Lectures on moral philosophy.

Witherspoon, John

doi:10.1037/12404-001

Cited by 4 publications

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“…In other words, whether one was truly spiritual influenced a variety of other abilities as well, including that person's intellectual abilities and theological understanding (Jeynes, 1999(Jeynes, , 2002(Jeynes, , 2003. In the minds of these religious and educational leaders, therefore, it is only to be expected that godly individuals such as Jonathan Edwards, John Witherspoon, Noah Webster, and John Winthrop were also some of the most puissant intellects of the time (Witherspoon, 1949;Woodward, 1801).…”

Section: Becoming Like Jesus Christ In Character: Historical Practicesmentioning

confidence: 94%

The Need for Changes in the Nature of Christian Seminary Education

Jeynes

2012

Christian Higher Education

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Section: Becoming Like Jesus Christ In Character: Historical Practicesmentioning

confidence: 94%

The Need for Changes in the Nature of Christian Seminary Education

Jeynes

2012

Christian Higher Education

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“…52 For instance, he appealed to conscience in the course of rejecting efforts on the part of human moral agents to aim directly at the good of the whole, thus arguing against mounting utilitarian tendencies in providentialist moral thought: 'to make the good of the whole our immediate principle of action', he wrote, 'is putting ourselves in God's place, and actually superseding the necessity and use of the particular principles of duty which he hath impressed upon the conscience'. 53 Like Calvin, then, Witherspoon held that our place is simply to obey our God-given duties, not to try to fathom and become an active participant in God's providential care for the good of creation. He also regarded conscience as conveying not just a bare sense of rightness or wrongness, but an apprehension that we will be punished and rewarded according to our actions, preserving a link between conscience and the judgement of God.…”

Section: Conscience After Calvinmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…He also regarded conscience as conveying not just a bare sense of rightness or wrongness, but an apprehension that we will be punished and rewarded according to our actions, preserving a link between conscience and the judgement of God. 54 Moreover, Witherspoon hedged his account of moral science as the knowledge of human nature with reminders that the fall has made it difficult to discern the lineaments of created human nature, which alone can provide the source for moral philosophy. 55 Yet this and other reminders of human depravity seem like lip service in the face of Witherspoon's enthusiasm for the very project of moral philosophy as a form of moral inquiry abstracted from revelation.…”

Section: Conscience After Calvinmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…54 Moreover, Witherspoon hedged his account of moral science as the knowledge of human nature with reminders that the fall has made it difficult to discern the lineaments of created human nature, which alone can provide the source for moral philosophy. 55 Yet this and other reminders of human depravity seem like lip service in the face of Witherspoon's enthusiasm for the very project of moral philosophy as a form of moral inquiry abstracted from revelation. Thus he appeals to the difficulty of correctly delineating the created nature of humanity as confirmation of the fall, like Carmichael using natural inquiry to confirm revelation rather than using revelation to interpret nature.…”

Section: Conscience After Calvinmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Calvin's legacy for contemporary Reformed natural law

Herdt¹

2014

SJT

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Recent scholarship has done much to uncover a continuous tradition of distinctively Reformed natural law reflection, according to which knowledge of the natural moral law, though not saving knowledge, is universally available to humanity in its fallen state and makes a stable secular order possible. A close look at Calvin's understanding of natural law, and in particular of conscience and natural human instincts, shows that Calvin himself did not expect the natural law to serve as a source of substantive action-guiding moral norms. First, Calvin held that conscience delivers information concerning the moral quality even of individual actions. But he also thought that we often blind ourselves to the deliverances of conscience. Second, he argued that our natural instincts predispose us to civic order and fair dealing insofar as these are necessary for the natural well-being or advantage of creatures such as ourselves. But he also carefully distinguished the good of advantage from the good of justice or virtue. The modern natural lawyers eroded Calvin's careful distinction between conscience as revealing our duty as duty, and instinct as guiding us towards natural advantage. They also turned away from Calvin's insistence on the moral incapacity of unredeemed humanity. The modern natural lawyers saw their task as one of developing an empirical science of human nature to guide legislation and shape international law, bracketing questions of whether this nature was fallen and in need of redemption. When Scottish Presbyterian Reformed thinkers, such as Gershom Carmichael and John Witherspoon, tried in diverse ways to restore eroded Reformed commitments to the science of human nature, about which they were otherwise so enthusiastic, they were not particularly successful. A science which could derive moral norms from an examination of human instincts, and a conscience which could deliver universal moral knowledge, proved too attractive to decline simply because of the transcendence of God or the fallenness of humankind. Those who wished to preserve an account of natural law which remained faithful to a fully robust set of Reformed theological commitments could do so only by refusing to regard the natural law as a positive source of moral knowledge.

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“…Take away this, and the beauty vanishes as well as the pleasure.' 20 What remained in man's heart was a primal goodness in the form of 'moral conscience,' which, in the words of one of his most widely published American sermons of 1776, was the result of 'the constant influence and over ruling power of divine providence' that 'preserves man from himself'. 21 Landsman's Hutcheson-Witherspoon parallel with regards to moral conscience written on man's heart overlooks this disparity: Any Hutchesonian feeling of 'pleasantness' from morally sound human behaviour in fact took place 'because I feel myself under an obligation to do it … It is not duty because pleasing, but pleasing because duty.'…”

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The Ambiguity of ‘Union’ and the Development of rhetoric in Scottish-American Higher Education: provincial anxiety in John Witherspoon’s language and syntax

Mailer¹

2007

IRSS

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On March 17 1777, while British cannons were firing just metres away from his window in Nassau Hall in the College of New Jersey, John Witherspoon sat down to write a letter to his son David in Scotland. As a former Scottish divine, Witherspoon had moved to America in 1767 in order to assume the presidency of the College of New Jersey, later to be called Princeton. Before writing the letter to his son, he had become the only clergyman to sign the Declaration of Independence. 1 His influence is suggested by a British officer who, writing to Major General Sir Guy Carleton in 1783, pointed to 'Dr Witherspoon … the political firebrand, who perhaps had not a less share in the Revolution than Washington himself. He poisons the minds of his young students and through them the Continent'. 2 Indeed, alongside teaching one President (Madison, B.A. 1771) and one Vice-President (Burr, B.A. 1772), forty-nine US representatives, twenty-eight U.S. senators, three Supreme Court justices, one secretary of state, three attorney generals and two foreign ministers, Witherspoon was also a delegate to the Continental Congress, a member of three standing committees during the Revolutionary War and of more than one-hundred-and-twenty Congressional committees. 3 Witherspoon, however, did not immediately mention any of these activities in his letter to David. Instead, rather bathetically, in the first words of the first paragraph, he stated that 'it gratifies me exceedingly that you and Fanny [Witherspoon's daughter] are so punctual on writing, and that your letter is well written & quite free from bad spelling so that I hope by pains and practise you will write a good & fair and current hand … I do assure you that

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Lectures on moral philosophy.

Abstract: Lectures on moral philosophy. By the Rev. John Witherspoon ... Carefully revised, and freed from the errors of former editions. To which is added, by the same author, an Address to the students of the senior class, and Letters on education and marriage.

Cited by 4 publications

References 0 publications

The Need for Changes in the Nature of Christian Seminary Education

The Need for Changes in the Nature of Christian Seminary Education

Calvin's legacy for contemporary Reformed natural law

The Ambiguity of ‘Union’ and the Development of rhetoric in Scottish-American Higher Education: provincial anxiety in John Witherspoon’s language and syntax

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