Ralph Cudworth and the theological origins of consciousness

The English Neoplatonic philosopher Ralph Cudworth introduced the term "consciousness" into the English philosophical lexicon. Cudworth uses the term to define the form and structure of cognitive acts, including acts of freewill. In this article I highlight the important role of theological disputes over the place and extent of human freewill within an overarching system of providence. Cudworth's intellectual development can be understood in the main as an increasingly detailed and nuanced reaction to the strict voluntarist Calvinism that is typified in the thought of his near contemporary William Perkins. At the heart of Cudworth's rejection of Calvinism is the dilemma over whether God is understood primarily in terms of will or justice. In this fleshing-out of the power of consciousness Cudworth moves from an instrumental account of the working of the human mind towards an account of human consciousness that is intrinsic to his definition of human agency.     

The Obscenity Bargain: Ralph Ginzburg for Fanny Hill

The next‐to‐the‐last witness at the July 1968 hearings on the nomination of Abe Fortas to replace Earl Warren as Chief Justice was James Clancy. Along with another attorney, Charles Keating, who would later gain infamy in the savings and loan scandal of the 1980s, Clancy appeared on behalf of Citizens for Decent Literature, an anti‐smut organization that had filed amicus briefs supporting censorship “as essential to the development of good family living” ¹ in the Supreme Court's important obscenity decisions. ² Clancy asserted that everyone should see the materials Fortas had held were entitled to First Amendment protection, and so he had assembled a thirty‐minute compilation of them for the Judiciary Committee's viewing.