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Thinkers

Joseph Butler

British Empiricism · Europe · 1692 to 1752

English bishop who held that conscience has a natural right to rule our impulses, and that self-interest and goodwill do not clash.

What it is

Joseph Butler (1692 to 1752) was an Anglican bishop and moral philosopher. He is remembered for his arguments about conscience and self-interest, set out in sermons he gave in London, and for a book that defends Christianity against its critics.

He was born at Wantage into a Presbyterian family, studied at a school for nonconformists, and then joined the Church of England. He became a preacher at the Rolls Chapel in London, later bishop of Bristol, and in 1750 bishop of Durham. He died two years later at Bath.

The main ideas

  • Against egoism. In the Fifteen Sermons preached at the Rolls Chapel (1729) he argued against Thomas Hobbes, who held that people act only from self-interest. Butler said that is not what human nature is like.
  • Conscience has authority. He described conscience as an inborn sense of right and wrong that has the right to rule over our other impulses, not just one voice among many.
  • Self-love and goodwill do not simply clash. Concern for oneself and care for others both belong to our nature.
  • Who is the same person? In The Analogy of Religion (1736) he argued against John Locke's view that a person stays the same through memory.
  • Religion and nature. The full title of the Analogy ties religion, natural and revealed, to the constitution and course of nature, and the book argues that the two are alike in the way they work.

What it looks like in practice

Picture someone who has helped a friend at some cost and wonders whether that was just disguised self-interest. Butler would say that both the wish to help and the wish for one's own good are real parts of a person, and that neither has to be explained away as the other. He would add that when they pull apart, conscience is the part that has the right to decide. This is an illustration of his reasoning, not a passage from his writing.

Books and moments

  • Fifteen Sermons preached at the Rolls Chapel (1729) is his work on conscience, self-love and benevolence, preached while he was preacher at the Rolls Chapel in London.
  • The Analogy of Religion (1736) is his defence of religion against objections, and the source of his argument about personal identity.
  • Bishop of Durham, 1750. He was moved to this see two years before his death.

Questions and criticism

  • Who was the Analogy aimed at? The book is often called a reply to the deists, who thought religion could rest on reason and nature alone. One account says only its second part takes them on, and that calling the whole book a reply to deism is a later habit.
  • Did he turn down Canterbury? One reference says he declined the post of archbishop of Canterbury. Another says that story has been disproved and is repeated without checking. Accounts differ.

Close neighbours

Thomas Hobbes and John Locke are the thinkers he argued against, so those pages show the other side. The page on David Hume sits nearby, as another British thinker of the same century.

Written by epchē in our own words, and checked against independent sources on 29 October 2026. The sources are listed below.

Who they connect to

Influenced

  • David Hume · Hume read him and took up his stress on human nature as the base of morals. (scholars disagree about this link)

Reacted against

  • Thomas Hobbes · His sermons answer Hobbes' claim that all human motives are selfish.

Other British Empiricism thinkers

Sources we used

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