Bishop Joseph Butler

Biography

Born in Wantage, England from a Presbyterian cloth merchant in 1692, Joseph Butler led a life devoted to ministry and philosophy. He attended what is now considered the Tewksbury Academy, a school meant for non-Anglicans to gain access to Oxford or Cambridge. There, he started a correspondence with Samuel Clarke discussing certain theological concerns. He converted to the church of England while at Oxford University and graduated two years later. He took on his first official role as a preacher in the Rolls Chapel in London where his Fifteen Sermons were given. He also acquired a degree in law there before being instated as the head chaplain to the Queen in 1736 when he published his seminal work, The Analogy of Religion. He was elected as the Bishop of Bristol in 1738 then transferred to Durham. He held various other high positions in the Church of England until his death in 1752. In his sermons and publications, Butler looks at the human life—raising questions of self-love, consciousness, and our relationship to God. He argues against the moral egoists and hedonists of his time such as Thomas Hobbes. He defended that morality is natural to being human and justifies the presence of religion in the understanding of morality, although making many non-religious arguments in his texts. Throughout his works, he makes reference to the lack of predictability of nature and the limits of human nature in comparison to the infinite wisdom of God. Butler was revered for his good character and compelling argumentation.

Philosophical Position and Argument

Bishop Joseph Butler’s works span many philosophical and theological topics and come in unorthodox forms like letters and sermons. The highly formal English, popular in the 18^th century that is used in his prose is wonderful, but at times difficult to extract the truth from. In many instances, he lays out his proofs for his beliefs in structured ways which provides clarity to his well-thought-out argumentation. It may be helpful to think about Butler’s position as going from making broad claims about human nature’s inclination to virtue, to more narrow claims about its inclination towards religion, and most specifically, its inclination to Christianity. I think the best way to view Bishop in the context of Modern philosophy is to look at the broadest of these claims: man’s nature to be virtuous.

Butler’s claim that it is man’s nature to be virtuous is a reactive claim to the burgeoning moral theories of the time. Hobbes, who preceded Butler, believed that all voluntary acts were done with the object of one’s own interest. Mandeville, a contemporary of Butler, believed in man’s natural predisposition to vice and its good in the greater scheme of society. Similarly, Butler is reacting to hedonism, the long-standing idea that man’s actions are motivated by pleasure. One can imagine why an Anglican pastor devoted to God would have problems with these theories.

When we think about the ideas of egoism it can seem intuitive: for many of our actions, we can think about how they are motivated by our own desires, not the good of others. The Egoist would extend this to all our actions—everything we do is self-motivated. Butler takes the polar-opposite position: all our actions are motivated by good, which includes the good of others and self-love. In other words, it is inherent in human nature to act in accordance with the good. This is a trait that is given to us by God, and it is the exception when people act in vice, rather than the rule. Generally, when people do not act in goodness, it is usually because of the lack of human understanding. We tend to try to do good things but misunderstand how our actions might affect others. The end goal here is to show that morality is natural. Since the philosophers of his time were deeply concerned with the natural world, if they refute morality and therefore nature, they are being inconsistent.

Butler argues that human nature is much like a machine or a social system like an economy. When someone acts selfishly and does immoral things, such as a sociopath who does not care about the people he harms by his actions, it is an error of human nature, much like an error of a machine. Likewise, machines have purposes. Watches, for example, tell time. So, man’s nature is teleological in that it has an end which is goodness. The comparison of human nature to a machine goes further: it also is broken down into constituent parts. The first two of these parts or faculties of human nature are shared with animals. We have a benevolent part of our nature, in which we do caring things for each other such as raising our kids. Included in this is also self-love where we look after our own needs. Second, there is a faculty that is distinct from benevolence and self-love. In this faculty, we may have feelings of honor, frustrations towards others, and attitudes towards society. Third, we have what differentiates humans from animals which is the reflective faculty of consciousness which allows us to evaluate our own or others’ actions and determine their moral goodness.

In the first sermon, Butler uses the example of parenthood which we do naturally out of our benevolent faculty. However, when difficulties and frustrations inevitably arise, our second faculty might kick in, making us want to be neglectful. It is through our consciousness that we can overcome the difficulty and recognize that it is morally good to continue to care for our children. Therefore, we are social creatures, disposed to working positively with other humans. After all, as he cites in the beginning of the sermon, we are all one in the body of Christ. Our consciousness is necessary for the promotion of wellbeing as participants of the body of Christ. In the second sermon, Butler points out that it would be natural for an animal to be get stuck in a trap because they desire the food that is laid out. It would be unnatural for a human to get stuck in a trap because we would use our conscious judgement to recognize that it would cause us a great deal of harm.

