Interpretations I: Edwards and Modern Philosophy

Scripture focus

Beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of men, after the rudiments of the world, and not after Christ.

Colossians 2:8 KJV

At a glance

Summary of the chapter

Bruce Kuklick, a leading historian of American philosophy, made a startling claim: whatever else is uncertain about the field, "the foundation stone in the history of American philosophy is Jonathan Edwards." McClymond and McDermott use this claim to organize a chapter about Edwards's philosophical afterlife — not among the "New Divinity" theologians who consciously carried on his project (ch. 37), but among later, often secular, philosophers who inherited problems he had already framed: the nature of being, the reliability of perception, and religious experience.

The chapter complicates the tidy "canonical" story running from Edwards through Boston Unitarianism, Transcendentalism, and the American Renaissance to the golden age of Royce, Peirce, and James, and finally to John Dewey. That story, the authors note, quietly favors later secular values and is skewed toward Harvard and eastern Massachusetts. Kuklick's alternative genealogy instead follows Trinitarian, non-Unitarian Congregationalists centered at Yale and in Connecticut — a line running from Edwardsean orthodoxy to the philosophical foundations of Andover liberalism and eventually to Dewey himself.

Even so, both genealogies converge on a striking pattern: American pragmatism, for all its reputation as secular and results-oriented, was saturated with religious concern. Peirce, Royce, and James all wrote substantially on religion, and James defined pragmatism's core method by quoting Edwards's Religious Affections. Even Dewey, the most secular of the four, retained what Kuklick calls a "godly residue," merely substituting scientific technique for Edwards's doctrine of grace.

Key points

• Historian Bruce Kuklick calls Edwards "the foundation stone in the history of American philosophy," even though "American philosophy" itself is a notoriously contested category.
• This chapter treats Edwards's influence on philosophers, distinct from the theological "New Divinity" successors covered in chapter 37.
• The standard "canonical" narrative of American thought (Unitarianism, Transcendentalism, pragmatism, Dewey) is geographically and ideologically skewed toward Harvard and later secular values.
• Kuklick's alternative genealogy follows Trinitarian Congregationalists at Yale, tracing a different line from Edwardsean orthodoxy to Dewey.
• Pragmatism's major figures — Peirce, Royce, James, and Dewey — each show, in different degrees, the enduring imprint of religious questions Edwards had already posed.

A line worth remembering

the foundation stone in the history of American philosophy is Jonathan Edwards

McClymond & McDermott The Theology of Jonathan Edwards, ch. 40

Related Scripture

• 1 Corinthians 1:20
• Romans 1:20
• Proverbs 1:7
• Acts 17:28

For reflection and discussion

1. Paul warns the Colossians against being 'spoiled' by philosophy that follows 'the tradition of men' rather than Christ — how might Edwards, a serious philosopher himself, have distinguished good philosophical work from that warning?
2. What does it mean for a strand of Christian thought to keep shaping a culture's intellectual life long after that culture has stopped consciously believing it?
3. Where do you see ideas in today's culture that have drifted far from their original theological roots, the way pragmatism did from Edwards?