, Matthew A., 2019, “The Inner Work of Liberty: Cudworth on Desire and Attention”, International Journal of Philosophical Studies, 27(5): 649–667. doi:10.1080/09672559.2019.1657168 (Scholar)
• Leisinger, Matthew A., forthcoming, “Cudworthian Consciousness”, in Oxford Studies in Early Modern Philosophy, volume 11, Oxford: Oxford University Press. (Scholar)
• Lotti, Brunello, 2004, Ralph Cudworth e l’idea di natura plastica, Udine: Campanotto. (Scholar)
• Martin, Raymond, and John Barresi, 2013, The Rise and Fall of Soul and Self: An Intellectual History of Personal Identity, New York: Columbia University Press. (Scholar)
• Mintz, Samuel I., 1962, The Hunting of Leviathan, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. (Scholar)
• Muirhead, John H., 1931, The Platonic Tradition in Anglo-Saxon Philosophy, New York: Allen & Unwin. (Scholar)
• Musca, Giosuè, 1988, “«Omne genus animalium». Antichità e Medioevo in una biblioteca privata inglese del Seicento”, Quaderni Medievali, 25 : 25–76. On Cudworth’s books. (Scholar)
• Pailin, David, 2020, “Cudworth, Ralph ”, The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford: Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/6864 (Scholar)
• Passmore, J.A., 1951, Ralph Cudworth: An Interpretation, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. (Although Passmore misattributed one of the manuscripts, this classic study of Cudworth’s philosophy has not been superseded.) (Scholar)
• Pécharman, Martine, 2014, “Cudworth on Self-Consciousness and the I Myself”, Vivarium, 52(3–4): 287–314. doi:10.1163/15685349-12341278 (Scholar)
• Popkin, Richard H., 1992, “Cudworth”, in his The Third Force in Seventeenth-Century Philosophy, Leiden: Brill, 333–350. (Scholar)
• Radcliffe, Elizabeth S., 2019, “Ruly and Unruly Passions: Early Modern Perspectives”, Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplement, 85: 21–38. doi:10.1017/s1358246118000668 (Scholar)
• Rogers, G.A.J., 1988, “Die Cambridge Platoniker” and “Ralph Cudworth”, Ueberwegs Grundriss der Geschichte der Philosophie: die Philosophie des 17. Jahrhunderts, vol. 3.1. Basle: Ueberweg, 267–82, 285–90. (Scholar)
• Rogers, G.A.J., Jean-Michel Vienne, and Yves Charles Zarka, 1997, The Cambridge Platonists in Philosophical Context. Politics, Metaphysics, and Religion, Dordrecht: Springer. doi:10.1007/978-94-015-8933-8 (Scholar)
• Rosa, Susan, 1994, “Ralph Cudworth in the République des Lettres: The Controversy about Plastick Nature and the Reputation of Pierre Bayle”, Studies in Eighteenth Century Culture, 23: 157–160. doi:10.1353/sec.2010.0108 (Scholar)
• Sailor, Danton B., 1962, “Cudworth and Descartes”, Journal of the History of Ideas, 23(1): 133–140. doi:10.2307/2708062 (Scholar)
• –––, 1988, “Newton’s Debt to Cudworth”, Journal of the History of Ideas, 49(3): 511–518. doi:10.2307/2709490 (Scholar)
• Scott, Dominic, 1990, “Platonic Recollection and Cambridge Platonism”, Hermathena, 149: 73–97. (Scholar)
• Sellars, John, 2011, “Is God a Mindless Vegetable? Cudworth on Stoic Theology”, Intellectual History Review, 21(2): 121–133. doi:10.1080/17496977.2011.574339 (Scholar)
• –––, 2012, “Stoics Against Stoics In Cudworth’s A Treatise of Freewill”, British Journal for the History of Philosophy, 20(5): 935–952. doi:10.1080/09608788.2012.718870 (Scholar)
• Simonutti, Luisa, 1993,“Bayle and Le Clerc as Readers of Cudworth: Aspects of the Debate on Plastic Nature in the Dutch Learned Journals”, Geschiedenis van de Wijsbegeerte in Nederland, 4(2): 147–165. (Scholar)
• Smith, Justin E.H. and Pauline Phemister, 2007, “Leibniz and the Cambridge Platonists: The Debate Over Plastic Natures”, in Leibniz and the English Speaking World, Pauline Phemister and Stuart Brown (eds), Dordrecht: Springer, 95–110. doi:10.1007/978-1-4020-5243-9_7 (Scholar)
• Thiel, Udo, 1991, “Cudworth and Seventeenth-Century Theories of Consciousness”, in The Uses of Antiquity: The Scientific Revolution and the Classical Tradition, Stephen Gaukroger (ed.), Dordrecht: Kluwer, 79–99. doi:10.1007/978-94-011-3412-5_4 (Scholar)
• –––, 2011, The Early Modern Subject: Self-Consciousness and Personal Identity from Descartes to Hume, Oxford: Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199542499.001.0001 (Scholar)
• Zarka, Yves Charles, 1997, “Critique de Hobbes et Fondement de la Morale chez Cudworth”, in Rogers, Vienne, and Zarka 1997: 39–52. doi:10.1007/978-94-015-8933-8_3 (Scholar)
• Zarka, Ives Charles (ed), 2013, Liberté et nécessité chez Hobbes et ses contemporains (Descartes, Cudworth, Spinoza, Leibniz), Paris: Vrin. (Scholar)