Rawls J. Lectures on the History of Political Philosophy

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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 con-

science.

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 con-

cerning 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 af-

fords 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 see-

ing instances of villainy and baseness, and therefore cannot commit the

same without being self-condemned.” Thus if we generalize (or universal-

ize, to use a contemporary term) the principles implicit in the moral pas-

sions 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 con-

science 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 as-

sumes 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 no-

tions, 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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tion I have not considered and shan’t do so here. I suspect, however, that

most of his account can be preserved intact, at least if we grant his taking

moral experience as sui generis.

lecture iii

The Economy of the Passions

§1. Introduction

Today I wish to discuss what I shall call the economy of the passions as il-

lustrated by what Butler says about compassion in Sermons V–VII, and

about resentment and the forgiveness of injuries in Sermons VIII–IX. But

ﬁrst, two brief comments.

(1) I want to emphasize once more the stress that Butler gives to the

social character of human nature. Indeed, this is the main theme of Ser-

mon I. Recall that the text of this sermon is Romans 12:4–5: “For as we

have many members in one body, and all members have not the same of-

ﬁce: so we, being many, are one body in Christ, and every one members

one of another.” Butler wishes to ﬁll in the analogy which St. Paul suggests

here between the parts of our body and how they constitute one body

on the one hand, and how we, as many separate persons, constitute a soci-

ety as opposed to a mere aggregate of individuals. The account of the

moral (vs. physical) constitution of human nature is designed to display

how it is that “we were made for society and to do good to our fellow-

creatures” as well as that “we were intended to take care of our own

life and health and private good” (Sermon I: 3, p. 35). (Recall here that in

the eighteenth century the term “moral” had a wider use than today, and

often meant “psychological,” which is Butler’s intended sense in inquir-

ing into the “moral constitution of human nature.”) Once this constitu-

tion is described, Butler sums up the theme of the social nature of human

beings with the repetition of the statement just cited (I: 9, p. 44) and in

the long and quite wonderful paragraph I: 10 (pp. 44f ). The second sen-

tence of this paragraph is: “Mankind are by nature so closely united, there

is such a correspondence between the inward sensations of one man and

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those of another, that disgrace is as much to be avoided as bodily pain, and

to be the object of esteem and love as much desired as any external goods.”

You need to read the whole paragraph here.

Here, of course, Butler is

stressing a long-standing Christian theme, not only against Hobbes’s doc-

trine of man as unﬁt for society, but against various forms of individualism

more generally. I mention these obvious points only so we shan’t lose sight

of them.

(2) In the quote above from I: 10, we see that Butler ﬁnds signs of our

social nature in the passions, for example, in the fear of disgrace and the de-

sire for esteem. Today we will discuss compassion and resentment as pas-

sions that are especially important, so Butler thinks, for our moral constitu-

tion as a whole. Compassion strengthens and supports our capacity to

follow and act from the dictates of conscience and the claims of benevo-

lence. Although, as it turns out, there is a sense in which compassion is a

non-moral passion, whereas resentment on some occasions is needed to

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2. [Sermon I, paragraph 10, says in its entirety the following. —Ed.]

“And from this whole review must be given a different draught of human nature from

what we are often presented with. Mankind are by nature so closely united, there is such a

correspondence between the inward sensations of one man and those of another, that dis-

grace is as much to be avoided as bodily pain, and to be the object of esteem and love as

much desired as any external goods: and, in many particular cases, persons are carried on

to do good to others, as the end their affections tend to, and rest in; and manifest that they

ﬁnd real satisfaction and enjoyment in this course of behaviour. There is such a natural

principle of attraction in man towards man, that having trod the same track of land, hav-

ing breathed in the same climate, barely having been born in the same artiﬁcial district, or

division, becomes the occasion of contracting acquaintances and familiarities many years

after: for any thing may serve the purpose. Thus, relations, merely nominal, are sought

and invented, not by governors, but by the lowest of the people; which are found sufﬁcient

to hold mankind together in little fraternities and copartnerships: weak ties indeed, and

what may afford fund enough for ridicule, if they are absurdly considered as the real princi-

ples of that union; but they are, in truth, merely the occasions, as any thing may be of any

thing, upon which our nature carries us on according to its own previous bent and bias;

which occasions, therefore, would be nothing at all, were there not this prior disposition

and bias of nature. Men are so much one body, that in a peculiar manner they feel for each

other, shame, sudden danger, resentment, honor, prosperity, distress: one or another, or all

of these, from the social nature in general, from benevolence, upon the occasion of natu-

ral relation, acquaintance, protection, dependence; each of these being distinct cements of

society. And, therefore, to have no restraint from, no regard to others in our behaviour, is

the speculative absurdity of considering ourselves as single and independent, as having

nothing in our nature which has respect to our fellow-creatures, reduced to action and

practice. And this is the same absurdity, as to suppose a hand, or any part, to have no natu-

ral respect to any other, or to the whole body.”

