5. Conscience: Butler's Approach - Conscience comes from God (I)

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  • Created by: Alasdair
  • Created on: 26-06-17 18:21
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  • 5. Butler's Approach - Conscience comes from God (I)
    • The most crucial thing which distinguished women and men from the animal world was the possession of the faculty of reflection or conscience
      • So being human involves being moral
      • "There is a principle of reflection in men by which they distinguish between approval and disapproval of their own actions....this principle in man...is conscience"
    • Butler believed conscience could determine and judge rightness or wrongness of different actions and thoughts
    • Conscience, for Butler, also held a powerful position within human decision-making because, he wrote, it "magisterially exerts itself" spontaneously "without being consulted"
    • There is something authoritative and automatic for Butler about the way conscience works when moral decisions have to be made
    • He gave to conscience the final say in moral decision-making
    • Conscience governed and ordered such aspects and was the final moral authority:
      • "Had it strength, as it has right; had it power as it has manifest authority, it would absolutely govern the world"
    • Saw human nature as hierarchical and at the top is conscience:
      • Base
        • Drives for food which influence us without any thought for consequences
      • Above base
        • Two general impulses: self-love and benevolence
      • Beneath top
        • "principle of reflection"
          • Linked closely to conscience
          • Makes us approve or disapprove of our actions
      • Top
        • Conscience has supreme authority and all moral decisions are decided under guidance and authority of conscience
    • Conscience came from God
      • Conscience was a person's God-given guide to right conduct and its demands must therefore always be followed
    • Does not try to analyse whether conscience is based on reason or feeling or both:
      • He just says that is obviously exists; it comes from God and must be obeyed if a person is to truly be happy
    • Did not see mistakes made by conscience as a serious problem
      • He believed that in any moral dilemma most people will see intuitively what is right thing to do

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