Acting out of vice seems to be helpful or more in line with our desires. Butler argues that this is untrue: acting out of anger or contempt may feel better but it is only a good feeling because it is a relief from frustrations, not good in and of itself like compassion is. Doing good can actually feel good for us but that feeling is simply the result of our good nature acting in accordance with morality, not the driving force behind our actions.

I admire Butler’s rebuttal to his contemporaries’ cold view of a world of people without virtue, or later philosopher’s refusal to accept morality to exist whatsoever. His view of human morality as natural paints an optimistic picture in which we do not have far to go before we can see a world filled with good.

Comparison to Mandeville:

First, I will address Mandeville’s defense of psychological egoism. He claims that all animals are “only solicitous of pleasing themselves” and that humans, being animals, are no different. Since virtue and piety are so highly praised in society, people often try to emulate these values. But we only do so out of our own desire to be loved and respected, not because we are genuinely interested in being good.

Second, in Mandeville’s defense of ethical egoism, he argues that there are consequences to society when people are individually virtuous. In his “Grumbling Hive” poem, the bees pray to their god to make all the members of their society virtuous. Once the bees stop leading lives of vice, the economy crumbles, and the bees begin to exit the hive. So, were humans to follow the virtuous lives that we are instructed to, our industry would fail, we would starve, and the overall vice would be far worse than where we started.  

Immediately, we can see that Mandeville’s views on human nature could not be more opposite from Butler’s beliefs. To overly simplify, Mandeville thinks people tend to be wicked and our actions are self-motivated, Butler believes people are moral and our actions are motivated by benevolence. Jennifer Welchman approaches Butler’s arguments against Mandeville’s thinking in her essay, “Who Rebutted Bernard Mandeville”. The main claim that Butler makes is in distinguishing between first-order desires which are motivated by the moral goodness and external objects and second-order desires which are motivated by self-love (importantly, not self-interest). The three arguments from Butler that Welchman highlights are as follows: first, that

Additionally, self-love and benevolence are not at odds with each other. Mandeville seems to think that if we are doing anything in the name of helping others, it is solely for ourselves. Butler objects, saying that although we may help others partially by the happiness it brings us, it is also motivated by genuine care for others’ wellbeing. Finally, there are some deeds which cannot possibly be paraphrased into self-interest. On one hand, there are acts of martyrdom which are difficult to think of in terms of self- interest. On the other hand, there are cruel acts where people are willing to let harm befall them if it means that people who they hate are worse-off.

While I think Butler’s arguments are mostly sound, Welchman does not think he effectively rebuts Mandeville’s arguments, reaffirming his position that all these behaviors garner approval, fame, or notoriety from society which everyone ultimately desires. I think a better approach to the problems in Mandeville’s work would be to criticize what he sees as virtue in the context of society. If Mandeville wants to defend his notion that individual vice is admissible on the grounds that it allows for greater societal virtue, he must defend that those broader virtues are in fact good. I do not see that greater trade or industry is necessarily more virtuous overall than a society filled with good and honest people. I fail to understand how the bee’s “paradise” is a paradise at all when there are major judicial problems favoring the wealthy, for example. There are many “macro” issues in the society which do not justify the individual wrongdoings. Not even the staunch Utilitarian would be likely to defend the good society he proposes. I believe Butler would agree that if you want to propose an ethical system, your virtues should in fact be good in themselves. Additionally, Butler’s understanding of human consciousness as reflective rational is inconsistent with the justifications people have for their actions in Mandeville’s view. If we are rational, it would be likely that we could see through others’ self-interest. If we are always doing things to garner approval from others out of self-interest, surely, we would all catch on to this great ruse.

Mandeville is certainly useful as a comparison tool to Butler in that he brings up reasonable objections to the notion that all things are done with good as their ends. He also raises an incredibly pervasive question in ethics about weighing the good of individuals with public wellbeing.

