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(6)It is shown very powerfully in the passion of resentment that conscience is supreme and authoritative.

(B)Another Form:

(1)Revise the first premise above by just supposing that we are capable of being a law unto ourselves. (Leave out the theological background.)

(2)Then proceed largely as before.

§4. Summary of Butler’s Argument for the Authority of Conscience

(1)We have surveyed Butler’s argument for the authority of conscience as he presents it in Sermon II, which is entirely devoted to this question, and have mentioned points which he makes elsewhere (particularly in the Preface, pars. 24–30, and Sermon I: 8–9). Let’s now ask what the argument is, or indeed whether strictly speaking it is an argument at all. What I shall say is at best an interpretation of Butler’s argument or presentation. Clearly he does not try to make a rigorous case for his view.

Butler takes for granted, I think, what I have called the Deistic Assumption, which implies that God is the Author of our nature, and that the design of our nature gives reasons for believing what God intended our nature to be and how its various elements are to work together. Butler also assumes that as reasonable and rational beings, we are capable of being a law unto ourselves and of taking part in the life of society. By “reasonable” I include what Butler means by “fair-minded.” Reasonable and fair-minded are different notions from rationality. This latter has the sense roughly of adoption of the most effective means to given ends, or of adjusting given ends to one another when these ends compete and cannot be jointly satisfied.1

(2)Now if we are to be capable of being a law unto ourselves, our nature must have what Butler calls a moral constitution adapted to some aim and capable of governing itself. The question of the authority of conscience, or the lack of any such authority, is to be settled by looking at our moral experience to see if we find any appropriate authoritative element which can govern our nature and direct our conduct and adapt it to our life in society.

1. See the Lectures on Hobbes for the distinction between reasonable and rational.

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Certainly given the many elements in our nature, we need some such governing or regulative principle. We have appetites, affections, and passions of various kinds, some more directly concerned with other persons, some more directly with ourselves. These appetites, affections, and passions focus on means to certain ends—states of affairs or whatever—and do not, as such, take into account the wider effects on other persons generally. These springs of conduct are, let’s say, narrowly focused, whether the focus is on other persons or on ourselves. None of these springs of conduct can provide a governing or regulative principle. This follows from the nature of appetites, affections, and passions. They do not embody a reasonable or rational principle by which self-government or self-regulation is possible. Butler illustrates this by the example of the animal enticed into the baited trap by the prospect of gratifying its hunger. Were we to behave in similar fashion, contrary to the affection for ourselves expressed by the principle of reasonable self-love, we would be acting wrongly as well. Butler uses this example to exemplify the general idea of supremacy: the idea of how one principle in our nature can be governing—have authority rather than merely influence—over other elements in our nature.

(3) Next, I believe Butler holds that reasonable self-love is not the authoritative principle of our nature, although he is anxious to maintain that, in the long run at least, and given the moral government of God, there is no essential conflict between the authority of conscience and reasonable self-love. His view of ostensible conflict I shall postpone until later. But it is easy to see that reasonable self-love, although a general affection in the sense that it regulates particular appetites, affections, and passions, is an affection for ourselves. The object of reasonable self-love is always partial: it concerns the good of but one person among many. And so it cannot provide a principle suitable for our being a law unto ourselves as a member of society.

The same is true of benevolence: benevolence is likewise often a general affection (as self-love is) in that it regulates particular affections for other persons’ good. This is the case when benevolence takes the form of public spirit, or love of country (patriotism), and the like. But whereas the persons who are the concern of reasonable self-love are always well-de- fined—namely the very person who is moved by self-love—the persons who are the concern of benevolence shift and vary, and criss-cross, in all sort of ways from person to person. C. D. Broad suggests that Butler means

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by benevolence the principle of utility: to maximize the happiness of society. But this is not to be found in the texts and is indeed contrary to it. The upshot then is that neither self-love nor benevolence, either general or particular, can provide the requisite authoritative principle so that we can be a law unto ourselves.

(4) Of course, there may be no such principle; although Butler does not entertain this possibility. To say that we are made in the image of God is to say that there is such a principle in our nature. Butler believes that our moral experience is sufficient testimony that this principle is to be found in conscience.

First, it is formal in the fact that every (normal) fair-minded person, when impartial and able to consider the matter in a cool hour, approves of some kinds of actions and not others. People recognize and judge that they ought to do some things and not others; and that these judgments are decisive and binding upon them. From these judgments there is no further appeal: they specify conclusive reasons for how we are to act. Moreover, the decisive and binding nature of these judgments does not depend upon their hold and effective influence on our character and springs of conduct. Thus, these judgments are authoritative: these features all together specify what authority is, as opposed to influence.

Second, it is important that persons generally agree in their approvals and disapprovals. Or to use the term introduced earlier, the content of the deliverances of conscience is more or less the same in all ages and in all countries. This enables the deliverances of conscience (imposing as always the conditions on them required for considered judgments) to provide an authoritative principle so that we can be a law unto ourselves as members of society. Plainly, if each person’s conscience clashed with everyone else’s, the requisite conditions would be lacking.

Third, Butler makes the further observation that when we act against our conscience, we condemn ourselves before ourselves and incur our selfdislike. I think he means to say that no other element in our nature has this feature. Self-sacrifices of various kinds we may reject having to make; but so long as they are reasonably necessary we don’t in the least stand selfcondemned. And even if in some cases we must sacrifice the interests of others in certain hard cases (for example, when someone must lose out and we are to decide, as it were, judiciously), we should be troubled by such

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diversions and actions, and often troubled deeply to do the best we can. We need not condemn and hate ourselves for this, assuming that the decision and action taken was the reasonable one in the circumstances and that these circumstances were not our doing or responsibility. This special feature of conscience, if indeed it is special, is one of the features of our moral experience Butler appeals to in contending for the authority of conscience.

Fourth, and last, Butler connects the authority of conscience and the self-condemnation we feel in acting contrary to it with the moral passions, for example, with our feelings of resentment and indignation, and the like. He says in Sermon VIII: 18 (pp. 148–149): “Why should men dispute concerning the reality of virtue, and whether it be founded on the nature of things, which yet surely is not matter of question; but why should this, I say, be disputed, when every man carries about him this passion, which affords him demonstration, that the rules of justice and equity are to be the guide of his actions? For every man naturally feels an indignation upon seeing instances of villainy and baseness, and therefore cannot commit the same without being self-condemned.” Thus if we generalize (or universalize, to use a contemporary term) the principles implicit in the moral passions of resentment and indignation, these principles turn out to be what Butler calls the “rules of justice and equity.” These rules are not simply rules of reason but he thinks of them as powerfully felt, as is shown by the moral passions. The reason we condemn ourselves when we go against our conscience is that we are doing things which we hate in others, and which arouse our resentment and indignation.

(5) For all these reasons, then, Butler takes the deliverances of conscience to be authoritative for us apart from their influence. This distinction between authority and influence is of great importance, and so I have tried to give one possible account of it. As a final point, I believe that Butler assumes that our moral experience is sui generis (and in this he agrees with Clarke and the intuitionists). This means roughly that the notions of moral approval and disapproval, the sense of “ought” involved in being a law unto ourselves, the notions of resentment and indignation as feelings directed to injury vs. harm (to wrongs), are based on one or more primitive moral notions, not further definable in terms of non-moral notions. How far Butler’s account of the authority of conscience depends upon his Deistic assump-

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