Butler

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  • Created by: Jess0699
  • Created on: 03-12-16 09:37
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  • Joseph Butler Conscience
    • Butler's background
      • Anglican bishop
      • Defined conscience as
        • A faculty of reflection
        • Conscience is a faculty that separates humans from other sentient beings
          • Part of a process that humans have - they becomes aware of their own situation
        • Other creatures do not have conscious awareness
          • They exist but they do not try to understand
        • From humans reflectivee nature - conscience develops
      • Crucially influenced by Aristotle and Aquinas
    • Conscience the voice of God within
      • Selfish
      • Golden Rule: 'In everything do to others as you would have them do to you' (Matthew: 7:12)
        • To do this you have to love & respect yourself
          • Transferred to others
          • This respect for humanity - heart of Butler's Rolls Sermons
    • The Rolls Sermons
      • Written for opening of the law courts
      • Butler preaching to lawyers hearing criminal cases
      • Criminals have no conscience
        • No intuitive sense of their own worth
        • Criminals do not love themselves
          • Why they commit crime
        • No respectful themselves NONE for others
      • Instil self-respect in yourself - become truly one of God's people
    • Analogy of Religion to the Constitution and Course of Nature
      • Clear link between God, nature & morality
        • 1. God has created the natural order
        • 2. Moral sense is embedded in all humans
          • Innate moral sense is conscience
      • Moral sense fails for criminals
        • They have allowed their conscience to be degraded by degrading themselves
          • They have low self-esteem
      • There is 'great wickedness' within the human race
        • Criminals magnify this wickedness
        • There is a struggle in every human
          • Between conscience & passions
            • These passions can never be fulfilled
              • Desire to fulfil them - leads to criminality and evil acts
              • Solution: live a disciplined and moral life
                • Conscience the guide to this

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