Closing Statement

Butler is a key Christian philosopher in the modern era who often defends his philosophy without requiring the reader to accept every tenet of Christianity. His apologetic works use many of the argumentative styles of the time and his defense of virtue is a relief from his critical contemporaries. The Modern Philosophy which we engaged within this course had a noticeable theme running through it: God. This God, however, often has different characteristics from the typical Christian God. It is fascinating to view someone of this period use many of the tools of his fellow philosophers to take a step back and defend this version of God. Within the syllabus, it could be a useful tool to see how this kind of philosophy is running in tandem with people like Hume, Mandeville, Chatelet, and others. It reminds us that the world of philosophy did not simply get rid of religion and traditional views of morality as skepticism became more popular.

I think Butler should replace Anton Amo on the Syllabus in part because he seems moderately redundant to others like Descartes. Specifically, the questions he addresses in the selection given are already refuted in the dialogue between Descartes and Elizabeth of Bohemia. I also think Amo’s work is mostly descriptive. It doesn’t have the same amount of defenses and argumentation as the other philosophers in the course, even if those arguments are faulty. The structure of his work makes it seem like he will back up his theses in his proofs, but they are mostly more of his own definitions. Both thinkers appeal to Biblical verses which could be the common ground over which replacement seems fair. Still, Butler’s use of Bible passages is more metaphorical, while Amo’s use is quite concrete. In defending the difference between “the soul and the breath”, Amo quotes the Bible as an argument: “If in his hands are the would of all living things and the breath of all men.” Is he really doing philosophical argumentation? I think not. Amo is certainly a much more pleasant read than Butler is, but it doesn’t seem that much of his few original concepts stick or are a major conversation that the other philosophers we read are involved with.

Bibliography

Primary Works:

• Butler, Joseph. Several Letters to the Reverend Dr. Clarke, from a Gentleman in Glocestershire, Relating to the First Volume of the Foregoing Sermons; with the Drs. Answers Thereunto. London: Printed for James Knapton, 1725.
• Butler, Joseph. Fifteen Sermons Preached at the Rolls Chapel. Memphis, USA: General Books, 2012.
• Butler, Joseph, Joseph Cummings, and Henry Rogers. The Analogy of Religion, Natural and Revealed, to the Constitution and Course of Nature: To Which Are Added Two Brief Dissertations: I. Of Personal Identity, II. Of the Nature of Virtue. Weyers Cave, VA: Ravenbrook Publishers, 2006.
• Butler, Joseph, and Andrew Kippis. The Analogy of Religion, Natural and Revealed, to the Constitution and Course of Nature: To Which Are Added Two Brief Dissertations: I. On Personal Identity, and II. On the Nature of Virtue: Together with a Charge, Delivered to the Clergy of the Diocese of Durham, at the Primary Visitation, in the Year 1751. Hartford: Published by Samuel G. Goodrich, 1819.
• Butler, Joseph, and David E. White. The Works of Bishop Butler. Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press, 2008.
• Butler, Joseph. Six Sermons Preached upon Publick Occasions. London: Printed for John and Paul Knapton, 1749.

Secondary Works:

• Darwall, Stephen. “Butler: Conscience as Self-authorizing.” The British Moralists and the Internal ‘ought’: 1640–1740: 244-83. doi:10.1017/cbo9780511608957.010.

This seems like an interesting source because it approaches some of the scholars who disagree with Butler’s reasoning. It will supply me with some of the arguments people have made against him and some of the defenses people make of his work.

• Lefevre, Albert. “Self-Love and Benevolence in Butlers Ethical System.” The Philosophical Review 9, no. 2 (1900): 167. doi:10.2307/2176486.

I chose this source because it delves into a particular topic in Butler’s works about love and his arguments about it in relation to the hedonic philosophers. The author’s writing is very clear and will help with understanding some of the texts Butler writes.

• Louden, Robert B. “Butler’s Divine Utilitarianism.” History of Philosophy Quarterly 12, no. 3 (1995): 265-80. Accessed February 27, 2021. http://www.jstor.org/stable/27744666.

The author of this paper takes an unorthodox view of Butler being a Utilitarian as opposed to a deontologist as many philisophical historians have claimed. This will help me get an interesting perspective and give me insight into the way various historians view Butler’s works.

• Welchman, Jennifer. “Who Rebutted Bernard Mandeville?” History of Philosophy Quarterly 24, no. 1 (2007): 57-74. Accessed April 23, 2021. http://www.jstor.org/stable/27745078.