Joseph Butler: caring for yourself can include others

If helping someone makes us happy, does that mean we did it only for ourselves? Joseph Butler invites us to slow down before reaching that conclusion. In the preface to Fifteen Sermons, he distinguishes self-love from particular passions directed towards objects such as compassion and another person’s good. The fact that a desire belongs to us does not prove that we ourselves must always be its object. It is a small verbal distinction with large consequences for describing human motives. [1]

The daily phrase appears within this argument: “Every thing is what it is, and not another thing.” Our Italian translation is “Ogni cosa è ciò che è, e non un’altra cosa.” The preface was added to the second edition in 1729; we read its text in the 1827 edition transcribed by Project Canterbury. This is not advice to resign ourselves to any situation. Butler is asking us to distinguish concepts that an excessively broad label risks making indistinguishable, before we even judge them. [1][3]

Immediately before the sentence, Butler argues that self-love and benevolence should be distinguished rather than automatically opposed. This does not mean that every private interest is good, or that a generous act cannot be mixed with a desire for approval. He explicitly recognises that motives can combine and that it is often difficult to determine how much each contributes. Precision does not promise to read someone’s mind. It allows us to describe more carefully what we do not yet know. [1]

Consider an invented editorial example: you take a book to someone who cannot come to collect it. You might want to help them while also looking forward to spending time together. The second motive does not logically erase the first. Understanding the act requires information about the situation, consequences and intentions, when these can be known. Calling everything selfish would be a linguistic shortcut; calling everything altruistic would be an equally convenient one. Neither label carries out the investigation for us. [1]

Butler is writing within moral and religious reflection, not reporting a psychological experiment or a formula for classifying everyone. The point we bring into everyday life is narrower: distinguishing two things does not force them into rival teams. We can ask what someone seeks for themselves and what they want for others without assuming that one answer necessarily removes the other. Even a good action deserves an accurate description. Being suspicious of everything is not automatically more clear-sighted than believing everything we hear. [1]