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Joseph Butler (18 May 1692 O.S. – 16 June 1752 O.S.) was an English Anglican bishop, theologian, apologist, and philosopher, born in Wantage in the English county of Berkshire (now in Oxfordshire). His principal works are the Fifteen Sermons Preached at the Rolls Chapel (1726) and The Analogy of Religion (1736).
He is known for critiques of Deism, Thomas Hobbes's Ethical egoism, and John Locke's theory of personal identity. The many philosophers and religious thinkers Butler influenced included David Hume, Thomas Reid, Adam Smith,White (2006), §8. Henry Sidgwick,J. B. Schneewind, Sidgwick's Ethics and Victorian Moral Philosophy. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1978, p. 47. John Henry Newman,John Henry Cardinal Newman, Apologia Pro Vita Sua. New York: Modern Library, 1950, p. 41. Originally published 1946. and C. D. Broad,C. D. Broad, Five Types of Ethical Theory. Paterson, NJ: Littlefield, Adams, and Co., 1959, p. 83. Originally published 1930. and is widely seen as "one of the pre-eminent English moralists."James C. Livingston, Modern Christian Thought. New York: Macmillan, 1971, p. 47. He played a major, if underestimated role in developing 18th-century economic discourse, influencing political economist Josiah Tucker.Peter Xavier Price, 'LIBERTY, POVERTY AND CHARITY IN THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF JOSIAH TUCKER AND JOSEPH BUTLER', Modern Intellectual History (2017), 1–30. doi:10.1017/S1479244317000518. [1]
In 1736 Butler became the head chaplain of George II's wife Caroline, on the advice of Lancelot Blackburne. He was nominated Bishop of Bristol on 19 October 1738 and consecrated a bishop on 3 December 1738 at Lambeth Palace chapel. Remaining Bishop of Bristol, Butler was installed Dean of St Paul's on 24 May 1740, keeping the office until his translation to Durham. He is said apocryphally to have declined an offer to become Archbishop of Canterbury in 1747, but he served as Clerk of the Closet to the king in 1746–1752. He was translated to Durham by the confirmation of his election in October 1750; he was then enthroned by proxy on 9 November 1750. He is buried in Bristol Cathedral.
Joseph is remembered in the Church of England with a commemoration on 16 June. He had his own collection of manuscripts (e. g. Lectionary 189).
Butler's Analogy was one of many book-length replies to the deists, and long believed to be the most effective. Butler argued that nature itself was full of mysteries and cruelties and so shared the same alleged defects as the Bible. Arguing on empiricist grounds that all knowledge of nature and human conduct is merely probable, Butler appealed to a series of patterns ("analogies") observable in nature and human affairs, which in his view make the chief teachings of Christianity likely.
Butler argued that "because nature is a mess of riddles, we cannot expect revelation to be any clearer".Livingston, Modern Christian Thought, p. 51. Today, Butler's Analogy is "now largely of historical interest,"Stephen L. Darwall, "Introduction" to Joseph Butler, Five Sermons. Indianapolis: Hackett, 1983, p. 1. with the only part widely read being the section which deals with his criticism of John Locke's theory of personal identity.
In the Sermons, Butler argues that human motivation is less selfish and more complex than Hobbes claimed. He maintains that the human mind is an organized hierarchy of a number of different impulses and principles, many of which are not fundamentally selfish. The ground floor, so to speak, holds a wide variety of specific emotions, appetites and affections, such as hunger, anger, fear and sympathy. They, in properly organized minds, are controlled by two superior principles: self-love (a desire to maximize one's own long-term happiness) and benevolence (a desire to promote general happiness). The more general impulses are in turn subject to the highest practical authority in the human mind: moral conscience. Conscience, Butler claims, is an inborn sense of right and wrong, an inner light and monitor, received from God.Butler, Five Sermons, p. 37. Conscience tells one to promote the general happiness and personal happiness. Experience informs that the two aims largely coincide in the present life. For many reasons, Butler argues, unethical and self-centred people who care nothing for the public good are not usually very happy.
There are, however, rare cases where the wicked seem for a time to prosper. A perfect harmony of virtue and self-interest, Butler claimed, is guaranteed only by a just God, who in the afterlife rewards and punishes people as they deserve.Butler, Five Sermons, p. 45.
More precisely, Locke claims, Person A is the same person as Person B only in a case where A and B share at least some of the same memories. Butler said that the way "real" memories can be distinguished from false ones is that people who had the experiences that are truly remembered. Thus, Butler claimed, memory presupposes personal identity and so cannot constitute it.Joseph Butler, The Analogy of Religion. Cincinnati: Jennings and Graham, 1847. p. 324.
Ethics and moral psychology
A Butler scholar, Stephen Darwall, wrote: "Probably no figure had a greater impact on nineteenth-century British moral philosophy than Butler."Darwall, "Introduction<" p. 3. Butler's chief target in the Sermons was Thomas Hobbes and the egoistic view of human nature he had defended in Leviathan (1651). Hobbes was a materialist who believed that science reveals a world in which all events are causally determined and in which all human choices flow unavoidably from whatever desire is most powerful in a person at a given time. Hobbes saw human beings as being violent, self-seeking, and power-hungry. Such a view left no place for genuine altruism, benevolence or concept of morality as traditionally conceived.Darwall, "Introduction," p. 1.
Criticism of Locke
In Appendix 1 of the Analogy, Butler offers a famous criticism of John Locke's influential theory of "personal identity", an explanation of what makes someone the "same person" from one time to the next, despite all the physical and psychological changes experienced over that period. Locke claimed that personal identity is not from having the same body or the same soul but from having the same consciousness and memory. According to Locke, memory is the "glue" that ties the various stages of our life together and constitutes sameness of person. This section of the Analogy is the only widely read part of it today.
Veneration
Butler is honoured on the liturgical calendar of the Episcopal Church (USA) on 16 June.
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Categories: 1692 Births, 1752 Deaths, People From Wantage, Alumni Of Oriel College, Oxford, 18th-century Church Of England Bishops, 18th-century English Non-fiction Writers, 18th-century English Male Writers, 18th-century English Writers, 18th-century English Philosophers, Anglican Philosophers, English Anglican Theologians, Anglican Saints, Bishops Of Bristol, Bishops Of Durham, Christian Apologists, Deans Of St Paul's, Clerks Of The Closet, English Sermon Writers, Empiricists, English Male Non-fiction Writers, British Critics Of Atheism, Critics Of Deism, People From Stanhope, County Durham, 18th-century Anglican Theologians
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