Work · Empiricism, Enlightenment & Liberalism
A Discourse Concerning the Love of God
Against Malebranche and Norris: loving creatures does not compete with loving God – it is how we come to love him.
Introduction
Damaris Masham, daughter of the Cambridge Platonist Ralph Cudworth, in whose household at Oates in Essex John Locke lived from 1691, published the Discourse anonymously in 1696. It answers the “Letters Concerning the Love of God” (1695) by John Norris, England’s leading follower of Malebranche, and Mary Astell, who had argued that since God alone causes our pleasures, only God deserves our love of desire. Masham replies that creatures are the first things we love and that we come to know and love God through them; a doctrine that makes affection for family and neighbours suspect undermines social life. Drawing on Locke, she defines love as the mind’s disposition towards whatever pleases it.
Connections
Criticizes
- The Search after Truth1674 · Nicolas Malebranche
More works by Damaris Masham
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