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Obligation and Rightness

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 February 2009

W. D. Falk
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Extract

Butler observes in the Preface to the Sermons that the subject of morals can be approached in two different ways: “One begins from enquiring into the abstract relations of things: the other from a matter of fact, namely what the particular nature of man is, its several parts, their economy or constitution; from whence it proceeds to determine what course of life it is, which is correspondent to his whole nature. In the former method the conclusion is expressed thus, that vice is contrary to the nature and reason of things: in the latter, that it is a violation or breaking in upon our own nature. Thus they both lead us to the same thing, our obligations to the practice of virtue; and thus they exceedingly strengthen and enforce each other.” In making this observation Butler raises the problem of the nature of moral obligation, and of the criteria by which the existence of a moral obligation can be known. He does so by calling attention to the divisions of opinion which existed on this issue in his own days. Samuel Clarke, the fashionable moralist of the period, sought the roots of moral obligation in the “nature and reason of things”: for an agent to know that an act is his duty is to know that it is fitting or suitable to the circumstances in which it occurs. Shaftesbury, on the other hand, and many of the adherents to the doctrine of Natural Law, like Grotius and Pufendorf, sought the roots of moral obligation in the nature of agents: for an agent, to know that an act is his duty is for him to experience a special motive to do it. Butler recognized the fundamental difference between these two approaches.

Type
Articles
Information
Philosophy , Volume 20 , Issue 76 , July 1945 , pp. 129 - 147
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy 1945

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References

page 129 note 1 Butler, Joseph, Sermons, ed. by Gladstone, , 6Google Scholar.

page 129 note 2 Ibid., 71.

page 130 note 1 Butler, Joseph, Sermons, ed. by Gladstone, , 6Google Scholar.

page 130 note 2 Foundations of Ethics, 327.

page 130 note 3 Ibid., 52.

page 131 note 1 Foundations of Ethics, pp. 43, 44.

page 132 note 1 Foundations of Ethics, 56.

page 133 note 2 Duty and Ignorance of Fact, pp. 26–27.

page 137 note 1 Foundations of Ethics, 170 (my italics).

page 137 note 2 Ibid., 315. “When we face a moral situation, what we see first is the existence of component suitabilities, or responsibilities, or claims, or prima facie obligations—whichever language we prefer.”

page 139 note 1 Foundations of Ethics, 226–227.

page 139 note 2 Hume makes this point forcibly: “If morality bad naturally no influence. on human passions and actions, it were in vain to take such pains to inculcate it; and nothing could be more fruitless than that multitude of rules and precepts with which all moralists abound. Philosophy is commonly divided into speculative and practical; and as morality is always comprehended under the latter division, it is supposed to influence our passions and actions and to go beyond the calm and indolent judgement of the understanding. And this is confirmed by common experience which informs us that men are often governed by their duties, and are deterred from some actions by the opinion of injustice, and impelled to others by that of obligation.”—A Treatise of Human Nature, Vol. II, 166, Everyman's LibraryGoogle Scholar.

page 144 note 1 Pufendorf, , Of the Law of Nature and Nations, English translation, 1703, 47Google Scholar.

page 144 note 2 Op. cit., 174.

page 144 note 3 Vide my paper on Morals Without Faith, Philosophy, 04 1944Google Scholar.

page 145 note 1 Does Moral Philosophy rest on a Mistake? Mind, 1912.