A Review of Edwards's "Inquiry into the Freedom of the Will"Tappan, Henry Philip
Religion
A Review of Edwards's "Inquiry into the Freedom of the Will"
Tappan, Henry Philip
Edwards, Jonathan, 1703-1758. Freedom of the will; Free will and determinism
3. To say that volition is as the desire, is equivalent to saying that
volition is as the "greatest apparent good," which again means only the
most agreeable,--so that the volition becomes again the _sense or
feeling of the greatest apparent good_. There is in all this only a
variety of expressions for the same affection of the sensitivity.
4. Determination of will is actual choice, or the production in the mind
of volition, or choice, or the strongest affection, or the sense of the
most agreeable, or of the greatest apparent good. It is therefore an
effect, and must have a determiner or cause.
5. This determiner or cause is called motive. In explaining what
constitutes the motive, we must take into view both _mind_ and _object_.
The object must be perceived by the mind as something existent. This
perception, however, is only preliminary, or a mere introduction of the
object to the mind. Now, in order that the sense of the most agreeable,
or choice, may take place, the mind and object must be suited to each
other; they must be correlatives. The object must possess qualities of
beauty and agreeableness to the mind. The mind must possess a
susceptibility agreeable to the qualities of the object. But to say that
the object possesses qualities of beauty and agreeableness to the mind,
is in fact to affirm that the mind has the requisite susceptibility; for
these qualities of the object have a being, and are what they are only
in relation to mind. Choice, or the sense of agreeableness, may
therefore be called the unition of the sensitivity and the object.
Choice is thus, like any emotion or passion, a fact perpetually
appearing in the consciousness; and, like emotion or passion; and,
indeed, being a mere form of emotion and passion, must ultimately be
accounted for by referring it to the constitution of our being. But
inasmuch as the constitution of our being manifests itself in relation
to objects and circumstances, we do commonly account for its
manifestations by referring them to the objects and circumstances in
connexion with which they take place, and without which they would not
take place; and thus, as we say, the cause of passion is the object of
passion: so we say also, in common parlance, the cause of choice is the
object of choice; and assigning the affections of the mind springing up
in the presence of the object, to the object, as descriptive of its
qualities, we say that choice is always as the most beautiful and
agreeable; that is, as the greatest apparent good. This greatest
apparent good, thus _objectively_ described, is the motive, or
determiner, or cause of volition.
_In what sense the Will follows the last dictate of the Understanding._
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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