Tag Archives: Calvinism

Edwards and Kames tackle Moral Obligation

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This post is part 4 of a series that has explored the three essays on the topic Liberty and Necessity by John Wesley, Jonathan Edwards and Lord Kames. This series started with this post Wednesday with Wesley: Thoughts Upon Necessity

In the last post, we found that both Edwards and Lord Kames put forth a position where all of our actions are morally necessary and that they are just as certain as any found in the natural world. Both of these theologians further propose that every act is a “going forth of the will” which “is always determined by the strongest motive.”1

Where these theologians disagreed with each other was on how the concept of liberty should be defined. Lord Kames will assert that “liberty [is] opposed to moral necessity.” 2 Edwards recoils at this idea, arguing that liberty is not only not opposed to moral necessity but requires it.3 Lord Kames ascribes to the term liberty “a power [to act] without or against motives.”4 Edwards rejects this noting that an action done without a motive is no liberty at all.5

It is anachronistic to attempt to label the Lord Kames and Edwards with terms used in modern debates about free will. 6 Any identification attempted here would be based on a limited exposure to the corpus of either thinker and based primarily on these essays. However, by breaking down their essays into a series of premises we can deduce where they fall within the debate and gain some clarity on why these theologians have opposing ideas about liberty, necessity and moral accountability.

Taking these into account, I would suggest that Lord Kames is an incompatibilist as he seems to find moral necessity and moral obligation incompatible.

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Where the Reformed philosophers Edwards and Kames part ways

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Having read Wesley’s “Thoughts Upon Necessity”, I decided to explore more of Lord Kames’ essay “On Liberty and Necessity”. That led to reading Jonathan Edwards remarks on the essay as well. This post is part 3 of a series which started with this post Wednesday with Wesley: Thoughts Upon Necessity

In the last post Lord Kames’ position was explored and summarized using excerpts from his essay “On Liberty and Necessity”. Wesley represented Lord Kames’ view reasonably well In his own essay, In this post we will explore how Jonathon Edwards and Lord Kames differ.

Lord Kames presented us with what he considered the fixed law of the moral world.

 [our mind must] necessarily be determined to the side of the most powerful motive … in this lies the necessity of our actions 1

On this Lord Kames and Jonathan Edwards are agreed. Here is a similar statement found in the more popular work “Freedom of the Will” by Edwards.

It is that motive, which, as it stands in view of the mind, is the strongest, that determines the will.
…
I suppose the will is always determined by the strongest motive.2

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Continuing Thoughts Upon Necessity and the views of Lord Kames

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Having read Wesley’s “Thoughts Upon Necessity”, I decided to read more of Lord Kames’ essay “On Liberty and Necessity”. This post is a follow-up to the post Wednesday with Wesley: Thoughts Upon Necessity, which introduces us to both the essays.

In the last post, we highlighted portions of Lord Kames’ position to provide enough content in which to frame Wesley’s argument against it. We also provided a condensed format of Wesley’s argument. In this post we will focus on Kames’ view that we are given a “delusive Sense of a Liberty of Contingence, to be the Foundation of all the Labour, Care and Industry of Mankind” and the responses to that idea from both Jonathan Edwards and John Wesley.1

The position taken by Lord Kames
In the prior post we relied primarily on Wesley’s quotes from Kames’ essay. Here we will add a more expansive summary taken directly from Kames’ work “Liberty and Necessity“. 2

Lord Kames will assert a basic principle: “that nothing can happen without a cause” and that “nothing that happens is conceived as happening of itself, but as an effect produced by some other thing.” 3

This principle is applied to both the natural and moral worlds, however, it will be made clear that the fixed laws that govern each are not the same.

Taking a view of the natural world we find all things there proceeding in a fixed and settled train of causes and effects. It is a point which admits of no dispute, that all the changes produced in matter, and all the different modifications it assumes, are the result of fixed laws. Every effect is for precisely determined, that no other effect could, in such circumstances, have possibly resulted from the operation of the cause: which holds even in the minutest changes of the different elements [as these are the] necessary effect of pre-established laws.4

The result, Kames admits, is that “in the material world, there is nothing that can be called contingent but everything must be precisely what it is.” In the moral world, which is the realm in which “man is the actor”, we find things “do not appear so clearly.”

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