Abstract
The position that Henry More (1614-1687) occupies in the history of philosophy is quite specific and certainly deserves attention - despite the fact that standard interpretations tend to neglect him. For he seems to have one foot in the tradition of Renaissance Platonism and the other in modern natural philosophy as shaped by Descartes, Hobbes and later Newton.
This middle position between the two images of the world is a source of some tension for More, but it also provides him with a means of resolving this tension in an interesting way. It is for this reason that an examination of More's philosophy can be of more general, and not merely historical, interest: for it grapples with questions that were formative in the birth of modern science as we know it today.
Through the analysis of a few selected thematic areas (world soul, imagination, magic, enthusiasm), this study attempts to offer a comprehensive insight into Moore's philosophical system. It conceives of the world as a system of mechanically colliding particles governed by mathematically expressible laws of nature, but at the same time as something living and possessing a soul which, through sympathetic relations, connects all things into a harmonious and organic whole: The world as a living machine.