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Edwards and Hutcheson

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 August 2011

A. Owen Aldridge
A. Owen Aldridge
Affiliation:
University of Maryland
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Extract

Although traditionally regarded as an austere clergyman, rigidly circumscribed by narrow doctrinalism, Jonathan Edwards has the distinction of being America's pioneer esthetician. In a Dissertation concerning the Nature of True Virtue he brings together nearly all the theories prevalent in the early eighteenth century concerning the relation of beauty to virtue, and discusses the moral aspects of human passions and conduct. Francis Hutcheson is the philosopher whose influence is most pronounced. In the Dissertation he is mentioned by name three times; the general plan of his theory of moral sense is constantly suggested for comparison, contrast or illustration; fundamental doctrines and corollary principles from his system are specifically stated and attacked; and others of his notions are cited in support of Edwards' own views. It has long been known that Edwards read Hutcheson's work, but the close parallels in his own treatise, making it literally a commentary on Hutcheson, have not been generally recognized. Evidence of the extent of Hutcheson's influence may be found by comparing Edwards' dissertation with his earlier work on The Mind, a discussion of the essence of beauty or harmony in the realms of spirit and of sense. Written while its author was engaged in studying Locke, the discussion contains nearly all of Edwards' original ideas on natural and divine beauty. In the expanded and polished treatise some of the original ideas are modified as a direct result of Hutcheson's concepts, and a complete ethical and aesthetic system is developed to supplant the systems of Hutcheson and other moralists popular at the time.

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Type
Research Article
Information
Harvard Theological Review , Volume 44 , Issue 1 , January 1951, pp. 35 - 53
Copyright
Copyright © President and Fellows of Harvard College 1951

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References

1 Edwards apparently made his initial acquaintance with Hutcheson in excerpts in Ephraira Chambers' Cyclopaedia, 1738 [Johnson, Thomas H., Edwards, Jonathan' Background of Reading, Publications of the Colonial Society of Massachusetts, XXVIII (December, 1931), 204Google Scholar,] but since these excerpts are limited to three paragraphs, Edwards undoubtedly later read Hutcheson's Inquiry in toto.

2 For a supplementary account see: Johnson, Thomas H., Edwards, Jonathan, Representative Selections (New York, 1935), pp. lxxv–xciii.Google Scholar

3 An Inquiry into the Original of Our Ideas of Beauty and Virtue (5th edition, London, 1753). P. 7.

4 Ibid., p. 17.

4a Ibid., p. 129.

5 Ibid., p. 159.

6 Ibid., p. 180.

7 Ibid., pp. 207 ff.

8 Works of Jonathan Edwards (London, 1840), I, 122. A Dissertation concerning … Virtue was published posthumously in 1765.

9 Ibid., I, 125.

10 Essay on … Passions (3d. ed., London, 1742), pp. 332–33.

11 Inquiry, p. 47.

12 Ibid., p. 101. For a discussion of the opposing theories of arbitrary and absolute relationships see: Aldridge, A. O., Akenside and the Hierarchy of Beauty, Modern Language Quarterly, VIII (1947), 66–67Google Scholar.

13 In this reasoning Edwards seems to imply that even the lower animals have a temper of mind conforming to being in general. Hutcheson had earlier been attacked for implying that brutes could possess virtue, and in the additions to the fourth edition of his Inquiry he admitted that there is something in certain tempers of brutes “so very like the lower Kinds of Virtue, that I see no harm in calling them Virtue.” Edwards' theory that benevolence is based upon the essential nature of God and the nature of things is much more subject to application to animals than is Hutcheson's theory that benevolence is based upon an arbitrary connection. Edwards undoubtedly never intended to construct a system in which brutes could be considered capable of virtue, but this consequence can be drawn from it. Possibly, to escape this consequence, Edwards would fall back on a formula introduced in his first chapter in which he maintains that a being's degree of existence depends on its greatness or littleness: “An arch-angel must be supposed to have more existence, and to be every way further removed from non-entity, than a worm.” Edwards might affirm, according to this formula, that all creatures could participate in virtue in proportion to their degree of existence. This would contradict a flat statement in Freedom of Will, however, that brute creatures are not moral agents (Part I, Sec. V).

14 Here Edwards is subconsciously verging on the doctrine of William Wollaston that vice consists in acting contrary to truth and not treating things as they are.

15 Alciphron, The Third Dialogue, A. C. Frazer, ed., The Works of George Berkeley, D.D. (Oxford, 1871), II, 118–24.

16 Edwards makes no distinction between the esthetic and the intellectual whereas Kant clearly describes the pleasure in perceiving an end or purpose as a combination of an intellectual and an esthetic delight. Kant makes a distinction between pure or free beauty and beauty which is dependent on a concept of what the object should be and an answering perfection of the object. The beauty of animals and buildings which is of the second type, “presupposes a concept of the end that defines what the thing has to be, and consequently a concept of its perfection; and is therefore merely appendant beauty.” (Meredith, J. C., trans., Kant's Critique of Aesthetic Judgement [Oxford, 1911], p. 73Google Scholar.) Kant would say with Hutcheson that beauty has no essential relation to utility, and with Edwards that an intellectual perception of an end may increase the sensation of delight or satisfaction of the perceiver.

17 Hutcheson was fully aware of this principle, for he says of the pleasure from beauty that “We may have the Sensation without knowing what is the Occasion of it; as a Man's Taste may suggest Ideas of Sweets, Acids, Bitters, thoʼ he be ignorant of the Forms of the small Bodies, or their Motions, which excite these Perceptions in him.” Inquiry, p. 29.

18 Works, I, 141.

19 Ibid., I, 129.

20 Robertson, J. M. ed., Characteristics (London, 1900), II, 137–38Google Scholar.

21 Inquiry, pp. 111 ff.

22 Hutcheson's treatise may have been the source of these remarks on anger, but Edwards may have known also the more extreme positions of Shaftesbury and Butler that anger is in part a positive indication of the operation of moral sense. Butler even suggests that anger is one of the bonds of society. Gladstone, W. E. ed., Sermons (Oxford, 1897), p. 119Google Scholar. Elsewhere in his dissertation (Chapter VII) Edwards proves that gratitude is improperly considered to be a virtue, a view which influenced Godwin. See: Aldridge, A. O., Jonathan Edwards and William Godwin on Virtue, American Literature, XVIII (1947), 308–18CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

23 Inquiry, p. 243.