the eighteenth century. He is still read and discussed among
contemporary philosophers, especially for arguments against some major
figures in the history of philosophy, such as Thomas Hobbes and John
Locke. In his Fifteen Sermons Preached at the Rolls Chapel (1729),
Butler argues against Hobbes's egoism, and in the Analogy of Religion
(1736), he argues against Locke's memory-based theory of personal
identity.
Overall, Butler's philosophy is largely defensive. His general
strategy is to accept the received systems of morality and religion
and, then, defend them against those who think that such systems can
be refuted or disregarded. Butler ultimately attempts to naturalize
morality and religion, though not in an overly reductive way, by
showing that they are essential components of nature and common life.
He argues that nature is a moral system to which humans are adapted
via conscience. Thus, in denying morality, Butler takes his opponents
to be denying our very nature, which is untenable. Given this
conception of nature as a moral system and certain proofs of God's
existence, Butler is then in a position to defend religion by
addressing objections to it, such as the problem of evil.
This article provides an overview of Butler's life, works, and
influence with special attention paid to his writings on religion and
ethics. The totality of his work addresses the questions: Why be
moral? Why be religious? Which morality? Which religion? In attempting
to answer such questions, Butler develops a philosophy that possesses
a unity often neglected by those who read him selectively. The
philosophy that develops is one according to which religion and
morality are grounded in the natural world order.
1. Life
Joseph Butler was born into a Presbyterian family at Wantage. He
attended a dissenting academy, but then converted to the Church of
England intent on an ecclesiastical career. Butler expressed distaste
for Oxford's intellectual conventions while a student at Oriel
College; he preferred the newer styles of thought, especially those of
John Locke, the 3rd Earl of Shaftesbury and Francis Hutcheson, leading
David Hume to characterize Butler as one of those "who have begun to
put the science of man on a new footing, and have engaged the
attention, and excited the curiosity of the public." Butler benefited
from the support of Samuel Clarke and the Talbot family.
In 1719, Butler was appointed to his first job, preacher to the Rolls
Chapel in Chancery Lane, London. Butler's anonymous letters to Clarke
had been published in 1716, but a selection of his Fifteen Sermons
Preached at the Rolls Chapel (1729) was the first work published under
his name. The Rolls sermons are still widely read and have held the
attention of secular philosophers more than any other sermons in
history. Butler moved north and became rector of Stanhope in 1725.
Only at this point is his life documented in any detail, and his
tenure is remembered mainly for the Analogy of Religion (1736). Soon
after publication of that work, Butler became Bishop of Bristol. Queen
Caroline had died urging his preferment, but Bristol was one of the
poorest sees, and Butler expressed some displeasure in accepting it.
Once Butler became dean of St. Paul's in 1740, he was able to use that
income to support his work in Bristol. In 1750, not long before his
death, Butler was elevated to Durham, one of the richest bishoprics.
The tradition that Butler declined the See of Canterbury was
conclusively discredited by Norman Sykes (1936), but continues to be
repeated uncritically in many reference works. Butler's famous
encounter with John Wesley has only recently been reconstructed in as
full detail as seems possible given the state of the surviving
evidence, and we are now left with little hope of ever knowing what
their actual relationship was. They disagreed, certainly, on Wesley's
right to preach without a license, and on this point Butler seems
entirely in the right; but Butler may have supported Wesley more than
he opposed him, and Wesley seems entirely sincere in his praise of the
Analogy.
Butler has become an icon of a highly intellectualized, even rarefied,
theology, "wafted in a cloud of metaphysics," as Horace Walpole said.
Ironically, Butler refused as a matter of principle to write
speculative works or to pursue curiosity. All his writings were
directly related to the performance of his duties at the time or to
career advancement. From the Rolls sermons on, all his works are
devoted to pastoral philosophy.
A pastoral philosopher gives philosophically persuasive arguments for
seeing life in a particular way when such a seeing-as may have a
decisive effect on practice. Butler had little interest in, and only
occasionally practiced, natural theology in the scholastic sense; his
intent is rather defensive: to answer those who claim that morals and
religion, as conventionally understood, may be safely disregarded.
