Joseph Butler
1692-1752 · English (Wantage; Stanhope, Bristol and Durham) · Moral Philosophy, Moral Psychology, Philosophy of Religion, Personal Identity, Anglican Apologetics
Every thing is what it is, and not another thing.
Joseph Butler (1692 – 1752) was the youngest son of a Presbyterian draper of Wantage, sent to a dissenting academy to be made a minister. At twenty-one he wrote anonymously to Samuel Clarke, the most admired philosopher-divine in England, to say that he had very probable arguments for the being of God and could go only a little way with demonstration. He conformed to the Church of England instead, went to Oriel, and preached for seven years to the lawyers of the Rolls Chapel in London.
Topics Joseph Butler addresses
- constitution of human nature
- supremacy of conscience
- authority versus strength of principles
- self-love and particular passions
- pleasure as consequent on gratification
- coincidence of virtue and self-interest
- benevolence and self-love not opposed
- refutation of psychological egoism
- resentment as a natural passion
- forgiveness of injuries
- love of our neighbour
- love of God
- self-deceit
- government of the tongue
- compassion
- ignorance of man
- Balaam and the character of self-deception
- analogy of religion to the course of nature
- probability as the guide of life
- future life and the continuance of the living agent
- moral government of God
- probation and moral discipline
- doctrine of necessity and fatalism
- miracles and presumption against them
Questions to put to Joseph Butler
Human Nature and Its Constitution
- What do you mean when you say human nature is a 'constitution' rather than just a collection of impulses?
- How do you distinguish between a principle having authority and a principle having strength?
- Why isn't pleasure the object of our passions, and why does that matter for understanding selfishness?
- What is self-love, exactly, and how is it different from the particular passions like hunger or ambition?
- How do you argue that benevolence is no more opposed to self-interest than any other affection?
Conscience and the Supremacy of Reflection
- What is conscience, and why do you say it has a natural supremacy over every other principle in us?
- How can conscience have authority over a passion that is stronger than it is?
- What do you mean when you say that in common cases every honest man knows at first view what his duty is?
- How do you account for self-deceit — the way we hide our real motives even from ourselves?
- Why do you treat acting against conscience as acting against our own nature, not just against a rule?
Virtue, Benevolence, and Moral Approval
- Why isn't virtue simply a matter of producing the greatest happiness for others?
- How do you argue that we approve justice and honesty in themselves, not just for their good consequences?
- Why do you think a person who does something unjust in order to produce more happiness has made a mistake?
- What's the relationship between virtue and self-interest when we sit down in a cool hour and think it through?
- How do you understand resentment — is it a morally legitimate response to being wronged?
- How can forgiveness of an injury be genuine if resentment is a natural and proper passion?
Analogy, Probability, and the Defence of Religion
- What do you mean by saying that probability is the very guide of life?
- How does the method of analogy work — what exactly are you comparing to what?
- Why do you think the difficulties people find in Christianity are already present in the natural world God is admitted to have made?
- How does our ignorance of the whole scheme of things serve as an answer to objections drawn from apparent evil or injustice?
- What is the argument for a future life based on the continuance of the living agent through changes in the body?
- Why do you think it is practical folly to dismiss Christianity without inquiry, even if its evidence falls short of certainty?
Personal Identity and the Living Agent
- What's wrong with saying that memory or consciousness of past actions is what makes a person the same person over time?
- What do you mean by identity in a 'strict and philosophical sense' as opposed to the loose sense in which a plant stays the same plant?
- How does the argument that consciousness presupposes identity rather than constituting it actually work?
- Why do you think the self that persists through bodily change might also persist through death?
Converse with Joseph Butler on Simposeum. Replies are grounded in Joseph Butler's own writing, cited to the page.