Roger Crisp presents a comprehensive study of Henry Sidgwick's The Methods of Ethics, a landmark work first published in 1874. Crisp argues that Sidgwick is largely right about many central issues in moral philosophy: the metaphysics and epistemology of ethics, consequentialism, hedonism about well-being, and the weight to be given to self-interest. He holds that Sidgwick's long discussion of 'common-sense' morality is probably the best discussion of deontology we have. And yet The Methods of Ethics can be hard (...) to understand, and this is perhaps one reason why, though it is a philosophical goldmine, few have ventured deeply into it. What does Sidgwick mean by a 'method'? Why does he discuss only three methods? What are his arguments for hedonism and for utilitarianism? How can we make sense of the idea of moral intuition? What is the role of virtue in Sidgwick's ethics? Crisp addresses these and many other questions, offering a fresh view of Sidgwick's text which will assist any moral philosopher to gain more from it. (shrink)

In Henry Sidgwick's taxonomy in The Methods of Ethics, a method is a rational procedure for generating rules for right action, a principle is the statement of the ultimate good, and both these elements combine to form the moral theory, which shows the connection between the rules for right action to the good achieved by acting on those rules. Any method can be matched to any principle, but only satisfactory theories connect methods and principles plausibly or logically. ;Rightness, the (...) proper end of a method, is the proper end for agents as such; the rules generated by the method need not be linked by them to the goods. A method of generating rules of rightness is all there is to the moral theory of Jural Intuitionism, which is correct as far as it goes. But theorists need more than rules for rightness; they also need the standard of the good on which rightness depends. Philosophical Intuitionists know rightness depends on goodness, but misidentify that good as individual excellence. Jural Intuitionists correctly identify the aimed-at end for agents, rightness; Philosophical Intuitionists correctly link rightness to goodness. ;Common Sense Morality is sufficient for agents, who unconsciously identify the good as Utilitarians do, namely, as universal happiness. Common Sense Morality provides the data for fashioning a hybrid moral theory. That theory links the Egoist, Intuitionist, and Utilitarian methods to the Utilitarian principle. Sidgwick thinks he has shown that the Intuitionist and Utilitarian methods do, but the Egoist method does not, serve the Utilitarian end. Thus the moral theory on which Common Sense Morality is founded fails. Moral philosophy betrays a Dualism of Practical Reason, wherein the rational ends of individual happiness and universal happiness require conflicting rules for action. ;Pace Sidgwick, the Intuitionist method does not serve the Utilitarian end: Intuitionism requires that one believe both that rightness does and does not have intrinsic value. There is another problem: Sidgwick is biased, since for him only consequentialism is a moral theory. Finally, Sidgwick fails because he is committed both to Common Sense Morality and precision, and expects more systematization than morality allows. (shrink)

In the nineteenth century, Henry Sidgwick struggled with the apparent paradox that utilitarians might only attain their goal if they renounced utilitarianism in practice; he also noticed a parallel problem that anticipated what has been called the ‘paradox of desire’ in Buddhist ethics – the paradox that desiring desirelessness is self-defeating. In fact, he regarded only the latter as a genuine paradox. I consider three approaches that might mitigate the problematicimplications for Buddhist ethics and certain forms of consequentialism. (...) One approach draws on recent defences of moral realism that find echoes in at least one Buddhist tradition. The other two draw on what I call the ‘comparative cartography of ethical concepts’; one is due to David Webster, who compares Western andPali-based Buddhist concepts, while the other offers an extension of his approach, comparing ‘thick’ and ‘thin’ ethical concepts, again mainly in the context of ancient Indian Buddhism. I argue that these latter two approaches offer promising defences of Buddhist ethics against objections based on the so-called ‘paradox of desire’. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: The Central Idea Bentham's Use of Utility Traditional Interpretation: Mill Reinterpretation (1): The Art of Life Reinterpretation (2): Happiness and Indirect Utilitarianism Mill's Metaphysics and Logic Proof of the Principle of Utility Bentham on Clarification Sidgwick.