Butler tried to show, as a refutation of the practice of his day (as
he perceived it), that morals and religion are natural extensions of
the common way of life usually taken for granted, and thus that those
who would dispense with them bear a burden of proof they are unable to
discharge. In arguing that morals and religion are favored by a
presumption already acknowledged in ordinary life, Butler employs many
types of appeal, at least some of which would be fallacious if used in
an attempted demonstrative argument.
2. Human Nature as Made for Virtue
Butler's argument for morality, found primarily in his sermons, is an
attempt to show that morality is a matter of following human nature.
To develop this argument, he introduces the notions of nature and of a
system. There are, he says, various parts to human nature, and they
are arranged hierarchically. The fact that human nature is
hierarchically ordered is not what makes us manifestly adapted to
virtue, rather, it is what Butler calls "conscience" that is at the
top of this hierarchy. Butler does sometimes refer to the conscience
as the voice of God; but, contrary to what is sometimes alleged, he
never relies on divine authority in asserting the supremacy, the
universality or the reliability of conscience. Butler clearly believes
in the autonomy of the conscience as a secular organ of knowledge.
Whether the conscience judges principles, actions or persons is not
clear, perhaps deliberately since such distinctions are of no
practical significance. What Butler is concerned to show is that to
dismiss morality is in effect to dismiss our own nature, and therefore
absurd. As to which morality we are to follow, Butler seems to have in
mind the common core of civilized standards. He stresses the degree of
agreement and reliability of conscience without denying some
differences remain. All that is required for his argument to go
through is that the opponent accept in practice that conscience is the
supreme authority in human nature and that we ought not to disregard
our own nature.
The most significant recent challenge to Butler's moral theory is by
Nicholas Sturgeon (1976), a reply to which appears in Stephen Darwall
(1995).
Besides the appeal to the rank of conscience, Butler offered many
other observations in his attempt to show that we are made for (that
is, especially suited to) virtue. In a famous attack on the egoistic
philosophy of Thomas Hobbes, he argues that benevolence is as much a
part of human nature as self-love. Butler also argues that various
other aspects of human nature are adapted to virtue, sometimes in
surprising ways. For example, he argues that resentment is needed to
balance benevolence. He also deals forthrightly with self-deception.
Only three of the fifteen sermons deal with explicitly religious
themes: the sermons on the love of God and the sermon on ignorance.
3. Human Life as in the Presence of God
Butler's views on our knowledge of God are among the most frequently
misstated aspects of his philosophy. Lewis White Beck's exposition
(1937) of this neglected aspect of Butler's philosophy has itself been
generally neglected, and both friends and foes frequently assert that
Butler "assumed" that God exists. Butler never assumes the existence
of God; rather, at least after his exchange with Clarke, he takes it
as granted that God's existence can be and has been proved to the
satisfaction of those who were party to the discussion in his time.
The charge, frequently repeated since the mid-nineteenth century, that
Butler's position is reversible once an opponent refuses to grant
God's existence, is therefore groundless. It is true that Butler does
not expound any proof of God's existence. (Notice that this fact makes
it problematic to identify him with the character Cleanthes in Hume's
Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion.) However, he does endorse many
such proofs, using common names rather than citing specific texts.
The sermons on the love of God are rarely read today, but they provide
abundant evidence that Butler's God is not some remote deity who
created the world and then lost interest in it. On the contrary, the
difference that God makes to us is the difference that a lively sense
of God's presence makes.
4. This Life as a Prelude to a Future Life
Butler considered the expectation of a future life to be the
foundation of all our hopes and fears. He does not state exactly why
this is so, and most commentators have concluded that he is referring
to hopes and fears regarding what will happen to us as individuals
when we die. Such an intention would be contrary to Butler's general
line of thought. More consonant with what Butler does say is the
Platonic point that one cannot truly benefit by acting viciously and
then escaping punishment. Since that is what appears to happen in this
world, appearances must be denied. Secondly, and here Butler would
agree with Hume, in this world there is an appearance that the
superintendence of the universe is not entirely just. Thus, there are
three logical options: (1) the universe is ultimately unjust, (2)
contrary to appearances, this world is somehow just, or (3) the
universe is just, but only when viewed more broadly than we are able
to see now. Given these options, Butler thinks there are good
practical reasons for accepting the third in practice.
