Rem B. Edwards

This volume contains the editor’s informative “Preface to the Period”, the Quaestio that Edwards submitted in 1723 to complete his master’s degree at Yale, and 19 sermons. Some of the sermons were first preached during 1723 and 1724 in Bolton, Connecticut, but most were composed between 1726 and 1729 in Northampton, Massachusetts while Edwards was junior minister in the church of Solomon Stoddard, his grandfather; a few originated after Stoddard’s death in February, 1729, when Edwards became sole minister of the Northampton congregation.

Philosophers might be misled by the title of this book, particularly philosophers of religion. Although the author argues that some religious ideas are natural, he does not try to vindicate "natural religion" or "natural theology." Instead, he argues that some religious concepts are natural in that they depend on "noncultural constraints" like genetics and the effects of evolution on human brain development, and that these ideas are considered to be "perfectly obvious" and "self-evident" to those who hold them. Boyer focuses on a few religious concepts which, though not absolutely universal, are nevertheless very widespread in human cultures. He warns that his approach has no "philosophical relevance" to the truth or falsity of these ideas and little significance for systematized theology. Boyer pays little attention to major world religions and, aside from a few references to Catholicism, concentrates upon primitive religions like that of the Fang peoples of Cameroon or the Aguaruna of the Peruvian Amazon, including their religious practices and social categories or roles, as well as their religious ideas.

Modern bioethics is clearly dominated by deontologists who believe that we have some way of identifying morally correct and incorrect acts or rules besides taking account of their consequences. Robert M. Veatch is one of the most outspoken of those numerous modern medical ethicists who agree in rejecting all forms of teleological, utilitarian, or consequentialist ethical theories. This paper examines his critique of utilitarianism and shows that the utilitarianism of John Stuart Mill is either not touched at all by his critique or can be defended against it. This article argues that the dominant deontological majority is mistaken and that a utilitarian theory of moral action very much like Mill’s is precisely what is needed by modern medical ethics and by those medical practitioners who are resolved to practice medicine in a reasonable and morally acceptable manner.

Traditional hedonists like Epicurus, Bentham and Sidgwick were quantitative hedonists who assumed that pleasures and pains differ, not just from each other, but also from other pleasures and pains only in such quantitatively measurable ways as intensity, duration, and nearness or remoteness in time. They also differ with respect to their sources or causes. John Stuart Mill introduced an interesting and important complication into the modern theory of hedonism by insisting that pleasures also differ qualitatively as well as quantitatively. This article thoroughly and critically examines Mill’s attempt to explain what qualitative differences might mean, and it proposes, defends, and extends a plausible theory of qualitative differences.

A Return to Moral and Religious Philosophy in Early America concentrates especially on three philosophical positions that dominated early American philosophy, Puritanism and Idealism, the Enlightenment or Age of Realism, and Transcendentalism. This book focuses primarily but not exclusively on the best representatives of each. Jonathan Edwards was the most brilliant and philosophically minded of early Puritan thinkers; his thinking was colored by metaphysical idealism. Thomas Jefferson gave us the best of the Age of Reason, but other Enlightenment thinker like Benjamin Franklin, Ethan Allen, and Tom Pain are considered where relevant. Ralph Waldo Emerson is presented as the best of that romantic individualism known as Transcendentalism. Briefer references are made to other early American thinkers like Samuel Johnson, John Witherspoon, Cadwallader Colden, John Adams, James Madison, Henry David Thorough, and Theodore Parker. Considerable quoted material, especially from the central figures, is included. A moral and religious interpretative framework for binding all of this together into a coherent story is provided.

This work is conceived as a modem study of the relationships of the concept of human freedom with the moral concepts of responsibility and obligation and other closely allied notions. One pitfall into which writers on my sub jects have occasionally fallen has been that of spending too much time in critically examining positions and arguments which no sane philosopher has ever offered. In order to guard against the danger of debating with "straw men," I have attempted to engage in critical conversations with several twentieth century writers on my theme. I have attempted to pay special at tention to a handful of writers who have written extremely important and influential discussions and who are representatives of a diversity of per spectives on the issues involved. In particular, I have taken note of the work of two determinists, Sir David Ross and Hastings Rashdall, a libertarian, C. A. Campbell, and a reprel>entative of the more recent linguistic-analytic approach, P. Nowell-Smith. Many other important writers have been brought in at crucial points in the conversation. But this is not a history of the problem in the 20th century. Rather, it is a critical, systematic study of a problem or set of related problems. This work may be divided roughly into two parts, a metaphysical-psycho logical part comprising the first three chapters, and a metaethical-ethical part consisting of the last three chapters.