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still compassion and to strengthen our capacity to carry out the dictates of

justice, more accurately penal justice. But resentment is not to be confused

with revenge, the gratiﬁcation of which is always wrong; and resentment it-

self must be hedged and balanced by the precept to forgive those who in-

jure us. It is this balancing and working together of the various passions and

how they assist our capacity to act from the dictates of conscience, and a

public spirit of good-will to others generally, that I mean to refer to by the

phrase “the economy of the passions.” The passions are, as it were, a sub-

system within the moral constitution of human nature; they have an essen-

tial role, in Butler’s view, in adapting that moral constitution to virtue, that

is, to those forms of thought and conduct which enable us to take part in

and to contribute to the life of society.

When we come to Hume and Kant we shall compare their accounts of

the passions, and their role, with Butler’s account.

Thus these intuitive

common-sense psychological inquiries are an essential part of the material

we want to cover.

§2. Butler’s Method

Now for a few remarks about Butler’s method of approaching the passions:

(1) First, keep in mind the theological background, or what I have

called Butler’s “Deistic Assumptions”: namely, that God exists with the fa-

miliar theistic properties; that God created the world; that in addition to be-

ing omniscient and omnipotent, etc., God is also benevolent and just, and

therefore intends the good of living things and of human beings in particu-

lar. This assumption Butler never argues for; he simply takes it for granted.

While the Sermons are not limited to this assumption in the same way as

the Analogy (the Sermons after all are sermons and take Scripture as their

texts, etc.), it is useful for our purposes to note (what I believe is the case)

that the Deistic Assumption by itself accounts for most, if not all, of what

Butler thinks he needs.

Thus, it explains how Butler can say that our moral constitution (and

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3. [See John Rawls, Lectures on the History of Moral Philosophy, ed. Barbara Herman

(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2000) for the lectures on Hume and Kant re-

ferred to here. —Ed.]

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how it prompts us to think and act) is “the voice of God within us” (Ser-

mon VI: 8, p. 114); and how he can say on another occasion that our human

nature (that is, I take it, our moral constitution) is to be held sacred, for “in

the image of God, made He man” (Sermon VIII: 19, p. 149). Further, there

are a number of places where Butler assumes that our moral constitution

correctly described provides a reason for believing how God intends our

constitution to be. Thus in Sermon II: 1 (in which Butler gives his main ar-

gument for the authority of conscience) he says: “If the real nature of any

creature leads him and is adapted to such and such purposes only, or more

than to any other; this is a reason to believe the Author of that nature in-

tended it for those purposes” (p. 51). Note that Butler is not arguing to the

existence of God with such and such properties and intentions, etc. He as-

sumes that God exists and has certain intentions, consistent with God’s be-

nevolence and justice in creating the world. Therefore, the moral constitu-

tion of our nature may reasonably be taken to disclose something about

God’s intentions concerning us; which intentions, given our relation to

God, are law for us. Since the examination of our constitutions shows that

we are bound to regard the deliverances of our conscience as authoritative

and decisive (and not merely as having some inﬂuence, more or less, on this

or that occasion), Butler speaks of our moral constitution as sacred and as

the voice of God.

In paragraph (II: 3), he goes on later to say:

Since then our inward feelings, and the perceptions we receive from

our external senses, are equally real; to argue from the former to life

and conduct is as little liable to exception, as to argue from the latter

to absolute speculative truth...Andallowing the inward feeling,

shame; a man can as little doubt whether it was given to him to pre-

vent his doing shameful actions, as he can doubt whether his eyes were

given him to guide his steps. (p. 53)

Butler continues:

...astothese inward feelings themselves; that they are real, that man

has in his nature passions and affections, can no more be questioned,

than that he has external senses. Neither can the former (the passions)

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be wholly mistaken; though to a certain degree liable to greater mis-

takes than the latter (the senses). (p. 53)

Among the important points in the paragraph is Butler’s belief that what

he calls the passions (vs. appetites and affections and attachments) are an

important part of our moral constitution, and help to disclose to us how

we are intended by God to conduct ourselves.

(2) Among the consequences of the Deistic Assumption are these. First,

that none of the passions are in themselves evil; for such passions could not

have been part of God’s intention. There are, to be sure, abuses of passions

and letting them go beyond their proper use (Sermon VIII: 3–4, pp. 137–

138). Revenge is an abuse of resentment and is our responsibility and fault

(Sermon VIII: 14–15, pp. 145–146). What is a wicked and bad character is

the disorder of our moral constitution; and the abuse and lack of control of

its several elements, once this disorder occurs.

