Towards a Solution to the "Perennially Intriguing Problem" of the Sources of Jonathan Edwards's Idealism

Abstract

This paper argues that Jonathan Edwards developed idealism from the instruction he received and conveyed in logic, ethics, physics and metaphysics. His view of the direct perception of mind with its ideas and the indirect perception of matter provided the basis for a dualism between mind and matter and the necessary condition of the distinction between the ideal and the material world.