Jonathan Edwards’ Self-Love Theory: A Revision

Authors

  • Tyler Sherron

Keywords:

Philosophy, Early Modern History

Abstract

In The Theological Magazine (1798), Jonathan Edwards Jr. challenged the Hopkinsian claim that it is impossible “to describe a self-love of a ‘different kind from selfishness, which is not included in universal disinterested benevolence’” by invoking “all those personal feelings, in which President Edwards places self-love.” In his search for less-alloyed disinterestedness, Samuel Hopkins creatively fenced self-love from the Christian moral life by recategorizing it when duly regulated (i.e., by a readiness to be given up for the good of the whole) as genuine disinterested benevolence. But for Edwards Jr., this was a mistake.

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