A second consequence of the Deistic Assumption is that a passion, at

least an important and fundamental one, must have some proper role and

task in our moral constitution as a whole. Of course, it may appear to

us to have no such role and task. But on the Deistic Assumption this

can’t be so; and hence we are prompted to reﬂect on our makeup to see

if we can work out what its role and task is. This is important for Butler

in the case of resentment. The role and task of compassion he thinks

are relatively straightforward; it assists the dictates of conscience and the

concerns of good-will to others, particularly when others are in distress

and need our help. But why should we have the passion of resentment,

which Butler says is unique among the passions (as opposed to their abuse)

in having as its aim the inﬂicting of pain and misery on another, even

if only because of an injury (vs. harm) which this person has done? Thus

Butler looks for the role and task that resentment must have; if we de-

scribe our moral constitution correctly, we may be able to work out what

it is. Of course, we may not be able to, since the scheme of nature and

our place in it is a moral scheme of God’s government, but one im-

perfectly comprehended. (See Analogy: Pt. I, Ch. 7, “Of the Government

of God, considered as a Scheme or Constitution, imperfectly compre-

hended.”)

(3) A further observation is this, stated in the ﬁrst paragraph of Sermon

VIII, “Upon Resentment.” When Butler examines our moral constitution

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and its various parts, he always does so as the constitution of natural beings

and within their natural circumstances. He assumes that our moral consti-

tution is adjusted to these circumstances and natural conditions; our proper

constitution is what it is because of our situation in nature. Thus he says

that in this inquiry we are “to take human nature as it is, and the circum-

stances in which it is placed as they are; and then consider the correspon-

dence between that nature and those circumstances, or what course of

action and behavior, respecting those circumstances, any particular affec-

tion or passion leads us to” (p. 136). See also Sermon VI: 1, p. 108. He says

he mentions this matter to distinguish his inquiry from those of another

kind: namely, why aren’t we more perfect creatures than we are (e.g., why

doesn’t conscience in us have power (inﬂuence) as it has authority); or why

aren’t we placed in better circumstances? But such questions as these we

have nothing to do with. To pursue them is to run the danger of doing

something “worse than impertinent curiosity” (Sermon VIII: 1, p. 137).

Thus Butler sees his task as not that of asking “Why were we not made of

such a nature, and placed in such circumstances, as to have no need of so

harsh and turbulent passion as resentment?” but, taking our nature and

condition as being what they are, “Why or for what end such a passion

was given us?”: and this chieﬂy in order to show what are the abuses of it

(VIII: 2, p. 137). Thus, as his practical temper inclines him, Butler refuses to

engage in philosophical speculation or subtle metaphysical inquiries. He re-

ally does, for the most part, stick to what he takes to be the plain facts con-

cerning our moral constitution as manifest in our common moral experi-

ence; he thinks that these facts are open to view in the sense that we

require no philosophical or other doctrine to uncover them, no special pro-

cedures or methods to make them available to us. Butler thinks, to be sure,

that only someone who already has a systematic theory would describe our

nature as Hobbes does (cf. Sermon I: 4, ftnt. b (pp. 35ff ); V: 1, ftnt. a,

pp. 93ff ). But he thinks that it is clear to us that Hobbes is mistaken, once

we carefully examine our common moral experience. What I have in

mind is that we do not ﬁnd in Butler the idea that the agreed facts of moral

experience are peculiarly difﬁcult to ascertain, even granting that partiality

and pride, etc., can draw us into self-deception and self-deceit (Sermon X:

“Upon Self-Deceit”). All of this gives Butler’s discussion of the passions a

rather straightforward empirical cast, not unlike that of natural history. It

is this feature of Butler’s Sermons which, despite their theological back-

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ground, made them so important for Hume. Much if not most that Butler

says doesn’t depend on this background at all.

§3. Role of Compassion: As Part of Our Social Nature

(1) Its deﬁnition—from Sermon V: 1 we can say: Compassion is an

affection for the good of our fellow creatures and delight from the

affections being gratiﬁed, and an uneasiness from things going contrary

to it.

Thus by deﬁnition compassion is related to others’ good (as distinct

from resentment which concerns a wrong, an injury). It is a general affec-

tion somewhat indeterminate in the range of persons it includes; but to

some degree it often includes all human persons—and so is fellow-feeling,

as Butler often says. In this respect it is distinct from attachments—affec-

tions for particular persons—and from self-love, a kind of general affection

for oneself.

Butler’s initial characterization of compassion is not quite right, and it’s

important to correct it for the purpose of understanding his view. He says

(Sermon V): When we rejoice in the prosperity of others, and compassion-

ate their distresses, we, as it were, substitute them for ourselves, their inter-

est for our own; and have the same kind of pleasure in their prosperity, and

sorrow in their distress, as we have from reﬂection upon our own (92–93).

