Publisher's Synopsis
To almost all of his commentators, Jonathan Edwards (1703 - 1758) displays the signs of a thinker who is following some sort of comprehensive project, and yet philosophically these same commentators find it difficult to pinpoint the nature of that project.1 Perry Miller famously opined that Edwards was "so much ahead of his time that our own can hardly be said to have caught up with him,"2 and the renaissance in Edwards studies over the past half century in history, theology, philosophy, and literature gives a confirming testimony. Many of these scholars are drawn to Edwards as a visionary who somehow anticipates later intellectual developments, yet there are many interpretations of what precisely this vision is. Indeed, there remains no widespread agreement among these scholars as to how to interpret many of Edwards' most important ideas and arguments, what the most important features of Edwards' thought even are, or even who have been the major influences upon his thought. For some Edwards is a neo-Platonist, following either Malebranche or Cambridge Platonism. For others he is a close follower of British contemporaries, particularly Locke but perhaps also Berkeley, and is even a possible precursor to philosophical turns that find a fuller expression in Hume.
