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Butler, Fanaticism and Conscience

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 January 2009

Edward W. James
Affiliation:
Massachusetts State College at Bridgewater

Extract

Butler refused to be satisfied with just one leading principle, or rational basis for human action, but in the end settled for three: self-love, to provide for our ‘own private good’; benevolence, to consider ‘the good of our fellow creatures’ (II:II); and conscience, ‘to preside and govern’ over our lives as a whole (2:14). By so doing he hoped to ensure a completeness to our ethical scheme, so that nothing would be omitted from our moral deliberations. Yet by so doing he also exposed himself to severe criticism. For any such appeal to a plurality of principles, as Green remarked, is ‘repugnant both to the philosophic craving for unity, and to that ideal of “singleness of heart” which we have been accustomed to associate with the highest virtue’. More specifically, by appealing to a plurality of principles Butler faced the charges of (i) circularity, where the principles come to define and defend each other; (ii) inconsistency, where the principles ‘take turns’ at being primary and hence render each other superfluous; and (iii) incompleteness, where the ‘primary principle’ is itself undefined or undefended. As the tale has been told Butler stands accused of all three of these errors.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy 1981

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References

1 Butler, J., Fifteen Sermons Preached at the Rolls Chapel: Bound with Dissertation of the Nature of Virtue, Robins, T. A. (ed.) (Naperville, Illinois: Allenson, 1970)Google Scholar. All further references to Butler, unless otherwise designated, will refer to this work: the first number will designate the sermon—reading ‘P’ for ‘Preface’ and ‘V’ for ‘Of the Nature of Virtue’—the second number, the section. All emphases will be Butler's.

2 Greene, T. H., Prolegomena to Ethics, Bradley, A. C. (ed.) (New York: Thomas Y. Crowell Company, Inc., 1969), 241Google Scholar.

3 Sidgwick, H., The Methods of Ethics (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1962), 378CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

4 Sturgeon, N., ‘Nature and Conscience in Butler's Ethics’, Philosophical Review 85 (1976), 316356CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

5 Broad, C. D., Five Types of Ethical Theory (New York: Littlefield, Adams, & Co., 1965), 8283Google Scholar.

6 Rorty, A., ‘Butler on Benevolence and Conscience’, Philosophy 53 (1978), 171181CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

7 Locke, J., An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, II, Yolton, J. W. (ed.) (New York: Dutton, 1961)Google Scholar. All references regarding Locke will be to this work. All emphases will be Locke's.

8 Cooper, A. A., 3rd Earl of Shaftesbury, ‘A Letter Concerning Enthusiasm’, Characteristics of Men, Manners, Opinions, Times, I (Birmingham: John Baskerville, 1783), 61, 69Google Scholar. The emphasis is Shaftesbury's.

9 Castigated by MrWotton, in his Bart'lemy Fair: Or: An Enquiry after Wit (London: R. Wilkin, 1709)Google Scholar as ‘the celebrated Letter to my Lord What-de-ye-call-him?’ (22), it was elsewhere called ‘a Bantering of Insipation, without making the least offer of Arguing about the Matter’ in Remarks Upon the Letter to a Lord Concerning Enthusiasm (London: John Wyat, 1708); and further ridiculed by Fowler, Edward in Reflections Upon a Letter Concerning Enthusiasm (London: H. Clement, 1709)Google Scholar; ‘Had it never been printed at all, I believe it had never been the worse’ (Preface).

10 A. A. Cooper, ‘Soliloquy: or, Advice to an Author’, op. cit. note 8, 317–318. The emphasis is Shaftesbury's.

11 Moore, G. E., Principia Ethica (Cambridge University Press, 1960)Google Scholar, §14. Moore has a singular reference and so says ‘deludes’ rather than ‘delude’.

12 Hence it should be no surprise that Moore in the end did see the need for system, as he later insisted on developing general maxims for the promotion of good, rather than focusing on specific acts and duties.

13 Hutcheson, F., An Inquiry into the Original of our Ideas of Beauty and Virtue in Two Treatises (London: J. Darby, 1925), 164Google Scholar. The next passage is found on p. 186, with the emphases in Hutcheson.

14 Solzhenitsyn, A. I., The Gulag Archipelago, 1918–1956, I, Whitney, T. P. (trans.) (New York: Harper & Row, 1973), 174Google Scholar. The emphasis is Solzhenitsyn's.

15 Clarke, S., A Discourse Concerning the Unalterable Obligations of Natural Religion in A Collection of Theological Tracts, IV, Watson, R. (ed.) (London: J. Nichols, 1785), 141Google Scholar.

16 Wollaston, W., The Religion of Nature Delineated (London: J. and P. Krapton, 1750), 70Google Scholar. The emphasis is Wollaston's.

17 Op. cit., note 15, 142.

18 Ibid., 212.

19 J. Rawls, A Theory of Justice (Cambridge: Harvard University Press), 46. Unless otherwise noted, all page references regarding Rawls will refer to this work. Rawls of course states that he does not intend to give a complete ethical theory, and I am not accusing him of seeking to do so—only of trying to do more than he can with the concepts he has.

20 Rawls, J., ‘Fairness to Goodness’, Philosophical Review, 84 (1975), 538539CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Rawls goes on to point out that the original position is not ‘meant to be morally neutral’ but is ‘intended to be fair between individuals conceived as moral persons with a right to equal respect and consideration’ (539). The Bluecaps, alas, could and would agree, provided Rawls had a fair conception of a person—which for the Bluecaps he does not.

21 We are left with what may be called an intersystemic ethical incoherence, where one principle is required in an ad hoc fashion to augment another. For a discussion of intrasystemic ethical incoherence, cf. James, E. W., ‘A Reasoned Ethical Incoherence?’, Ethics 89, (1979), 240253CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

22 See, for instance, Narveson, J., ‘Liberalism, Utilitarianism, and Fanaticism: R. M. Hare Defended’, Ethics 88 (1978), 250259CrossRefGoogle Scholar. There Narveson uses and develops Hare's later utilitarian framework for dealing with fanaticism.

23 Kolakowski, L., Marxism and Beyond, Peel, J. Z. (trans.) (London: Pall Mall, 1968), 232, 233, 234Google Scholar.

24 Butler, J., ‘Butler–Clarke Correspondence’, Second Letter, in The Works of Joseph Butler, LL.D., II, Halifax, S. (ed.) (Boston: Hilliard and Brown, 1827), 345Google Scholar.

25 Op. cit., note 3, 200.

26 Price, R., A Review of the Principal Questions of Morals, Raphael, D. D. (ed.) (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1948), 3Google Scholar.

27 Ibid., 170, with the next passage from p. 184.

28 Op. cit., note 5, 83.