One of the most influential of the Victorian philosophers, Henry Sidgwick was the author of the masterpiece of utilitarianism, The Methods of Ethics. He also made important contributions to fields such as economics, political theory, and classics. An active champion of higher education for women, he founded Cambridge's Newnham College in 1871. He attended Rugby School and then Trinity College, Cambridge, where he remained his whole career. In 1859 he accepted a lectureship in classics, and held this post for (...) ten years. He then changed direction and in 1869 took up a lectureship in moral philosophy. In this book, published in 1886, Sidgwick gives an objective summary of ethical philosophies throughout history. He considers general issues in ethics and then gives a detailed critique of the work of major philosophers from early Greek thinkers through to his nineteenth-century contemporaries. (shrink)

As in the preceding chapter, Sidgwick attempts to highlight some difficulties in the views of his Cambridge teacher John Grote. Although Grote has a keen insight, says Sidgwick, into the human element of a philosophy, he is a poor analyst of systems and methods at the abstract level. The value in Grote's work lies in his detailed presentation of two important critiques of Mill. First, he argues convincingly that Mill's qualitative distinction between pleasures either is reducible to a quantitative distinction (...) or causes pure utilitarianism to be abandoned. Second, he points to the peculiarity in Mill's proof of utilitarianism, which takes a Positivist line in arguing that since people pursue happiness, they ought to pursue the happiness of others. (shrink)

One of the most influential of the Victorian philosophers, Henry Sidgwick also made important contributions to fields such as economics, political theory and classics. A proponent of the utilitarianism of Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill, which he analysed in his classic work The Methods of Ethics, he later turned to the practical side of politics in this work, published in 1891. His aim was to have a 'rational discussion of political questions in modern states', and he offers a (...) thorough examination of Victorian politics, beginning with a discussion of political theory before moving on to more concrete matters such as property and law. The later chapters discuss the function of government through themes such as procedural matters, international affairs, war, political parties, and public participation, giving a comprehensive account of both ideas about and the functioning of late-nineteenth-century government. (shrink)

One of the most influential of the Victorian philosophers, Henry Sidgwick also made important contributions to fields such as economics, political theory and classics. A proponent of the utilitarianism of Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill, which he analysed in his classic work The Methods of Ethics , he later turned to the practical side of politics in this work, published in 1891. His aim was to have a 'rational discussion of political questions in modern states', and he offers (...) a thorough examination of Victorian politics, beginning with a discussion of political theory before moving on to more concrete matters such as property and law. The later chapters discuss the function of government through themes such as procedural matters, international affairs, war, political parties, and public participation, giving a comprehensive account of both ideas about and the functioning of late-nineteenth-century government. (shrink)

In this chapter and the next, Sidgwick engages in a detailed analysis of the views of his teacher John Grote as presented in The Examination of the Utilitarian Philosophy. According to Sidgwick, Grote's work lacks those explicit principles and exact methods found in a systematic approach. Yet, it offers some valuable criticisms of Mill. The first criticism targets Mill's introduction of qualitative distinctions between pleasures, and holds that either this qualitative distinction must be resolvable into a quantitative one or pure (...) utilitarianism is abandoned. The second challenges Mill's proof of utilitarianism, which states that all men seek pleasure, and we cannot conceive of ourselves as aiming at anything else. Grote's reply is that, although people do seek happiness, it does not follow that they ought to seek the happiness of others. (shrink)

Sidgwick's first explicit statement of the utilitarian position, in an essay presented to the Metaphysical Society in 1873, provides a lucid overview of the errors to be avoided and the terms to be clarified in any adequate account of the subject. As a précis of the comprehensive treatment of utilitarianism that would soon appear in The Methods of Ethics, this essay should serve as a useful guide to that work.

John Stuart Mill wrote in the opening chapter of Utilitarianism, ‘A test of right and wrong must be the means, one would think, of ascertaining what is right or wrong,’ thus explaining why he thought the work to follow was practically important. In Chapter 3, ‘On the Ultimate Sanction of the Principle of Utility,’ he answers the question, ‘What are the motives to obey the principle of utility?’ This principle is presented as a morality to be adopted. Yet before the (...) nineteenth century was over Henry Sidgwick was proposing that it may well be best, from a utilitarian view, that the utilitarian doctrine is not too widely adopted. Perhaps it should be an esoteric morality.Moreover, Sidgwick argues, it seems contrary to self interest to adhere to an impartially benevolent morality. Devotion to utilitarian duty seems to require that the agent sacrifice his or her own happiness in a devotion to the relief of others that can only ‘partially mitigate’ their distress. Such a morality seems impossibly demanding. Sidgwick’s argument challenges Mill's claim that there is an adequate sanction for adoption of utilitarian morality. (shrink)

