David McNaughton - Joseph Butler: Fifteen Sermons and Other Writings on Ethics

I was extremely fortunate in my undergraduate Philosophy Department in a variety of ways. One was that the curriculum at Newcastle-upon-Tyne was fairly traditional. Butlers moral philosophy was part of the main ethics course, along with Aristotle, Hume, Kant, and Mill. This led to a life-long interest in Butler, whose insights strike me as more profound each time I read him. While there is a steady trickle of papers about Butlers moral philosophy, the works themselves seem to have more or less dropped out of the mainstream curriculum. And when they are included, it is only the famous five of his fifteen sermons that are taught. It is, indeed, a sad reflection on the comparative neglect of his work that there are no fully annotated and referenced editions of his Fifteen Sermons, nor indeed of his Analogy of Religion, currently in print. I am therefore especially pleased to have been given the opportunity to remedy this defect. (An edition of the Analogy is in preparation as a companion volume to this one.)

This is a readers edition of the final version of Butlers Fifteen Sermons with relevant related ethical writings. The Sermons were first published in 1726. Three years later Butler revised them and added a lengthy preface. It is the text of that second edition that is given here. As this is a readers edition, I have avoided an apparatus of textual variants that tends to distract the reader. Changes between the first and second edition that struck me as especially important are given in the Editors Notes. I have added to the Sermons three pieces that throw light on Butlers ethical views. The first is the Dissertation of the Nature of Virtue, which forms Appendix II of the Analogy, and which has been standardly reprinted in all complete editions of the Sermons. The others are less well known. The first is one of the Six Sermons Preached on Public Occasions, which were included in the fourth edition of the Sermons, published in 1749. This sermon, preached before the House of Lords on the anniversary of the execution of Charles I, greatly enlarges what Butler has to say about the relation between self-deception and hypocrisy. The second is that part of the correspondence between Butler and Samuel Clarke (written when Butler was fairly young) that deals with ethical issues. The matter they discuss is freedom and accountability for our actions, and the questions and objections that Butler poses to Clarke are ones to which he returns in the Sermons.

I have included an Editors Introduction, in which I give an outline of Butlers chief views, and discuss his treatment of various issues raised in the less well known of the sermons. The Editors Notes are designed to (1) aid comprehension, (2) draw attention to corresponding passages in other parts of his work where Butler discusses related themes, (3) direct the reader to the work of earlier philosophers whom Butler is discussing, or who may have influenced his thinking. After those Notes there are brief outlines of the thought of a number of philosophers and schools that had an influence on Butlers thought.

I want to acknowledge the assistance of a large number of people. On textual and related matters I have benefited greatly from the help of David White, who maintains a comprehensive website on Butler, a most valuable resource, at . He kindly supplied me with a copy of Bernards edition when I had all but despaired of finding one, and also with pdf copies of the various editions of the Sermons and the Analogy published in Butlers lifetime. I also had similar help and advice from the late Robert Tennant. One of my undergraduate students, Nathan Duddles, received an award from FSU to help me with the initial editing. I thoroughly enjoyed our eight months of working together. With his help we established a modern text, using Bernards edition as our standard. Nathan also found sources for nearly all the classical allusions, both in Butlers text and in Bernards notes. In addition, I received invaluable help with finding modern translations of Greek and Latin texts from my colleagues, Russ Dancy, Nat Stein, and David Levenson.