Ethics of Psychiatry addresses the key ethical and legal issues in mental health care. With selections by Paul S. Applebaum, Christopher Boorse, Kerry Brace, Peter R. Breggin, Paula J. Caplan, Glen O. Gabbard, Donald H.J. Hermann, Lawrie Reznek, Thomas Szasz, Jerome Wakefield, Bruce J. Winick, and Robert M. Veatch, among others, this sourcebook offers the latest research in psychiatry, psychology, advocacy, mental health law, social services, and medical ethics relevant to the rational autonomy of psychiatric patients.

This article explores a form of ethics and spirituality based on the nearly universal but often undeveloped human capacity for identifying self with others and with non-personal values. It begins with commonplace non-moral identification experiences, then describes identification with others in ethical and spiritual unions. Freud’s psychological emphasis on identification is linked with ethics and spirituality, though Freud would have objected. Robert S. Hartman’s three kinds of goodness—systemic, extrinsic, and intrinsic—are applied to abundant ethical and spiritual living through identification. Intrinsic identification with intrinsic values is the highest moral ideal; intrinsic identification with ultimate reality and with goodness in all its forms is the highest spiritual ideal.

The theses of this paper are that: 1. the attempt to found absolute norms on rationality presupposes the availability of a single universal absolute conception of rationality, but no such conception is available; and 2. any conception of rationality which might be available for justifying one's ultimate normative commitments is itself evaluative. “Rationality” itself is a value-laden concept, as are all its philosophical sub-divisions—logic, ethics, aesthetics, axiology, etc. Choosing ultimate value principles under conditions of freedom, enlightenment, and impartiality presupposes that one positively values such things. Rationality is an inescapably evaluative concept, not a value neutral concept.

This article introduces Formal Axiology, first developed by Robert S. Hartman, and explains its essential features—a formal definition of “good” (the “Form of the Good”), three basic kinds of value and evaluation—systemic, extrinsic, and intrinsic, and the hierarchy of value according to which good things having the richest quantity and quality of good-making properties are better than those having less. Formal Axiology is extended into moral philosophy by applying the Form of the Good to persons and showing how this culminates in an Axiological Virtue Ethics. This involves the systemic, extrinsic, and intrinsic goodness of persons, the intrinsic-good-making properties of persons, and the moral virtues that respect the intrinsic worth of persons in thoughts, feelings, and actions. A few obstacles to being and becoming morally good persons are also identified and explained.

This article defends Marjorie Suchocki’s position against two main objections raised by David E. Conner. Conner objects that God as a single actual entity must be temporal because there is succession in God’s experience ofthe world. The reply is that time involves at least two successive occasions separated by perishing, but in God nothing ever perishes. Conner also objects that Suchocki’s personalistic process theism is not experiential but is instead theoretical and not definitive. The reply is that his dismissal of Part V of PR is arbitrary, the interpretation of all experience is theoretical, and no metaphysical interpretations are absolutely definitive, including PR as a whole. Also, Conner ignores religious experience.

A typical dispute between a libertarian and a determinist will usually involve some reference to ‘self-determination’. The libertarian will perhaps claim that I am free when I am not determined in my choices by anything outside myself but instead determine my choices ‘myself’. To this the determinist is likely to reply that ‘self-determination’ is determination all the same and that he cannot see how the freedom of choice defended by the libertarian is an exception to determinism. This is where the discussion usually ends in frustration. The belief may persist that something is being disputed, but no one is very sure what that thing is. From the frequency that the term ‘self-determination’ appears in discussions of freedom, it might be gathered that the notion is one of primary importance. Unfortunately, in spite of its centrality, the meaning of the term is often left extremely vague. Nevertheless, underlying every appearance of the term is a special theory of some kind about the nature of the self, and where there is no such theory the term is probably used without any meaning at all.