Formation of Butler’s Moral Theology as a Foundation of Commercial Society

This chapter[aut]Yajima, Naoki primarilyCommercial society focuses on the Butler–Clark Letters, which influenced Butler’s early thought. This correspondence helped establish Butler’s criticism of Clarke’s claims regarding the omnipresenceOmnipresence of God as proof and the necessityNecessity of God’s existence. The omnipresenceOmnipresence of God is the subject of space and duration theory, whereas the necessary existence of God is the subject of causal theory. Butler criticized Clarke’s argument surrounding space/duration and offered the possibility of treating causality as human experience. He also criticized Clarke’s argument regarding God’s existence, thereby turning an understanding of the subject based on metaphysical necessityNecessity into a matter of probable belief. These arguments culminated in Butler’s late empiricist moral theory and the theory of religion and ideas that prepared the empiricist moral theory of Hume and other Scottish EnlightenmentEnlightenment thinkers. This chapter thus sheds light on how concepts such as necessityNecessity, probabilityProbability and conceivabilityConceivability, used in Butler’s critique of Clarke, are the foundational concepts of empirical moral theory and modern commercial societyCommercial society.