Edward Young’s Night Thoughts IX

This article examines how Edward Young’s Night Thoughts IX reshapes the key concepts of Baruch Spinoza and John Locke while deploying the speaker’s perceptions of the Almighty in human domains. At the age of sensibility, it was Young among his contemporary writers, who seriously utilizes, in his contemplative ode, divine experiences of external circumstances. His reworking of the two philosophers enables the speaker to effectively deliver his spiritual awareness of divinity to Lorenzo, who is a contemporary iconic figure ignoring immaterial revelations in the surrounding world. The essay scrutinizes how Young’s allusion to Spinoza and Locke contributes to enhancing the capability of one’s mind to realize the diverse manifestations of deity in permanent natural landscapes

Divinity · Environmental ethics · Epistemology · Perception · Psychoanalysis · Sociology · Theology · Philosophy · Psychology · Religion, Ecology, and Ethics · Religious studies · Religious Studies and Spiritual Practices