Abstract
Bishop Joseph Butler certainly refuted something but what, exactly? Was it the idea, which springs eternal in the breasts of sophomore ethics students, that all human behavior is in some significant sense selfish? (Call that view psychological egoism.) Was it Thomas Hobbes, in whom that idea is widely thought to have been made flesh? C. D. Broad says that the view was killed by Butler. A. I. Melden speaks of Butler's refutation of psychological egoism as lasting achievement to which nothing essential has been added since his time and a monument to the sagacity which characterizes his thinking on morals. ' But the Bishop has certainly gotten mixed reviews4; and one of his most important arguments is, I think, more difficult than his commentators have appreciated. I intend a full assessment of his writings on the topic. In the Preface to his Sermons, he says:
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