Joseph Butler

Clement McLoughlin
Joseph Butler
Joseph Butler was a theologian who believed conscience was the ultimate moral decision maker. He argued that our faculty of reflection is how we are distinguished from animals – ‘There is a principle of reflection in men by which they distinguish between approval and disapproval of their own actions ... this principle in man ... is conscience’. Butler maintained that humans were influenced by two basic principles, self-love which is the desire for happiness for ourselves and benevolence which is the hope of happiness in others. It was his ideology that the conscience adjudicates between these two principles, acting as an intrinsic part of our human nature. In Butler's view, conscience directs us towards acting for the happiness or interests of others instead of focusing on ourselves.
Like Aquinas, Butler argued that conscience determines and judges the rightness and wrongness of actions. He went on to say that conscience operates in situations without any introspection and is the ultimate authority in ethical judgements. His ideas are established on the standard that there is a basic Human Nature, and that within in this nature there is a system. He claimed that morality is a matter of following this system. He recognized this nature to have many parts to which he believed were organized hierarchically. He did not see this to hold the faculty that gave us the ability to behave morally but in place of, gives us the opportunity to judge the self-love or benevolence of each of our actions, leaving conscience at the top of this human nature.
Conscience gives instant intuitive judgements about what we should or should not do. It is, ‘our natural guide, the guide assigned us by the Author of our nature'. Conscience is a guide to moral behaviour, innate, placed within us by God, Butler calls it "the law of our nature" and, given its divine origin, must be obeyed: ‘it is our duty to walk in that path, and follow this guide without...