How convincing are Butler’s claims that people have an innate sense of right and wrong?
Joseph Butler was a bishop in the Church of England. He believed, similarly to Aquinas, that we have a God given ability to reason through the use of our conscience.
Benevolence is, according to Butler, the natural tendency of all human beings. In dramatic contrast to what Freud would say from a modern perspective, Butler would argue that we are all essentially good. This is the foundation for Butler’s argument that we have an innate sense of right and wrong from our god given conscience. Hence, since we say that we are all essentially good self-love comes as one of the many ways to show such goodness as highlighted by Butler in his book “15 Sermons Preached at the Rolls Chapel”. We as innately benevolent people will want to help others as one of the many ways to show goodness. Butler also believed that human beings have two rational guides to behaviour: enlightened self-interest and conscience. Conscience helps the selfish human become virtuous and so provides a balance between these two tendencies.
Butler, although believes we are essentially good people, doesn’t deny the fact that we have feelings and passions but says that it is our conscience and its god given sense of right and wrong judges between these passions as the “moral approving and disapproving faculty” and we therefore act proportionately according to our conscience.
Overall Butler argues that each human has a direct insight into the universal or objective rightness or wrongness of an action, otherwise known as an innate moral guide.
St Thomas Aquinas agreed with Butler’s claims that humans have an innate sense of what is right or wrong. This can be derived from his belief in the Synderesis Principle. The Synderesis Principle is the idea that humans have an innate knowledge of the basic principles of