Ignatius of Loyola, Jonathan Edwards, and Indifference

The aim of this paper is threefold: First, I provide a brief account of Ignatian indifference as contained in the Spiritual Exercises. I distinguish between two senses of ‘indifference’ and apply them to an imaginary Regina who is faced with the decision about whether to give an inheritance to UNICEF or use the funds to finance her daughter’s college education. Second, I argue that Jonathan Edwards’s polemic, in Freedom of the Will, against Isaac Watts’s account of indifference, is open to the ‘straw man objection’ when applied to the Ignatian concept. Finally, I put forth a Kantian based critique of Ignatian indifference. I claim that while indifference is a logically consistent notion it may very well be psychologically problematic. If it is an open question whether Regina can ever know with certainty that she has acted from the pure motive of duty, then it is also an open question whether she can ‘find’ herself indifferent in the Ignatian senses of the term.