Joseph Butler: Fifteen Sermons and other writings on ethics

by McNaughton, David

• ISBN13: 9780199657568
• ISBN10: 0199657564
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2017-03-19
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

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 Butler's 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.

Author Biography

David McNaughton, Florida State University

David McNaughton is Professor of Philosophy at Florida State University and Professor Emeritus at Keele University. He is the founder and first President of the British Society for Ethical Theory. He is the author of Moral Vision (1988) and, with Eve Garrard, Forgiveness (2010), and of a number of papers on ethics, philosophy of religion, and the relations between the two. He is currently writing a book with Piers Rawling on their approach to practical reasons, and editing Butler's Analogy of Religion for OUP.