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The “Idealism” of Jonathan Edwards

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 June 2011

George Rupp
George Rupp
Affiliation:
Brookline, Massachusetts
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Extract

That Jonathan Edwards is an idealist is a commonly held view among historians of American philosophy. Not surprisingly, the early essays “Of Being,” “The Mind,” and the so-called “Notes on Natural Science” figure prominently in the substantiation of this judgment; for they offer not infrequent and at times unambiguous testimony to a tendency in Edwards' writings which seems to reduce all reality to the status of exclusively mental existence. Yet despite the claim which such a characterization can lay to Edwards's own words, it can be seriously misleading unless viewed within the context of his broader theological, scientific, and epistemological commitments. Because the very works which are most conspicuous in their idealistic tendencies also evidence the countervailing emphases entailed in Edwards's empiricist orientation, an examination of those early essays can itself serve to place his metaphysics in perspective.

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Type
Research Article
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Harvard Theological Review , Volume 62 , Issue 2 , April 1969, pp. 209 - 226
Copyright
Copyright © President and Fellows of Harvard College 1969

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References

1 Cf., for example, Gardiner, H. N., The Early Idealism of Jonathan Edwards, Philosophical Review IX (1900), 573–96CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Riley, I. Woodbridge, American Philosophy: The Early Schools (New York: Dodd, Mead, and Co., 1907), 126–87Google Scholar; Townsend, Harvey G., Philosophical Ideas in the United States (New York: American Book Co., 1934), 39–61Google Scholar.

2 Cf. Miscellanies, #27a, #587, #650 in The Philosophy of Jonathan Edwards from His Private Notebooks, Townsend, Harvey G. ed (Eugene: University of Oregon Press, 1955), 74Google Scholar, 81, 82. All subsequent references to the Miscellanies and to the essays Of Being and The Mind will give the pagination of this volume.

3 Miscellanies, #149 (76), #200 (77), #254 (78), #383 (81), #749 (82, 86), #880 (87, 93–103), #976 (103).

4 Of Being, i. Although Edwards offers little elaboration, his identification of God with space is clearly not intended simply to collapse the Creator with his creation, as is indicated when he makes the further observation that “all the space there is without the bounds of the creation” and “all the space there was before the creation” is also God (2).

5 Cf. Richardson, Herbert W., The Glory of God in the Theology of Jonathan Edwards (Harvard dissertation, 1962), 108–12Google Scholar, and Copleston, Frederick, A History of Philosophy V/i (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday and Co. — Image, 1964), 69, 73Google Scholar.

6 Of Being, 6. Although this further contention is located five pages later in Townsend's edition, it occurs in the very next paragraph. The intervening pages contain a lengthy digression on the “prejudices of the imagination” which Town-send includes as a footnote in the text.

7 Of Being, 6.

8 Of Being, 6–7.

9 Of Being, 7.

10 Cf.: Dwight, S. E., The Life of President Edwards (New York: G. and C. and H. Carvill, 1830), 39–40Google Scholar — this same biography is also Volume I of the 10-volume Works of President Edwards, Dwight, ed. (New York: S. Converse, 1829)Google Scholar, same pagination; Gardiner, H. N., The Early Idealism…, 584–90Google Scholar; Midler, Perry, Jonathan Edwards (New York: Delta, 1967), 6ifGoogle Scholar.

11 The Mind, 70 (#8 in the list). Although (especially in the later writings) he occasionally qualifies the equation with phrases like “as it were” or “in effect,” Edwards does treat “Being in General” as a synonym for God. In addition to the inferential evidence of the contexts in which this phrase appears, #45 of The Mind (48) offers an explicit formulation: “When we speak of being in general we may be understood [to speak] of the divine being.”

12 Cf. Riley, I. Woodbeidge, American Thought from Puritanism to Pragmatism (New York: Henry Holt and Co., 1915), 28–36Google Scholar, and Elwood, Douglas J., The Philosophical Theology of Jonathan Edwards (New York: Columbia University Press, 1960)Google Scholar, especially 25f.

13 Cf. the well-known passage in Edwards' Personal Narrative, Jonathan Edwards: Representative Selections, Faust, C. H. and Johnson, T. H. eds. (New York: Hill and Wang, 1935), 60fGoogle Scholar.

14 Miscellanies, “aa” (244.f)Google Scholar, #123 (245f.), and #201 (246f.), #408 (249f.), #540 (250), #628 (251), and #1090. (251f.).

15 Of Being, 9.

16 The Mind, #15 (33).

17 The Mind, #62 (64).

18 The Mind, #45 (48).

19 Dwight, , Life …, 725Google Scholar (#44 on the list). Neither of the two series of topics listed at the end of the manuscript containing Of Being is included in Townsend's edition.

