Idealism and Aetiology
Jonathan Edwards aims to account for causes by reference to the ideas of God. Every finite being not only depends on but consists in God having an idea of it and God is the one immediate cause for anything that exists on each occasion. He takes this idealistic aetiology to be the true factual description of things. However, his argument about ‘the nature of things’ is (partly) definitional and existential, and so he is introducing and recommending a new use for natures being immediate productions out of nothing at each moment. This chapter argues that his inference can be validly drawn only from the ordinary use of ‘substance’ or ‘nature’ but he attempts to draw it from his novel use. His idealism and aetiology thus affirm or presuppose for their intelligibility the existence of conditions that he denies. So, Edwards’s argument for idealistic aetiology is invalid.