Reepicheep's Notes on Part I, Section II

Part I, Section II: Concerning the Determination of the Will

In this section Edwards has spun a thick web of thoughts for his reader. Most meagerly educated persons—such as me—are likely to become lost by the abstraction of his discourse. I am left wanting at least three kinds of aid: first, identification and definition of particular terms he requires the reader to understand; second, a paragraph-by-paragraph outline of his argument to highlight his complex exposition; and finally an example that models the application of his rigorous distinctions and guiding principles.

Terms Important to this Section
Determine: to direct and commit towards something; to choose a particular
Determiner: used synonymously with “motive” (see MOTIVE below)
Will: that faculty of the human soul which chooses; this is not used by Edwards as a wildly autonomous faculty of the mind, rather, it is hinged to the choice itself—much like the sun and sunlight are inextricable
Object: the action committed to by a determined will; an objective; a candy bar is not a viable object as Edwards uses the term, rather, to eat the candy bar is an object of the determined will
Motive: the sum of what is within the sight of the choosing faculty which leads the mind to an act of choice; a motivation
Understanding: the perceiving faculty of the mind; distinct from the Will or the Appetites (including habit and instinct)
Excite: to energize with potential; a pre-action (imagined?) state of delight within the Will
Nature: the sum of all intrinsic qualities possessed by something
Circumstance: an extrinsic condition possessed by something
Good: in this context, whatever motive the mind acts upon is deemed “good” by the mind; the mind does not choose something that it does not believe is, at that moment, fully “good”; this is opposed to the GOOD sought after in the writings of Plato, etc.
Degree: a limiting aspect of any person’s ability to perceive
Manner: the limitations of perspective arising out of the incomplete relationship any viewer has with the thing viewed
Mind: this seems to be Edward’s most inclusive term, containing at least the understanding and the will; it is that within a person which reasons
State: a potentially nonpermanent quality of a thing; ice is a state of water—not its nature
Probable: a perceived likeliness; intuitive in his usage—not argued for or proven
Appetites: habits of taste developed over time—generally used in a pejorative manner; blind animal passions; the opposite of reason
Reason: a disposition of mind which seeks to understand the nature of a thing and its relationship to other things; that which classifies (e.g. language) and inquires about reality and the justification of knowledge claims; as opposed to the appetites
Lively: the state of something being excited, as he uses the term “excite”

Paragraph-by-Paragraph Brief
¶1……To “determine the will” is to choose a particular act as an object (or objective) over another (or others).
¶2……For a thing to be determined there must be “a determiner.” Either the will itself determines its own choice, or it is determined by something outside of itself.
¶3……The “determiner of the will” is a motive that the mind perceives to be strongest.
¶4……A motive is the whole of that which leads the mind to an act of volition. The “strongest motive” references the chief and final summation of the various parts of any motive which is acted upon.
¶5……A motive, in this sense, must be within the perception of the understanding.
¶6……Before a will commits to an act of choice, there are both stronger and weaker motives (or motivations) which excite the will; however, the will is always determined by the strongest motive.
¶7……Things viewed by the mind have their own nature and circumstances. The viewing mind has its own nature and circumstances. The view itself is limited by its own degree and manner. Appearances define reality for the mind. The strongest motive—upon which the mind invariably acts—is always deemed by that mind to be “good.”
¶8……“Good,” as used here, here simply means “pleasing” or “agreeable to.”
¶9……To choose what is more agreeable is to reject what is less agreeable. In the same sense, to choose what is “good” means to reject what is “evil.” Every consonance of the soul necessitates a rejection of some dissonance (what Locke calls “uneasiness”).
¶10…..The willing act involves direct or immediate perceptions of what action is good—not so much on remote objects. A man with liquor before him either wills to drink or to let the drink alone.
¶11…..A less direct object—instant pleasure over and against delayed hankering—is not directly presented to the will as an object of choice, and as such these are not what Edwards calls, “direct objects of volition.” The will cannot guarantee immediate pleasure or future misery; it can only choose to pick up or leave the drink.
¶12…..Based upon the distinctions above (¶10–11), Edwards says that, “the will always is as the greatest apparent good” rather than saying that, “the will is determined by the greatest apparent good.” Voluntary action is not determined by some separate abstraction called “choice”; rather simply that which appears in or about the mind’s view most agreeable.
¶13…..The apparent nature and circumstances of an object make it agreeable or disagreeable to the mind.
¶14…..Beauty or deformity can appear within the nature of an object rendering the mind disposed or indisposed to it.
¶15…..Attendant pleasure or trouble relative to the object may be considered part of the circumstances tightly bound to the object.
¶16…..All things being equal between two objects, a temporally nearer object will be viewed as possessing a more pleasing state than the further one.
¶17…..The manner of view—the dynamic relationship between an object and the mind—make that object agreeable or disagreeable to the mind.
¶18…..An object which appears to possess properties of pleasure more probable than another will appear more agreeable to the mind.
¶19…..We are most attached to (or influenced by) those things of which we have had sense experience. Positive experience gives an idea of something “liveliness.” Ideas apart from prior experience can at times possess a “lively quality.” All of the aforementioned contingencies (included in ¶13–18) affect the degree of “liveliness” attending such ideas.
¶20…..The temperament of the person affects his perception of an object because his views will be attached either to his appetites or to reason.
¶21…..The mind may cause the appearances of an object to vary between “beautiful” and “deformed”—making the object’s effect upon the mind more or less “lively.”
¶22…..Choice is always directed towards the greatest apparent good in a given moment.
¶23…..In some sense then, “the will always follows the last dictate of the understanding”—provided that the term “understanding” is taken to include both perception and reason (or judgment). But where Reason is speciously separated from Intuition or Habituation, then “understanding” is a divided thing and cannot be said to always rule the will.
¶24…..The ideas contained in this entire section are to be clarified in Edwards’ discourse on human liberty. His summation is: “the will is always determined by the strongest motive or by that view of the mind which has the greatest degree of previous tendency to excite volition.”

