Joseph Butler: Sermons

Major Tenets of His Position:

The following selection is from Baraclow, Moral Philosophy: Theory and Issues.

According to the British philosopher and theologian Joseph Butler (1692-1752), self-interest is only one of many possible motives for action.

Mankind has various instincts and principles of action . . .; some leading most directly and immediately to the good of the community, and some most directly to private good. . . . [I]t is not a true representation of mankind, to affirm that they are wholly governed by self-love, the love of power and sensual appetites: . . . it is manifest fact, that the same persons, the generality, are frequently influenced by friendship, compassion, gratitude; and even a general abhorrence of what is base, and liking of what is fair and just, takes its turn amongst the other motives of action.

According to Butler, people can be motivated solely by self-interest, but they can also be motivated by friendship compassion, gratitude, and a desire to do the right thing. If they act in order to benefit or protect someone out of friendship or compassion, they are not acting out of self-interest. And experience shows that people act on such motives; they can and do sacrifice their self-interest in order to benefit and protect the interests and well-being of others.

There is ample evidence of parents who sacrifice their lives for their children; people who give their money away to others, etc. But the egoists have a reply:

The fireman who goes into a burning building to save others; the mother who risks her life (or loses her life) for her children - these people are not acting altruistically at all. The fireman gets pleasure from entering burning buildings; and the mother would feel horrible if she did not risk or lose her life in saving her children.

Critics of psychological egoism have two replies to this point:

1. Everyone's ultimate aim is not always purely self-interested pleasure-getting.

2. Even if psychological egoists were correct that everyone's ultimate aim is pleasure or happiness, that would not mean that people cannot sacrifice their own interests in order to benefit or protect others because people can have desires to protect and benefit others.

Butler maintains, in general, that people are generally happier in the long run if they care about others, refrain from harming others, and benefit others.

Critics make two points against this view:

1. Why must long-term self-interest take precedence over the short-term?

2. What if a person believed that ignoring the interests of others was in his own long-term self interest?

Major Points:

1. Butler's view is common to the 17th and 18th century attitude of searching for the foundation of morality in something other than the divine will. Though Butler was devoutly religious (he was a Bishop), he held that nature and revelation are complementary. He was therefore willing to forego appeals to revelation and search nature for the basis of morality.

2. Butler is working under the shadow of Hobbes and DeMandeville (DeMandeville was a contemporary of Butler). But he was also working under the influence of Shaftesbury, who held that there is an instinct of benevolence in man. Butler claims that these positions are all wrong. They do not portray an adequate picture of the nature of man. Butler wishes to show that self-love and benevolence are part of the whole of man's nature.

3. Butler looks to the whole of mankind, not to exceptions. He finds that self-love and benevolence are only two affections of man; they are not more important than any others. Self-love is complex; its object is not simply the self, but the gain of all things pleasing to the self.

4. But Butler, so far, seems only to have a position that is a synthesis of others. But he does go further than this. His position is that man has a higher faculty superior to the affections, a faculty that judges the affections and the actions that flow from them. That faculty is conscience. It is conscience that distinguishes us from the beasts; it is what keeps us from being overtaken by the passion of the moment. Conscience is that which what allows us to be a law unto ourselves - we are obliged to obey it because it is the law of our nature.

5. Butler claims that the conscience "without being consulted, without being advised with, magisterially exerts itself, and approves or condemns him the doer of them accordingly."

6. Criticisms:

a. Unclear concerning how the conscience works: very mechanical.

b. Conscience approves of what is beneficial to the whole man; and condemns what is beneficial only to some part of the whole. But how does conscience learn to do this? His answer probably follows from his theological position - that conscience does its job since it has been designed by God for its appointed end.