"The true knowledge or science which exists nowhere but in the mind itself, has no other entity at all besides intelligibility; and therefore whatsoever is clearly intelligible, is absolutely true"
About this Quote
Cudworth is trying to rescue truth from the swamp of sensory mess and partisan revelation by relocating it to the one place he thinks can’t be bribed: intelligibility itself. In a 17th-century world rattled by civil war, sectarian absolutism, and the new prestige of experimental science, he’s betting on a third authority. Not priestly decree, not mere observation, but the mind’s capacity to grasp clear relations. “Exists nowhere but in the mind” sounds radical until you hear the safeguard: he’s not celebrating personal opinion. He’s arguing that genuine science has a special kind of being - not physical, not institutional - and its reality is identical with its being understandable.
The subtext is a polemic against two threats at once. One is theological voluntarism: the idea that God could make any arbitrary rule true just because He wills it. Cudworth wants moral and metaphysical truths that even divine power doesn’t “change,” because they’re grounded in reason’s structure. The other is skepticism and materialism: if all you trust is what the senses deliver, you inherit uncertainty. Clear intelligibility becomes his criterion for certainty, a rationalist pressure test for claims about God, nature, and ethics.
It also contains a daring rhetorical move: “whatsoever is clearly intelligible, is absolutely true.” That “therefore” tries to collapse epistemology into ontology. The risk is obvious - clarity can be a psychological feeling, and history is full of lucid, wrong systems. Cudworth’s confidence works because it’s aspirational: an attempt to anchor public argument in something sturdier than authority, and to make reason itself feel like a moral duty.
The subtext is a polemic against two threats at once. One is theological voluntarism: the idea that God could make any arbitrary rule true just because He wills it. Cudworth wants moral and metaphysical truths that even divine power doesn’t “change,” because they’re grounded in reason’s structure. The other is skepticism and materialism: if all you trust is what the senses deliver, you inherit uncertainty. Clear intelligibility becomes his criterion for certainty, a rationalist pressure test for claims about God, nature, and ethics.
It also contains a daring rhetorical move: “whatsoever is clearly intelligible, is absolutely true.” That “therefore” tries to collapse epistemology into ontology. The risk is obvious - clarity can be a psychological feeling, and history is full of lucid, wrong systems. Cudworth’s confidence works because it’s aspirational: an attempt to anchor public argument in something sturdier than authority, and to make reason itself feel like a moral duty.
Quote Details
| Topic | Truth |
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