Table of Contents (Clicking on the links below will take you to those parts of this article)
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 Locke,
Shaftesbury and Hutcheson, leading 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 Rolls sermons (1726) was the first work
published under his name. These 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 be 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
practices 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. Butler's philosophy
possesses a unity often neglected by those
who read him selectively.
The totality of his work addresses the
questions: why be moral? why be religious?
and which morality?, which religion?
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 that
what Butler calls conscience 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, i.e.,
especially suited to, virtue. In his famous
refutation of Hobbes, one of them, he shows
that benevolence is as much a part of human
nature as self-love. Butler also shows how
various other aspects of human nature are
adapted to virtue, sometimes in surprising
ways, for example, 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. Butler does not
expound any proof of God's existence, a fact
that makes his identification with Cleanthes in
Hume's Dialogues problematic, but 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. Given the three
logical options (1) the universe is ultimately
unjust, (2) contrary to appearances, this world
is somehow just and (3) the universe is just,
but only when viewed more broadly than we
are able to see now, 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 Swinburne, is that in
the physical destruction of the body, we do
have sufficient warrant. 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 that
he proposes to refute is Locke's, and Locke
seemed not to see that his theory personal
identity presented a problem for expectation
of a future life. Locke's theory was that
memory is constitutive of personal identity,
and 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
sceptics and those inclined toward scepticism
and as an aid for those who propose to argue
with sceptics. The general motivation for his
work is to overcome intellectual
embarrassment at accepting the received
systems of morals and religion. To succeed,
Butler most 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
proof of 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 shows 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.
5. 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, and he
maintains that if any biblical teaching appears
immoral or contrary to what we know by our
natural faculties, 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 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 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.
6. 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.
7. 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 Hume and
Wesley, and Reid, Smith and 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.
8. Bibliography
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.
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.
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.
Darwall, Stephen. The British Moralists and the Internal `Ought'
1640-1740. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995.
Cunliffe, Christopher, ed. Joseph Butler's Moral and Religious
Thought: Tercentenary Essays. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992.
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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