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(5) Finally, Butler is concerned to show that a life devoted to benevolence and virtue has a natural compatibility with our happiness. See the whole Sermon XI and the 4th question, answered last. The affection to benevolence and virtue cannot be lacking from us without our being

disfigured.

l e c t u re v

Supposed Conflict between Conscience and Self-Love

§1. Introduction

I shall work into today’s main questions via the supposed conflict or inconsistency in Butler’s view between what he says about the Authority of Conscience on the one hand and the claims of self-love on the other. I emphasize that this matter is simply a way into the main question I hope to discuss; because I believe that for Butler there is no inconsistency or conflict. The important thing is to see why this is so: roughly, his idea is that the more our nature approaches its perfection, the more the love of vir- tue—of justice and veracity—and what Butler calls “real benevolence” (in XII: 4) become one and the same thing. Such benevolence is then the sum of the virtues; it is “a principle in reasonable creatures, and so to be directed by their reason” (XII: par. 19, p. 223). And so, we might better say: natural benevolence has been made more extensive and integrated with the direction of reason, that is, conscience or the principle of reflection.

On the other hand, Butler distinguishes various forms of self-love. There is self-love in the sense of our so-called interest, that is, our self-inter- est as fashionable worldly opinion thinks of it. There is what we may call narrow self-love, that of persons whose interests are mostly interests in themselves: in their own honor, power, position, wealth, and so on, persons whose natural benevolent affections and attachments are weak. Again, selflove differs according to its scope, that is, upon whether it is limited in its concerns to our temporal and imperfect state, or whether it also considers our state of possible perfection in the hereafter. If we introduce the notion of reasonable self-love as a settled affection to the proper good of our person

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as a reasonable creature (with the moral constitution as described in Sermons I–III), and if we take in the full scope of self-love, which includes the state of our possible perfection, then Butler believes that a life guided by the love of virtue—by an affection to right and justice and moved by real benevolence—is that way of life which best advances our good. It provides for the greatest happiness of which we are capable; a happiness we can reasonably have faith in and hope for. Thus, given our nature and our place in the world, there can be no conflict or inconsistency between conscience, the deliverances of which we are always to follow, and self-love. Here we must say that conscience is real benevolence informed by reason, and selflove is to be taken as reasonable self-love construed as a settled affection for the proper good of our person taken in full scope.

Offhand, this solution may seem to lack philosophical depth. You may say: “Of course, if we bring God into the picture and suppose that we are rewarded by the blessings of heaven for virtue and punished by hell-fire for vice, then there cannot be a conflict between conscience and self-love. The familiar question, ‘Why be moral?’ in this case has an obvious answer.” But to interpret Butler’s solution this way misses altogether what is in the text of Sermons XI–XIV: namely a moral psychology which sets out a number of different notions of benevolence and self-love; and which indicates a way in which we can think of these different notions as higher or more perfected forms of benevolence and self-love. This supposes that benevolence can be extended or generalized and thereby informed and guided by reason as the principle of reflection or conscience. This moral psychology then enables Butler to explain the love of our neighbor and the love of God in such a way that these loves are most congruent with our real happiness and hence with the highest form of self-love. What is to be learned from Butler is the principles of his moral psychology and how they are supposed to lead to this conclusion.

In studying Butler’s moral psychology, I urge you to put aside altogether the idea of rewards of heaven and punishments. The notions of reward and punishment play no essential part. To a considerable extent—al- though not completely—we can interpret Butler’s psychology in terms of secular analogies; and when we can’t do this, we must think of God as the perfection of reason and goodness, and not as dispensing rewards and punishments. The Visio Dei—the vision of God—plays an important part in Butler’s account in Sermons XIII–XIV; it is the consummation of our real

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happiness, or proper good. My suggestion is that whether or not we take this idea seriously, the principles of Butler’s moral psychology and how they work are not affected.

§2. Why Suppose Butler Is Inconsistent:

re: Conscience and Self-Love

Let’s consider here several relevant passages:

(1)In the Preface, par. 21, of Butler’s Sermons, Butler supposes that our own happiness is a manifest obligation; yet it may conflict with that of what conscience requires in certain cases: he resolves the conflict in favor of conscience. He says: “But the obligation on the side of interest really does not remain. For the natural authority of the principle of reflection is an obligation to the most near and intimate, the most certain and known: whereas the contrary obligation can at the utmost appear no more than probable; since no man can be certain, in any circumstances, that vice is his interest in the present world, much less can he be certain against another: and thus the certain obligation would entirely supersede and destroy the uncertain one; which yet would have been of real force without the former” (end of 21st paragraph, pp. 15–16). This passage settles the question by saying that conscience is more near and intimate, more certain and known. Butler says here that we can’t be certain in any circumstances that vice is our interest in the present world. But one says sometimes we can. And in any case this is hardly a persuasive or sufficiently deep ground for the always overriding authority of conscience.

(2)The summarizing par. 13 of Sermon III gives a similar impression. It says that reasonable self-love and conscience are, it seems, co-equal and superior principles in human nature.

Reasonable self-love and conscience are the chief or superior principles in the nature of man: because an action may be suitable to this nature, though all other principles be violated; but becomes unsuitable, if either of those are. Conscience and self-love, if we understand our true happiness, always lead us the same way. Duty and interest are perfectly coincident; for the most part in this world, but entirely and in every instance if we take in the future, and the whole; this being implied in the

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notion of a good and perfect administration of things. Thus they who have been so wise in their generation as to regard only their own supposed interest, at the expense and to the injury of others, shall at

last find, that he who has given up all the advantages of the present world, rather than violate his conscience and the relations of life, has infinitely better provided for himself, and secured his own interest and happiness. (p. 76)

Thus again it seems we are to follow conscience, since duty and interest are perfectly coincident; and presumably conscience is the safer guide; indeed for us, authoritative.

(3) The most striking passage is perhaps Sermon XI: 21: “Let it be allowed, though virtue or moral rectitude does indeed consist in affection to and pursuit of what is right and good, as such; yet, that when we sit down in a cool hour, we can neither justify to ourselves this or any other pursuit, till we are convinced that it will be for our happiness, or at least not contrary to it” (p. 206).

Butler here may be attempting to protect religion and common-sense morality from the scorn of fashionable self-interested doctrines. Since he doesn’t say here what notion of self-love he is appealing to when we, as it were, sit down in a cool hour, this passage is not inconsistent with my general suggestion made at the outset. I don’t think Butler ever goes back on the idea that for us conscience is supremely authoritative. We have to keep in mind what he says in par. 6 of III (p. 71): “Conscience does not only offer itself to show us the way we should walk in, but it likewise carries its own authority with it, that it is our natural guide; the guide assigned us by the Author of our nature: it therefore belongs to our condition of being, it is our duty to walk in that path, and follow this guide, without looking about to see whether we may not possibly forsake them with impunity.” Thus it is the guide assigned to us by God, and our duty is to follow it. Recall also the Dissertation of Virtue, where our conscience has a content that is not the same as maximum happiness or benevolence interpreted in that way. Real benevolence is benevolence as an affection for right and justice, etc., for the good of others, within the limits these notions allow.

In sum, then, these passages—while to a certain degree troublesome— don’t go counter to the general solution suggested. Part of the difficulty may be that Butler himself in the Preface to the Sermons says very little

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