Cudworth as a Critic of Hobbes

This chapter looks at Ralph Cudworth as a critic of Thomas Hobbes in two areas, atheism and ethics. Cudworth's major philosophical publication in his lifetime was The True Intellectual System of the Universe: The First Part; Wherein, All the Reason and Philosophy of Atheism is Confuted; And its Impossibility Demonstrated. The one modern edition in English of a work of Cudworth's presents his Treatise Concerning Eternal and Immutable Morality and his Treatise of Freewill. Cudworth's System is a defense of theism against atheism. The arguments of that defense often appear to be aimed at types of position, rather than at the views of particular individuals. Cudworth's criticism points us to a recurring and difficult question about Hobbes, the question of how there can be any normativity in the Hobbesian system.