Joseph Butler Fifteen Sermons And Other Writings On Ethics

Joseph Butler's Fifteen Sermons (1729) is a classic work of moral philosophy, which remains widely influential. The topics Butler discusses include the role of conscience in human nature, self-love and egoism, compassion, resentment and forgiveness, and love of our neighbour and of God. The text of the enlarged and corrected second edition is here presented together with a selection of Butler's other ethical writings: A Dissertation of the Nature of Virtue, A Sermon Preached Before the House of Lords, and relevant extracts from his correspondence with Samuel Clarke. While this is a readers' edition that avoids cluttering Butler's text with textual variants and intrusive footnotes, it comes complete with scholarly apparatus intended to aid the reader in studying Butlers work in depth. David McNaughton contributes a substantial historical and philosophical introduction that highlights the continuing importance of these works. In addition, there are extensive notes at the end of the volume, including significant textual variants, and full details of Butler's sources and references, as well as short summaries of Butler's predecessors, and a selective bibliography. This will be the definitive resource for anyone interested in Butler's moral philosophy.

The complete works of Joseph Butler, newly edited, with an introduction, notes, glossary, and an analytic index. This edition of Bishop Joseph Butler's [1692-1752] complete works is the first newly edited version to appear in a century, and is the only one to include a single, analytic index to the whole works. The editor's introduction presents Butler's ethics and philosophy of religion as a single, comprehensive system of pastoral philosophy and surveys the vast influence Butler exerted, especially in the nineteenth century. Included here are all fifteen published sermons from Butler's tenure as Preacher at the Rolls Chapel, the only sermons in English routinely studied by secular ethicists to this day; six additional sermons on the great public institutions; his Charge to the Clergy at Durham, controversial in its day for its defense of external religion; his youthful letters sent anonymously to Samuel Clarke, and the complete text of his Analogy of Religion, an apologetic tour de force, including the famous introduction on probability as the guide to life, the analogical defense of immortality, free will and the moral order of nature, as well as his famous rebuttal of deism and his dissertations on virtue and on personal identify. Butler's work is among the monuments of classical Anglican theology. He is a major source for work in ethical theory and philosophy of religion, as well as for the background of Victorian literature. David E. White teaches philosophy at St. John Fisher College and is an officer in the New York State Philosophical Association.

Joseph Butler (1692 -1752) was an English bishop, theologian, apologist, and philosopher. He was born in Wantage in the English county of Berkshire (now Oxfordshire). He is known, among other things, for his critique of Thomas Hobbes's egoism and John Locke's theory of personal identity. During his life and after his death, Butler influenced many philosophers, including David Hume, Thomas Reid, and Adam Smith. He is most famous for his Fifteen Sermons Preached at the Rolls Chapel (1726) and Analogy of Religion, Natural and Revealed (1736). The Analogy is an important work of Christian apologetics in the history of the controversies over deism's apologetic concentrated on "the general analogy between the principles of divine government, as set forth by the biblical revelation, and those observable in the course of nature, leads us to the warrantable conclusion that there is one Author of both." Butler's arguments combined a cumulative case for faith using probabilistic reasoning to persuade deists and others to reconsider orthodox faith. Overall, his two books are remarkable and original contributions to ethics and theology. They depend for their effect entirely upon the force of their reasoning, for they have no graces of style. The "Sermons on Human Nature" is commonly studied as an answer to Hobbes' philosophy of psychological egoism. These two books are considered by his followers to be among the most powerful and original contributions to ethics, apologetics and theology which have ever been made.

Joseph Butler's Fifteen Sermons (1729) is a classic work of moral philosophy, which remains widely influential. The topics Butler discusses include the role of conscience in human nature, self-love and egoism, compassion, resentment and forgiveness, and love of our neighbour and of God. The text of the enlarged and corrected second edition is here presented together with a selection of Butler's other ethical writings: A Dissertation of the Nature of Virtue, A Sermon Preached Before the House of Lords, and relevant extracts from his correspondence with Samuel Clarke. While this is a readers' edition that avoids cluttering Butler's text with textual variants and intrusive footnotes, it comes complete with scholarly apparatus intended to aid the reader in studying Butlers work in depth. David McNaughton contributes a substantial historical and philosophical introduction that highlights the continuing importance of these works. In addition, there are extensive notes at the end of the volume, including significant textual variants, and full details of Butler's sources and references, as well as short summaries of Butler's predecessors, and a selective bibliography. This will be the definitive resource for anyone interested in Butler's moral philosophy.