Evolving Thoughts

A thought

Things and actions are what they are, and consequences of them will be what they will be: why then should we desire to be deceived? [Bishop Joseph Butler, Fifteen Sermons, Sermon VII, §16.]

This is widely misquoted from Isaiah Berlin’s epigram at the head of Karl Marx: His life and environment (1939) as (misquotations bolded):

Things and actions are what they are, and their consequences will be what they will be: why then should we seek to be deceived?

I have found it in an earlier essay, from 1937. Possibly this is where Berlin got it. Even recent historians misquote it.

Ethics and Moral Philosophy Philosophy Quotes

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Comments (5)

  1. Earlier in the section, he writes:

    “Even without determining what that is which we call guilt or innocence, there is no man but would choose, after having had the pleasure or advantage of a vicious action, to be free of the guilt of it, to be in the state of an innocent man. This shows at least the disturbance and implicit dissatisfaction in vice.”

    At most, it shows (instead) the disturbance and implicit dissatisfaction in what one acknowledges to be (one’s own) vice – a different thing entirely. Unacknowledged, there is no need for the “hurry of business or of pleasure” to assist in any desired deception, there being an absence of the latter.

    1. Possibly, but I couldn’t locate another edition at the time. Google Books has the original 1726 edition here, and it has the same wording.

      Later note: As does the 1792 edition here.

      1. The first variation does not seem to me to signal a difference.

        The second (“seek” v. “desire”) makes a common implication of “desire” explicit. And I wouldn’t even be surprised to find that one of the recorded meanings of “seek” IS “desire” (esp. in contexts such as “seek to be deceived”). Must look it up when I achieve immortality.

        Is there much in it?

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