Joseph Butler

This book is the first English-language monograph about Bishop Joseph Butler (16921752) by Japanese scholars. It is an especially interesting and controversial message coming as it does from Japan, a well-developed secular economic state where less than 1% of the population are Christians and opposing the recent trend of curtailing the eighteenth-century political economy into religiosity and theology.

This multidisciplinary edited book presents a different and new perspective from the recent work of Oslington et al., which seeks to reduce the political economy of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Britain to religiosity and theology, triggered by the writings of A. M. C. Waterman. Unlike those works, the present one aims to re-examine the largely forgotten Butler, who was said in the nineteenth century to be the most influential cleric and preacher in the Church of England of the previous century not just as a clerical ideologue, but mainly as a proto-political economistbefore Adam Smith.

In order to achieve this goal, first, the authors clarify that Butler's theory of conscience and probability, which began with passion and selfishness, was created with the development of eighteenth-century commercial society in mind. Second, the manner in which Butler's discourse was directed not at anti-Anglicans or eminent intellectuals, but at the majority of ordinary secular society, is explored. How it was consistent with and defended their sentiments and economic behavior, not only in Analogy but mainly in Fifteen Sermons, is also investigated and explained. Finally, readers see that Butler's antirational grasp of humanity and empiricist epistemology, based on probability presented in these inquiries, can in fact be considered a pioneering expression of the methodological premises of modern economics.

Opposes recent trends that reduce political economy to theology, through analysis of 18th19th-century British thought Is the first book by Japanese researchers about J. Butler, an important cleric and thinker of 18th-century Britain Comprises a collaboration by Japanese academicians in history of economic thought, British philosophy, and puritanism

Auteur
Daisuke Arie, Professor Emeritus, Yokohama National University
Masatake Ohkubo, Former Professor, Sugino Fashion College
Naoki Yajima, Professor, International Christian University

Contenu

Introduction.- A Compromising Preacher: Butler as a Proto-Political Economist.- Formation of Butler's Moral Theology as a Foundation of Commercial Society.- Commercial Society and Religion: Butler, Paley and Priestley.- Butler's Defence of the Authority of Conscience.- Theories of Resentment and Civilisation from Perspectives of Joseph Butler and Lord Kames.- Joseph Butler and Adam Smith on Conscience, Self-deceit and General Rules.- Butler and the Scottish Enlightenment: His Relationship with Adam Smith.- Self-love in Butler and Rousseau.- Science and Religion in British Philosophy: The Case of the Plurality of Worlds.- Butler and Ben Shira's Apholism.