20 Miscellanies, # 27a (74).

21 Miscellanies, #880 (87). Cf An Unpublished Essay on the Trinity, Fisher, George P. ed. (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1903), 79Google Scholar; and Dissertation on the End for which God Created the World, The Works of President Edwards in Ten Volumes (New York: S. Converse, 1829), Vol. III, 32, 34Google Scholar.

22 Miscellanies, #697 (262).

23 Berkeley, George, A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge, section 117, in The Empiricists (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday and Co.— Dolphin, 1961), 198Google Scholar. Cf. sections 111–16, pp. 195–98.

24 Of Being, 9f. Townsend includes the note on atoms in the essay Of Being, although he acknowledges that it was originally separate.

25 Of Being, 12f.

26 Of Being, 17.

27 The list of Things to be Considered or Written Fully About, which Dwight includes along with the manuscript on atoms in what he terms Notes on Natural Science, is particularly striking in this regard. Reflections on gravity, density, refraction, laws of motion and so on are central themes. Cf. Dwight, , Life …, 715–61Google Scholar. In at least one entry (first series, #11, p. 716) “Isaac Newton's principles of light and colors” are mentioned explicitly.

28 Opticks, 400 (1931 reprint) quoted in Tufts, James H., Edwards, and Newton, , Philosophical Review LXIX (1940), 615Google Scholar.

29 Things to be Considered or Written Fully About, second series, #14 in Dwight, Life …, 722. Cf. #88, p. 760 for a still more elaborate image of God designing the “particular bulk, figure and place of every atom.”

30 The Mind,# 34 (39).

31 Of Being, 16. Cf. Things to be Considered or Written Fully About, second series, #47 in Dwight, , Life …, 272f. (also quoted in Townsend's editon of Of Being in a note on pp. 16–17); and The Mind, #61 (63)Google Scholar.

32 The Mind, #27 (36f.). Cf. The Mind, #61 (60–63), and Miscellanies, #267 (78).

33 The Mind, #34 (39).

34 Cf. The Mind, #9 (29f.), #10 (30), #40 (42–44), #51 (52); Miscellanies, #247 (129), #179 (259).

35 Of Being, 6f.

36 The Mind, #9 (29f.).

37 The Mind, #10 (30).

38 Miscellanies, #247 (129).

39 Miscellanies, #179 (259). Cf. The Mind, #40 (42), where he notes that “all material existence is only idea.”

40 Jonathan Edwards, 60, 62.

41 The Glory of God …, 71, 77, 186f.

42 The Mind, #66 (66). Cf. also An Unpublished Essay of Edwards on the Trinity, 80, and Miscellanies, #179 (259), for similar formulations, but with the (as I shall argue) not insignificant difference that the object of which there is an idea or repetition is God and not a “thing.”

43 The Glory of God …, 79.

44 The Mind, #27 (37).

45 The Mind, #13 (32).

46 The Mind, #13 (32). There can be little doubt that the strong influence which the whole tradition of Christian Platonism exerted on Edwards is at work in this and similar formulations of his position. In addition to the obvious importance for his thought of figures like Augustine and Calvin, Edwards was familiar with the work of at least some of the Cambridge Platonists, as is evident, for example, from his quotation of Cudworth's description of Plato's analogy of the cave in The Mind, #40 (44). Still, Edwards does not speak of things as exemplifying or participating in ideas. Instead he insists that things or phenomena themselves are ideas and hence are real. Consequently I find Berkeley and not Plato the more instructive figure for comparison.

47 Berkeley, , Three Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous in The Empiricists, 294fGoogle Scholar. Cf. Copleston, Frederick, A History of Philosophy V/2 (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday and Co. — Image, 1964), 48–51Google Scholar. Berkeley also distinguishes “images” from all ideas, which is certainly problematical on his own principles. But that is another problem. Cf. Copleston, 33f.

48 Miscellanies, #247 (129).

49 Miscellanies, #179 (259).

50 The Mind, #10 (30).

51 The Mind, #15 (32f.).

52 Of Being, 8.

53 The Mind, #34 (39).

54 The Mind, #40 (42f.). Cf. Things to be Considered or Written Fully About, first series, #31, and second series, #14, #15, #17, #49, #52, in Dwight, , Life …, 721, 722, 731Google Scholar. See also Freedom of the Will, Ramsey, Paul ed. (New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1957), 392f.Google Scholar.

55 Things to be Considered or Written Fully About, second series, #47 in Dwight, , Life …, 727f.Google Scholar. For an equally explicit rejection of Deism and an argument that “the late discoveries and advances which have been made in natural philosophy” imply “a present, continuing, immediate operation of God on the creation,” see Miscellanies, #1263 (184f.). Cf. Miscellanies, #178 (259) and #346 (130).

56 The Mind, #61, especially 61–63. Cf. Of Being, 18, and Things to be Considered or Written Fully About, second series, #22, #23, #68, in Dwight, , Life …, 722f., 744Google Scholar.

57 Of Being, I.