The first chapter of the Analogy is devoted to the argument that what
little we know of the nature of death is insufficient to warrant an
assurance that death is the end of us. And when we lack sufficient
warrant for acting on the presumption of a change, we must act on the
presumption of continuance. The recurrent objection, offered by such
otherwise sympathetic readers as Richard Swinburne, is that in the
physical destruction of the body, we do have sufficient warrant.
Roderick Chisholm (1986) has proposed a counter to this criticism.
Butler appends to his discussion of a future life a brief essay on
personal identity, and this is the only part of the Analogy widely
read today. That it is read independently is perhaps just as well
since it is difficult to see how it is related to the general
argument. Butler says he needs to answer objections to personal
identity continuing after death, which he certainly must do. But the
view he proposes to refute is Locke's, and Locke seemed not to see
that his theory of personal identity presented a problem for
expectation of a future life. Locke's theory was that memory is
constitutive of personal identity. Even if Butler is right in his
objection to Locke's theory, he certainly needs personal memories to
be retained since they are presupposed by his theory of rewards and
punishments after death.
5. The World as a Moral Order
Butler's work is directed mainly against skeptics (and those inclined
toward skepticism) and as an aid for those who propose to argue with
skeptics. The general motivation for his work is to overcome
intellectual embarrassment at accepting the received systems of morals
and religion. To succeed, Butler must present a case that is plausible
if not fully probative, and he must do so without resorting to an
overly reductive account of morals and religion. Butler's strategy is
to naturalize morals and religion. Although generally scorning
scholastic methods, Butler does accept the ontological argument for
God's existence, the appeal to the unity and simplicity of the soul
and the distinction of natural and revealed religion. The fundamental
doctrine of natural religion is the efficacy of morals—that the
categories of virtue and vice, already discussed in terms of human
nature, have application to the larger world of nature. To some,
fortune and misfortune in this world seem not to be correlated with
any moral scheme. But, with numerous examples, Butler argues that the
world as we ordinarily experience it does have the appearance of a
moral order.
Butler takes up two objections: the possibility that the doctrine of
necessity is true and the familiar problem of evil. With regard to
necessity, he argues that, even if such is the case, we are in no
position to live in accord with necessity since we cannot see our own
or others' actions as entirely necessitated. Butler's approach to the
problem of evil is to appeal to human ignorance, a principal theme in
various aspects of his work. What Butler must show is that we do not
know of the actual occurrence of any event such that it could not be
part of a just world. Since he does appeal to our ignorance, Butler
cannot be said to have produced a theodicy, a justification of the
ways of God to us, but his strategy may show a greater intellectual
integrity, and may be sufficient for his purposes.
6. The Christian Scriptures as a Revelation
Butler's treatment of revealed religion is less satisfactory, since he
had only a partial understanding of modern biblical criticism. Butler
does insist on treating the Bible like any other book for critical
purposes. He maintains that if any biblical teaching appears immoral
or contrary to what we know by our natural faculties, then that alone
is sufficient reason for seeking another interpretation of the
scripture. The point of a revelation is to supplement natural
knowledge, not to overrule it. Far from compromising the role of
religion, this view is entailed by the fact that nature, natural
knowledge and revelation all have a common source in God.
It is only in the second part of his Analogy that Butler argues
against the deists. The characterization of his work as on the whole a
reply to the deists is entirely a modern invention and is not found
anywhere in the first century of reactions.
Only one chapter of the Analogy is devoted to the "Christian
evidences" of miracles and prophecy, and even there Butler confines
himself to some judicious remarks on the logical character of the
arguments, especially with regard to miracles. In general, Butler
presents revelation as wholly consistent with, but also genuinely
supplemental of, natural knowledge. Hume says he castrated his
Treatise of Human Nature (1739/1740) out of regards for Butler. But
based on the texts that survive, there is no reason to think Hume
would have gotten the better of the argument. Charles Babbage (1837)
eventually showed why Hume had no valid objection to Butler.
Unfortunately, Butler's account of scripture is entirely
two-dimensional. He does not doubt the point that scripture was
written in terms properly applicable to a previous state of society,
but he has little sense of the canonical books themselves being
redactions of a multitude of oral and literary traditions and sources.
7. Public Institutions as Moral Agents
In the six sermons preserved from the years he served as the Bishop of
Bristol, Butler defends the moral nature of various philanthropic and
political institutions of his day. And in his Charge to the Clergy at
Durham, he presents a concise rationale for the Church.
