Ralph Cudworth, autonomy and the love of god: Transcending Enlightenment (and anti-Enlightenment) Christian ethics

Recent attempts by Christian ethicists to mine the tradition of Christian P latonism have overlooked seventeenth-century Cambridge Platonist Ralph Cudw orth. Cudworth's significance lies in his creative extension of Christian P latonism in response to the early modern situation of religious conflict. H e develops an account of autonomy as the self-rule of the "redoubled soul," while retaining a teleological account of the soul's final end as particip ation in god. Cudworth can help contemporary Christian ethicists imagine a way beyond pro-Enlightenment secular accounts of autonomy and anti-Enlighte nment rejections of autonomy in the name of tradition.