Five Sermons - Butler, Joseph

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Biographie:
BISAC notes: Lead with REL067070 if available in LSI, because the book is more Christian moral theology than general sermon literature. REL058030 is also a strong fit if the platform's sermon category is available. BISG's Religion guidance says topical religious headings should be used first where appropriate, then paired with the specific religion...

Sommaire:
Joseph Butler's Five Sermons is a concise and important work of Christian moral philosophy, examining human nature, conscience, self-love, and the duty to love one's neighbour. Drawn from Butler's famous sermons preached at the Rolls Chapel, these five discourses present some of the central arguments that made him one of the major Anglican theologians and moral philosophers of the eighteenth century. Butler writes as both preacher and philosopher, moving carefully through questions of motive, obligation, virtue, and the structure of human nature. His sermons argue against crude views of human selfishness and insist that conscience, benevolence, and moral reflection are not accidental features of humanity, but essential parts of what human beings are. The collection includes sermons Upon Human Nature and Upon the Love of Our Neighbor, placing Butler's religious teaching in close conversation with ethical philosophy. His concern is not merely devotional. He asks how human beings are made, how conscience should govern desire, how self-love relates to benevolence, and why moral duty cannot be reduced to appetite or advantage. This gives the sermons continuing value for readers of Christian ethics, Anglican theology, moral philosophy, eighteenth-century thought, and the history of religious argument. Plain, serious, and intellectually disciplined, Five Sermons offers a compact introduction to Butler's larger theological and philosophical project. It is especially suited to readers interested in sermons as moral reasoning, the Christian doctrine of conscience, the relation between religion and ethics, and the development of modern moral philosophy....