But it seems obvious that when others are in distress and we feel compas-

sion for them we do not have the same kind of distress as they; nor do we

feel as we would feel if we were to imagine (as far as we can) that we were

in their situation. Very roughly, when you are ill and I feel compassion for

you, I don’t feel ill; but my compassion prompts me to help or to comfort

you in some way. Moreover, my compassion doesn’t make me dwell on

how I would feel if I were ill in the way you are. I might start dwelling on

that, but the point is: that’s not what makes my feeling of compassion.

What does this is my thinking what I can do to help and to comfort, ac-

companied by feelings of distress on my part, and so on. Of course, Butler

knows this perfectly well, and says it correctly later in Sermon V: 5: “Whereas

men in distress want [need] assistance; and compassion leads us directly to

assist them...Theobject [of compassion] is the present misery of another

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[which needs] a particular affection for its relief....[Compassion] does not

rest in itself, but carries us on to assist the distressed” (97). Here Butler is

contrasting compassion with rejoicing in the felicitation of another.

lecture iv

Butler’s Argument against Egoism

§1. Introduction

Today I shall discuss Butler’s argument against egoism as found in Sermon

II, the ﬁrst of two sermons on the love of our neighbor. By egoism in this

connection we should understand Hobbes’s psychological egoism and the

various forms in which this was a fashionable view in Butler’s day (in

Mandeville, for example); or so Butler plainly believes. Keep in mind that

Butler is engaged in apologetics, in the defense of the common-sense moral

doctrines and virtues and in these as a part of Christian faith and belief. He

is concerned to argue that a way of life informed by these common-sense

virtues is not a way of folly unmindful of the proper good of our own per-

son, but to the contrary, it is completely consistent with this good when

correctly understood. Next time I shall discuss the supposed conﬂict be-

tween conscience and self-love and suggest how I think Butler resolves this

conﬂict. In this connection Sermons XII–XIII are important.

In Sermon XI (“Upon the Love of our Neighbor”) Butler examines four

questions which appear in this order in the text:

(1) Whether private interest is likely to be promoted to the degree in

which self-love engrosses us and prevails over other principles. It is in con-

nection with this question that Butler introduces the so-called Paradox of

Egoism (or paradox of hedonism): the idea that preoccupation with one’s

own concerns can be in various ways destructive of one’s own happiness.

This question is discussed in the long par. 7: 190ff.

(2) The second question is whether there is any peculiar incompatibility

between the pursuit of public vs. private interest. By a peculiar incompati-

bility between public and private interest Butler means an incompatibility

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which is other and greater than the incompatibility between any two affec-

tions, whether particular or general. Thus he observes (in par. 18) that the

more time and thought we give to the good of others, the less time and

thought we can give to the good of ourselves, and so on. His question is

whether there is a peculiar or distinctive kind of incompatibility between

private and public interest. He wishes to hold that there is not. The ques-

tion is ﬁrst discussed in pars. 10–11, pp. 194ff.

(3) The third question examines the nature, the object, and the end of

self-love, as distinguished from other principles and affections of the mind.

Butler believes that the answer to this third question must be taken up ﬁrst;

the answer to the other questions depends upon it, although as the discus-

sion proceeds he says things that are relevant to it. The ﬁrst discussion of

this question is given in pars. 5–8, pp. 189–192ff.

(4) Once the ﬁrst three questions are answered in the order (3) → (1) →

(2), Butler takes up a 4th question which can be seen as a generalization of

the 1st question. It asks whether a way of life, a devotion to benevolence

and virtue and to public good, is likely to prove incompatible with a proper

concern for our private good. He holds that it does not any more than any

other particular affection or passion may prove incompatible. Indeed, he

goes further, and enumerates several distinctive features of a way of life

characterized by a devotion to benevolence and virtue that tend to reduce

this incompatibility. This question is discussed in pars. 12–15, pp. 197–200.

He considers an objection to his answer in pars. 17–19; and in pars. 20–21,

pp. 204–206, there is a well-known passage on the alleged conﬂict between

conscience and self-love which appears to concede the supremacy of self-

love, in ostensible contradiction to Butler’s earlier thesis of the supremacy

of conscience: He says: “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” (206). This passage and others

related to it I take up next time. The question we have to ask is whether

Butler is simply inconsistent; or whether, taking the troublesome passages

in context and keeping in mind his overall view, we can work out a coher-

ent doctrine. Of course we may have to supply some of the details and cor-

rect a few slips, but we should assume—as usual with any text we are pre-

pared to read—that a coherent interpretation can be found.

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