Henry More: Introduction to the “Politology” of the Demon State

The chapter continues the cycle of studies devoted to the philosophical teaching of Cambridge Platonism. The core attention is paid to the part of theoretical legacy of a Cambridge School recognized leader, a renown philosopher Henry More (1614–1687), namely the Treatise “Conjectura Cabbalistica” (1655). The research highlights one side of the XVII century style that was typical for the Scientific Revolution ideological thinking avenues—the application of Kabbalistic Methods commentary to the explanation of science, as their peculiar mathematization, or as some kind of the world metaphysical picture “digitization”. Experiments of such theoretical synthesis are known in the history of European Philosophy from the time of Origen (II–III AD) the Jewish Neoplatonism of Philo of Alexandria (I century AD) and Neopythagoreanism (I–III century BC). The first precedents of this analytical description method took place in the geometric theories of Space at the Old Academy under the guidance of Speusippus and Xenocrates, in Plato’s dialogue “Timaeus” and mathematical theories of the Pythagorean School, taking into account the authentic medieval Jewish Kabbalah. In the era of the Scientific Revolution, this style of thought focuses on the search for an alternative way of scientific thinking, able to remove “sharp angles” of scientific-revolutionary theories, tie them to the philosophical tradition. Kabbalistic exegetics, in their own meaning, as an interpretation of the mysterious meanings of symbols—the numbers and the letters—occupy a rather ornamental place in More’s Treatise. More’s thought aims to overcome these problems with an idea of active Intermediaries possessing a specific, non-bodily “Materiality” of its nature—Spirit and Spiritual entities. This Kabbalistic exercise can be seen as a kind of introduction to the main philosophical work of H. More—the Treatise “Immortality of the Soul”, where the English-borne Dreamer from Cambridge comes to his euphoric height—to the description of the Demon Empire and the destinies of human Souls, leaving their temporary bodies. It is feasible that Isaac Newton under the influence of More, of whom he was a student, took an extraordinary interest in Kabbalistic cosmology, and through Francis van Helmont, who was included in More’s close Circle of Friends, Neoplatonic Kabbalistics influenced G. W. Leibniz’s thinking avenues.