8. Butler's Influence
Ernest Mossner (1936) is still the most useful survey of Butler's
influence. Mossner claims that Butler was widely read in his own time,
but his evidence may be insufficient to convince some. However that
may be, there is no doubt that by the late eighteenth century Butler
was widely read in Scottish universities, and from the early
nineteenth century at Oxford, Cambridge and many American colleges,
perhaps especially because the Scottish influence was so strong in
America. Butler's work impressed David Hume and John Wesley, and
Thomas Reid, Adam Smith and David Hartley considered themselves
Butlerians. Butler was a great favorite of the Tractarians, but the
association with them may have worked against his ultimate influence
in England, especially since Newman attributed his own conversion to
the Roman Church to his study of Butler. S. T. Coleridge was among the
first to urge study of the sermons and to disparage the Analogy. The
decline of interest in the Analogy in the late nineteenth century has
never been satisfactorily explained, but Leslie Stephen's critical
work was especially influential.
The editions most frequently cited today appeared only after wide
interest in Butler's Analogy had evaporated. The total editions are
sometimes said to be countless, but this is true only in the sense
that there are no agreed criteria for individuating editions. The
numerous ancillary essays and study guides are still useful as
evidence of how Butler was studied and understood. At its height,
Butler's influence cut across protestant denominational lines and
party differences in the Church of England, but serious interest in
the Analogy is now concentrated among certain Anglican writers.
9. References and Further Reading
Butler's first biography appeared in the supplement to the Biographia
Britannica (London, 1766). The most frequently reprinted biography is
by Andrew Kippis and appeared in his second edition of the Biographia
Britannica (London, 1778-93). This second edition is often confused
with the supplement to the first edition. The only full biography is
Bartlett (1839).
The best modern edition of Butler's works is J.H. Bernard's, but it is
a modernized text, as of 1900, and contains errors. Serious readers
may consult the original editions, now available on microfilm.
a. Works by Butler
* Several Letters to the Reverend Dr. Clarke. London: Knapton, 1716.
* Fifteen Sermons Preached at the Rolls Chapel. London: second
edition, 1729; six sermons added in the 1749 edition.
* Analogy of Religion, Natural and Revealed, to the Constitution
and Nature. London: Knapton, 1736.
* Charge Delivered to the Clergy. Durham: Lane, 1751.
b. Secondary Literature
* Babbage, Charles. Ninth Bridgewater Treatise. London: J. Murray, 1837.
* Babolin, Albino. Joseph Butler. Padova: LaGarangola, 1973. 2 vols.
* Baker, Frank. "John Wesley and Bishop Joseph Butler: A Fragment
of Wesley's Manuscript Journal 16th to 24th August 1739." Proceedings
of the Wesley Historical Society. 42 (May 1980) 93-100.
* Bartlett, Thomas. Memoirs of the Life, Character and Writings of
Joseph Butler. London: John W. Parker, 1839.
* Beck, Lewis White. "A Neglected Aspect of Butler's Ethics."
Sophia 5 (1937) 11-15.
* Butler, J.F. "John Wesley's Defense Before Bishop Butler."
Proceedings of the Wesley Historical Society. 20 (1935) 63-67.
* Butler, J.F. "John Wesley's Defense Before Bishop Butler: A
Further Note." Proceedings of the Wesley Historical Society. 20 (1936)
193-194.
* Chisholm, Roderick. "Self-Profile" in Roderick M. Chisholm, ed.
Radu J. Bogdan. Dordrecht:Reidel, 1986.
* Cunliffe, Christopher, ed. Joseph Butler's Moral and Religious
Thought: Tercentenary Essays. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992.
* Darwall, Stephen. The British Moralists and the Internal 'Ought'
1640-1740. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995.
* Mossner, E.C. Bishop Butler and the Age of Reason. New York:
Macmillan, 1936.
* Penelhum, Terence. Butler. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1985.
* Stephen, Leslie. "Butler, Joseph." Dictionary of National Biography, 1886.
* Sturgeon, Nicholas L. "Nature and Conscience in Butler's
Ethics." Philosophical Review 85 (1976) 316-356.
* Sykes, Norman. "Bishop Butler and the Primacy" Theology (1936) 132- 137.
* Sykes, Norman. "Bishop Butler and the Primacy" (letter) Theology
(1958) 23.
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