Oberlin's First Philosopher

Oberlin's First Philosopher* EDWARD H. MADDEN ASA MAHANWAS THE FroST president of Oberlin College (1835-50) and professor of moral philosophy--the usual pattern during these years of "academic orthodoxy" when Christianity was purveyed in American colleges as the philosophy .1 The orthodox professors argued philosophical points very little but rather "presented" and "illustrated" their basic truths. 2 In some ways Mahan fit the stereotype. He did not always probe deeply into questions or always offer reasons for his conclusions. His books are full of phrases like "it could not be otherwise", "no one, it is presumed, will deny that", "it is intuitively evident", "everyone cannot but know", and so on. And he frequently cited other philosophers , as well as the Scriptures, as "authorities." He even cited lengthy passages from Jonathan Edwards whenever he could, even though he differed with Edwards on almost every major point f In more important ways Mahan, however, does not fit the stereotype. Unlike Francis Wayland and most of the other academic orthodoxy before 1850, he had read, and been influenced by, German and French philosophers as well as the Scottish realists. Mahan was particularly influenced by Kant and Cousin. An astute contemporary reviewer remarked that Mahan, like Cousin, was an eclectic. "His eclecticism degenerates sometimes into the merely aggressive, and he delights occasionally in strange and incongruous combinations of Kant, Coleridge, Cousin and himself, but showing here and there great vigor and acuteness, and very considerable philosophical ability." a The aggressiveness of Mahan also sets him apart from the rest of the orthodoxy . He was too fiery by temperament to pass up polemics and hence got to the heart of some basic philosophical problems. He attacked the Edwardian doctrine of determinism and was led, by the vigor of his attack, into what many nineteenth-century Christians considered heresy3 He attacked utilitarianism in all its forms, including Paley's, in a far more consistent and thorough fashion than Francis Wayland and the other followers of Scottish realism and English intuitionism. And first and foremost he vigorously attacked the moral philosophy of his colleague Charles Grandison Finney, famous evangelist, professor of theology, and president-to-be of Oberlin. The spiritedness of his criticisms frequently aroused the ire of his Oberlin colleagues, but the spirited- *Research for some of the material in this paper was made possible by a grant from the Penrose Fund of the AmericanPhilosophicalSociety. ~Cf. Herbert W. Schneider, A History o] American Philosophy (2nd ed.; New York: Columbia University Press, 1963),pp. 195-220; and Joseph L. Blau, Men and Movements in American Philosophy (New York: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1952). 2Cf. E. H. Madden, "Francis Wayland and the Limits of Moral Responsibility," Proceedings o] the American Philosophical Bociety, Vol. 106 (1962),pp. 348-359. *Quoted by R. S. Fletcher in his History o] Oberlin College (Oberlin, Ohio, 1943),II, 701. 4Fletcher, I, 223-231. [57] 58 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY hess fortunately was accompanied by a "considerable philosophical ability" that merits close attention. I Mahan's critique of Edwards appears in his Doctrine o] the Will, first published in 1844. According to Mahan, "Edwards stands convicted of a fundamental error in philosophy, an error which gives form and character to his whole workmthe confounding of the Will with the Sensibility, and thus confounding the characteristics of the phenomena of the former faculty with those of the phenomena of the latter." 5 The trouble is that the whole of Edwards' work "is constructed without an appeal to Consciousness, the only proper and authoritative tribunal of appeal in the case." 8 If we attend carefully to consciousness, said Mahan, we can distinguish volition from the strongest desire and hence must distinguish between the separate faculties of will as personal activity and sensation as mere passive impression. The latter does not "act," it merely "suffers." The will is the moving force in life and unless it can be shown that there is some necessary connection between will and sensation--which, in fact, cannot be done--then it follows that the will is free, that is, the source of "personal activity ." Mahan's rejection of universal determinism, of course, entailed the rejection of the Calvinistic doctrine of election...