For Instance
I determined to read this section of our text and to journal my thoughts about it tonight instead of going to bed early or reading another book (¶1). Did my will act on its own or was there an external motivation? (¶2) There was a motive—what we commonly call “a reason”—behind this act (¶3). How can it be said that there was any single, driving motive that led me to choose? Afterall, my reasons were many: I thought that a day spent running errands should be balanced by an evening of rigorous contemplation; I was eager to catch up to where my colleagues were at in their readings; I was dissatisfied with my initial confusion after having first read the section several days ago; I was eager to post another outrageously long blog . . . and I suppose if I was patient enough, I could go on for a long time peeling apart the layers of my motivation. This is the point! All of these (and those unexamined) added together to weigh most heavily towards my determination to act. Altogether, Edwards would say, these lead to the formation of a strongest motive (¶4). I cannot imagine weightlessness as an alternative to my choice to read and write this evening because that is a state completely foreign to my understanding (¶5). While there were many exciting motives for the choice I made, the strongest motive ultimately engaged my will (¶6). I must have deemed it “good.” Why? The object of choice—reading and writing itself—had a particular nature and circumstantial quality. I, the person whose mind chose to read and write, have a particular nature and set of circumstances. The relation between my viewing and the object’s properties channels particular aspects of its nature more forcefully than others; in other words, there are other possible relations (e.g. if I were to revisit the possibility of reading and writing tomorrow morning, etc.) (¶7). By saying that reading and writing are “good,” I mean simply that the prospect pleased me more than some other alternative (¶8). The alternatives were esteemed “bad” by my choosing against them. I would have been “uneasy” without having chosen to read and write (¶9). My determination essentially came down to the motion of picking up the book and laptop rather than leaving them on my reading stand (¶10). I did not directly choose the virtue of discipline as more delightful than the vice of procrastination. Those are more remote objects of the will (¶11). At the commencement of my reading and writing, I must simply say that it pleased me—it was “good”—and I always do what appears “good” in that sense (¶12). This is not to say that reading and writing were necessarily good in and of themselves, rather that they appeared good to me at the point of volition (¶13). There was a kind of seemliness—a beauty of action—that presented itself to my mind as I considered what I would do. Likewise, there was a kind of inappropriateness—a deformity of action—in other options (¶14). Although the rigor involved in careful reading is not necessarily part of its nature (for a more intelligent person there might not be any rigor), it does attend my view of the choice so closely that it can be said to be part of the choice (¶15). What pleasure may be found in reading Freedom of the Will is much more accessible than that to be had in reading Calvin’s Institutes of Christian Religion because I do not have a copy of the Institutes in hand. The nearer of two pleasing objects is always deemed the most pleasing (¶16). Given my present circumstances—that the Edwards text is subject of much focus by my colleagues and given that my Dean procured the text for my study as an act of generosity, my perspective on the text affects a much greater degree of delight to my mind than if I were reading it alone and had purchased it against the better sense of my prudent, frugal wife (¶17). It is also more probable, in my estimation, that I will find deeper satisfaction in engaging with this book than in reading Kurt Vonnegut’s Welcome to the Monkey House (¶18). The idea of reading the Edwards is influenced by my recent, positive experience. Because of this positive experience, the idea of engaging again in further reading has a “lively quality” within my mind (¶19). My temperament, sometimes melancholy other times sanguine, is often given to the semi-obsessive pursuit of following Edwards’ line of thought (¶20). When I am inclined towards melancholy, the prospect of reading and writing takes on a more “beautiful” quality than when I am feeling sanguine (¶21). All of this adds up to making a choice: and I have chosen—as I will always do, according to Edwards—the greatest apparent good at the moment of choice (¶22). Does my Will then follow the last dictate of my Understanding? It seems that the answer depends on how we define “Understanding.” There are unexamined factors—other than reason alone—that greatly affect the mind. The whole of perception and reason combined may be said to, “rule the Will.” (¶23) Finally, my choice to read and write was governed by my motivation towards it based on previous, positive experiences which enlivened my view beyond the choice to not read and write (¶24).

If I have followed him correctly, Edwards has devised an architectural theory of the human soul (what he broadly sometimes refers to as the “mind”) in three interrelating parts: the understanding, the will and the appetites. These appear to be based on Platonic distinctions. The understanding perceives and reasons. The will chooses and therein engages the body. The appetites somehow engage unexamined mental processes that include intuition, the “subconscious,” habit, and instinct. His summation of this section is, “. . . the will is always determined by the strongest motive, or by that view of the mind which has the greatest degree of previous tendency to excite volition.” (p.15, ¶2)

In the end, Edwards admits that this has been a rather confusing section and he anticipates for the reader a clarification further ahead. In his own words, “. . . whether I have been so happy as rightly to explain the thing wherein consists the strength of motives, or not, my failing in this will not overthrow the position itself, which carries much of its own evidence with it, and is the thing of chief importance to the purpose of the ensuing discourse; and the truth of it I hope will appear with great clearness before I have finished what I have to say on the subject of human liberty.” (p.15, ¶2)

~Reepicheep~