Reepicheep's notes on Part I, Section I

Part I, Section I: Concerning the Nature of the Will

Edwards begins his inquiry by defining terms for the reader. Obviously, he must begin with a definition of the human will. He offers first what he calls a “plain definition” of the WILL: “that by which the mind chooses any thing. The faculty of the will is that faculty or power, or principle of mind, by which it is capable of choosing: an act of the will is the same as an act of choosing or choice.” (pg.1, ¶2)

It is most important that he appeals to plain language before he addresses the, “philosophers, metaphysicians, and polemic divines [who have] brought the matter into obscurity by the things they have said about it.” (pg.1, ¶1, emphasis added) If we are to follow our author properly, it seems to me that we must hound his comments on the use and abuse of language very closely—taking careful notice of his preference for language categories of common expression rather than those of attenuated discourse. He is not altogether removed from his discussion about language in the preface.

He spends considerable energy attempting to repair what John Locke has divided in his treatise Human Understanding concerning the nature of the will. Edwards argues that Locke has created a false linguistic dichotomy between volition (choosing) and preference. “Preference,” according to Locke, may include fancied impossibilities. Edwards disagrees: preference may only include fancied possibilities. Locke says that a man may, “prefer flying to walking, yet who can say he ever wills it?” (pg.2, ¶2) Edwards counters that flight is a remote possibility (essentially impossible), and ought to be distinguished from the only two actual, possible preferences: preferring to walk or its opposite, preferring not to walk.

Why has the author expended such energy on this distinction? I believe there are two reasons. First, he wants to clarify his understanding of human nature. Buried in his prose, we read his view of human nature, “And God has so made and established the human nature, the soul being united to a body in proper state, that the soul preferring or choosing such an immediate exertion or alteration of the body, such an alteration instantaneously follows.” (pg.3, ¶1) Here, Edwards is fusing the will proper to actions of the will. The two are practically inseparable to him. All of this returns to his concern about language. He writes, “. . . if we distinguish the proper objects of the several acts of the will, it will not appear, by this and such like instances, that there is any difference between volition and preference; or that a man’s choosing, liking best, or being best pleased with a thing, are not the same with his willing that thing; as they seem to be according to those general and more natural motions of men, according to which language is formed.” (pg.3, ¶1, emphasis added) He tidies this up with, “Thus, an act of the will is commonly expressed by its pleasing a man to do thus or thus; and a man doing as he wills, and doing as he pleases, are the same thing in common speech.” (pg.3, ¶1, emphasis added) This then we see is the second reason for our author’s disagreement with Locke’s terminology: he desires to preserve plain language categories.

Clear definitions of words and a responsible hermeneutic process are important to all interpretations of the written word. It seems that Edwards is attempting to wrest from near-obscurity the plain meanings of words that he must use in his discourse to follow. We stand to gain much from his approach in light of the writings of some contemporary Christian theologians. Concerning the nature of language, John R. Franke writes in his text, The Character of Theology (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2005), “. . . meaning is not related, at least not directly or primarily, to an external world of facts waiting to be apprehended. Instead, meaning is an internal function of language. Because the meaning of a statement is dependent on the context or the language game in which it appears, a sentence has as many meanings as the contexts in which it is used.” (pp. 24–25) He then adds, “Viewing language in this fashion presumes that it does not have its genesis in the individual mind grasping a truth or fact about the world and then expressing it in statements. Rather, language is a social phenomenon, and a statement acquires meaning within the process of social interaction.” (pg. 25)

To adopt Franke’s argument is to disallow any lasting significance to his own “anti-category” linguistic categories. If language is indeed unrelated to reality (his trepid “external world of facts”), we can all happily lose his book in our circular filing systems because he has himself damned any good straight out of his own pen and ink. Perhaps one day our progeny, strolling through the Museum of Unnatural History, will pass a single corral containing the fossilized remains of the committed relativist and the linguistic deconstructionist—their legacy summed up in ten, decisive words: “All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.”

Language can be slippery underfoot. This is why the earnest process of carefully defining terms is a plain solution to the problem of securing an intellectual footing across centuries. Once again the 18th Century Puritan has more to teach us than the 21st Century Postmodern.

~Reepicheep~