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Conscience and Self-Love in Butler's Sermons

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 February 2009

Alan R. White
Alan R. White
Affiliation:
University College, Hull.
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Extract

Mr. T. H. Mcpherson has given, in a recent article in PHILOSOPHY (Vols. XXIII, 1948, and XXIV, 1949), various reasons for supposing that there was a development in Butler's ethics from the Sermons to the Analogy. He argues that Butler was in the Sermons a “rational egoist” or “Ethical Eudaemonist,” and in the Analogy an Intuitionist. By “Ethical Eudaemonism” he seems1 to mean that “the ground or criterion of rightness is conduciveness to the agent's interest” (XXIII, pp. 327, 330, 331; XXIV, p. 18, etc.) or that “it is the happiness-producing character of acts that makes them right” (XXIII, p. 327). I shall use the phrase “McPherson's view” to denote the theory that this was Butler's view in the Sermons.

Type
Articles
Information
Philosophy , Volume 27 , Issue 103 , October 1952 , pp. 329 - 344
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy 1952

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page 329 note 1 I think that McPherson has not clearly distinguished in Butler the following views: (a) rational men act only in their own interest, (b) they ought to act so, (c) right acts produce happiness for the agent. I shall argue that (a) is often but not always, (b) never and (c) always Butler's view.

page 329 note 2 All quotations, unless otherwise stated, are from Gladstone's 1897 edition —Bernard's edition is better since he collates the two editions of the Sermons, but Gladstone's seems better known.

page 330 note 1 D. D. Raphael (op. cit., pp. 235–6) has listed most of these.

page 331 note 1 As McPherson (p. 12) and Raphael (p. 235) point out.

page 331 note 2 Most of these passages are treated more fully in the course of this article.

page 331 note 3 The alleged difficulties about the word “supposed” are treated later in this article. Here there is a clèar distinction between “passion” and “interest.”

page 334 note 1 This answer is quite in keeping with Clarke's usual view “originally and in reality it is as natural and (morally speaking) necessary that the will should be determined in every action by the reason of the thing and the right of the case, as it is natural and (absolutely speaking) necessary that the understanding should submit to a demonstrated truth.” (Selby-Bigge, British Moralists, Vol. II, p. 13).

page 335 note 1 “For reason and reflection comes into our notion of a moral agent” (II, 188).

page 335 note 2 I.e. Conscience as a purely rational principle.

page 335 note 3 Cp. fragment 13 (apud Bernard) “as all my passions and affections to my reason such as it is, so in consideration of the fallibility and infinite deficiencies of this my reason, I would subject it to God, that he may guide and succour it.”

page 338 note 1 I had already reached this conclusion when I found Bernard's comment on the “cool hour” passage (I, 59). “It is a concession which is made in the interests of moral practice not of moral theory.” This excellently summarizes my view.

page 339 note 1 In I, 46, there is a hint that the signs of conscience, e.g. a feeling of shame, may be misleading. I can find no other support for this doubt.

page 340 note 1 In fragment 9 (according to Bernard), Butler says, “Good men surely are not treated in this world as they deserve.”

page 340 note 2 McPherson seems to make this point on p. 13, without noticing its implications.

page 342 note 1 Cp. II, 55–6; quoted above p. 331 and referred to in note on that page.

page 342 note 2 Raphael (op. cit., p. 236 footnote) considers it well made.

page 343 note 1 McPherson admits (p. 13) this passage “may not appear to be very favourable” to his view and he seems to concede his whole case in saying, e.g., “Conscience, which has authority over the other principles in human nature, should correct him and show him that he will be really happier if he follows virtue.” “We may have doubts about the ultimate coincidence of virtue and interest, but that is because we do not properly understand what is our interest.” He continues, “There may be here a slight suggestion of the doctrine that Butler was later to develop in the Analogy. One might interpret the passage as a movement away from his emphasis on the reflective side of conscience, which is so marked in the Sermons, to the view in the later work that conscience makes ‘immediate judgments.’” I hope that I have proved that the immediacy of conscience is the recurrent view in the Sermons; though this is entirely compatible with its being “reflective” in the sense of this term usual in Butler's day.

page 343 note 2 I think McPherson is wrong to explain (p. 330) Butler's utilitarian passages as due to enlightened egoism.

page 343 note 3 A good example of this is seen in his various discussions of benevolence. Benevolence is often used either as a “particular affection” or as a “rational principle” (II, 31–3, 166, 173; 33–4, 35, 88, 188,169).

page 344 note 1 Therefore I consider his development thesis unnecessary.

page 344 note 2 Though the subject is mentioned in, e.g., II, 59, 61, 98, 109, 150, 175.