Генри Мор: Англиялық философ және тарихшы

English philosopher (1614–1687)
the English Jesuit and historian

Henry More ('/m//ɔr/; 12 October 1614 – 1 September 1687) was an English philosopher of the Cambridge Platonist school.

Henry was born in Grantham, Lincolnshire on 12 October 1614. He was the seventh son of Alexander More, mayor of Grantham, and Anne More (née Lacy). He was schooled at The King's School, Grantham and at Eton College. In 1631 he entered Christ's College, Cambridge, at about the time John Milton was leaving it. He took his BA in 1635, his MA in 1639, and immediately afterwards became a fellow of his college, turning down all other positions that were offered. He would not accept the mastership of his college, to which, it is understood, he would have been preferred in 1654, when Ralph Cudworth was appointed. In 1675, he finally accepted a prebend in Gloucester Cathedral, but only to resign it in favour of his friend Edward Fowler, afterwards bishop of Gloucester. More taught many notable pupils, including Anne Finch, sister of Heneage Finch, subsequently Earl of Nottingham. She later became Lady Conway, and at her country seat at Ragley in Warwickshire, More would spend "a considerable part of his time." She and her husband both appreciated him, and amidst the woods of this retreat he wrote several of his books. The spiritual enthusiasm of Lady Conway was a considerable factor in some of More's speculations, even though she at length joined the Quakers. She became the friend not only of More and William Penn, but of Franciscus Mercurius van Helmont (1614–1699) and Valentine Greatrakes, mystical thaumaturgists of the 17th century. Ragley became a centre of devotion and spiritualism.

More was a rationalist theologian. He attempted to use the details of 17th century mechanical philosophy—as developed by René Descartes—to establish the existence of immaterial substance. More rejected Cartesian dualism on the following grounds: "It would be easier for me to attribute matter and extension to the soul, than to attribute to an immaterial thing the capacity to move and be moved by the body." His difficulties with Cartesian dualism arose, not from an inability to understand how material and immaterial substances could interact, but from an unwillingness to accept any unextended entity as any kind of real entity. More continues " it is plain that if a thing be at all it must be extended." So for More 'spirit' too must be extended. This led him to the idea of a 'fourth dimension' (a term which he coined) in which the spirit is extended (to which he gave the curious name of "essential spissitude") and to an original solution to the mind body problem.

More appears to be the origin of the still popular slur against medieval Scholasticism that it engaged in useless speculative debates, such as how many angels might dance on the head of a pin (or "on a needles [sic] point," as he puts it), in the second chapter of The Immortality of the Soul. A quotation from More is used as the epigraph of Ralph Waldo Emerson's essay "The Over soul". Helena Blavatsky, the founder of Theosophy, quoted More and gave an exposition of his ideas in chapter VII of "Isis Unveiled".