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Article contents
The Development of Bishop Butler's Ethics: Part II
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 25 February 2009
Extract
Most critics of Butler's ethics have ignored the text of the Analogy, and have confined their attention to the short Dissertation on Virtue which is printed as an appendix to that work. This is a mistake. The Dissertation can only be really understood when it is read in its proper context. Butler tells us that the Dissertation was originally intended to form part of the third chapter of the first part of the Analogy. It is indeed an integral part of that chapter, as that chapter is an integral part of the book. The whole work must be considered if we would know Butler's mind at this time.
In seeking to follow Butler's thoughts on ethics as set out in the Analogy we are met with fewer inconsistencies than are to be found in the Sermons, but a good deal more in the way of obscurity and difficult phrasing. Butler reasons very closely, and gives few concessions to the hasty reader. Also, his cautious mind leads him to qualify his statements lest he commit himself to more than he is prepared to say, with the result that his sentences often contain many dependent clauses which cloud his meaning. But, although there may be passages of a contrary tendency, the view which will be developed here seems to represent the general drift of the Analogy.
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- Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy 1949
References
page 4 note 1 “Intuition” is a much misused word. Wherever it appears in this article it is to be taken as meaning simply “immediate knowledge,” without any suggestion of what faculty does the knowing, i.e. reason, or a moral sense.
page 4 note 2 I, 100 footnote.
page 4 note 3 I, 13.
page 5 note 3 II, 5.
page 6 note 1 “Abstract” in the sense of “not empirical,” or “not verifiable by sense-experience”; I do not mean by it “necessary” or “self-evident.”
page 6 note 2 Or, better, shown to be highly probable. Butler does not think it can be demonstrated conclusively. “Probability is the guide of life.”
page 7 note 1 I, 328.
page 7 note 2 Ibid.
page 7 note 3 Ibid.
page 8 note 1 I, 329.
page 8 note 2 Ibid.
page 8 note 3 I, 330.
page 8 note 4 I, 331.
page 8 note 5 I, 334.
page 9 note 1 I, 334.
page 9 note 2 I, 335.
page 9 note 3 Even punishment, in God's hands, will in the long run increase the “total happiness of mankind.”
page 10 note 1 I, 336.
page 10 note 2 I, 300.
page 10 note 3 I, 301.
page 10 note 4 I, 302.
page 11 note 1 I have borrowed this Kantian parody from Dr. D. Daiches Raphael, but his interpretation of Butler is very different from mine.
page 12 note 1 II, 13.
page 13 note 1 II, 13.
page 14 note 1 II, 14.
page 15 note 1 II, 190.
page 15 note 2 II, 173.
page 16 note 1 C. D. Broad, Five Types of Ethical Theory, Chapter III.
page 16 note 2 Taylor, A. E., “Some Features of Butler's Ethics” (Mind, 1926)Google Scholar.
page 16 note 1 II, 157.
page 19 note 1 Moore, G. E., Principia Ethica, p. 6Google Scholar.
page 21 note 1 II, 3.
page 22 note 1 Ross, W. D., Foundations of Ethics, p. 77Google Scholar.