In this chapter, first published in The Elements of Politics, Sidgwick outlines his conception of positive morality, that is, the commonsense morality generally accepted within a society. He then examines the relation between positive morality and positive law because the moral opinions and sentiments prevalent in a society largely determine how the government ought to act. One difference between legal rules and moral rules, highlighted by Bentham and Austin, is that, whereas the government either directly or indirectly represses a violation (...) of the former, only general disapprobation and social conscience punish a violation of the latter. A second difference, notes Sidgwick, lies in the comparative definiteness and systematic coherence of the two types of rules. Since no judicial process resolves doubts about moral rules, the law has greater consistency and definiteness than positive morality. (shrink)

In this essay I defend the view that Henry Sidgwick’s moral epistemology is a form of intuitionist foundationalism that grants common-sense morality no evidentiary role. In §1, I outline both the problematic of The Methods of Ethics and the main elements of its argument for utilitarianism. In §§2-4 I provide my interpretation of Sidgwick’s moral epistemology. In §§ 5-8 I refute rival interpretations, including the Rawlsian view that Sidgwick endorses some version of reflective equilibrium and the view that he (...) is committed to some kind of pluralistic epistemology. In§ 9 I contend with some remaining objections to my view. (shrink)

This paper argues that Henry Sidgwick’s account of the relationship between the right and the good, as well as his theory of the good are still undervalued in many respects. An applied section illustrates the practical significance of this finding. In cases in which shooting down a passenger plane can save a greater number of people on the ground, and no other relevant considerations apply, the passengers should desire their own destruction—not only to promote the general good, but also (...) in order to reach the only good they can still secure for themselves: giving their inevitable deaths a positive meaning. This utilitarian position regarding some one-versus-the-many cases has been overlooked in the German Supreme Court ruling on the destruction of 9/11 airplanes in 2006. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Philosophy 41.4 (2003) 569-570 [Access article in PDF] Ross Harrison, editor. Henry Sidgwick. New York: Published for The British Academy by Oxford University Press, 2001. Pp. v + 122. Cloth, $24.95. Henry Sidgwick consists of papers by Stefan Collini, John Skorupski, and Ross Harrison, with replies by Jonathan Rée, Onora O'Neill, and Roger Crisp.Collini's rich and witty paper considers two pictures of (...) Victorian intellectuals—the "public moralist," such as John Stuart Mill, and the academic specialist. Sidgwick in the 1880s and 1890s does not fit comfortably into either camp. He champions the academic philosopher over Leslie Stephen or Mathew Arnold; he contributes to Mind rather than writing to newspapers or standing for parliament; he refuses to take a public stand on the Boer war despite opposing it. He would not have been a teledon. But he also exerts influence on university policies (founding Newnham College for women, opposing the Latin and Greek requirement for admission), through Royal Commissions, and through his personal connections to those in power. (He had as brothers-in-law the Prime Minister and the Archbishop of Canterbury.) He represents one solution to the new problem of combining academic specialization with practical concerns. [End Page 569]One quibble: Collini argues that Sidgwick wields his analytic method in order to end public debate; disagreements rest on conceptual confusions. But Sidgwick's late essays do not close with "a thin, dry question to which... the answer is more or less obvious," but with controversial proposals (44): to prevent war, individual cultivation of impartiality is more important than external arbitration; there are no significant differences between moral requirements on states and individuals; the unequal distribution of luxuries is morally defensible if and only if necessary for "aesthetic progress"; sociology is suspect and must be kept distinct from ethics. A second paper on clerical veracity is needed given controversy about the first.Harrison's slightly diffuse paper places Sidgwick in the utilitarian tradition of discussing sanctions for morality. (Crisp argues neatly that Bentham and Mill are closer to Sidgwick than Harrison allows.) Harrison closes by arguing that Sidgwick should not have been bothered by the dualism of practical reason—the view that utilitarianism and egoism conflict and that there are no decisive arguments for choosing between them. He should have ended the Methods with utilitarianism. The conflict between egoism and utilitarianism "should not matter" because "these are truths of practical rather than speculative reason." Conflict shows only that "we are not in the best of all possible worlds" (114). This helps if, with Harrison, Sidgwick's worry is the "theoretical" one that rival properties claim to be right-making (110). But Sidgwick sees the problem as practical: when egoism and utilitarianism conflict, I must decide which to follow.Skorupski also rejects the dualism. There are many true underived claims about reasons for action. Each can be seen as an instance of the "Feeling/Disposition Principle" (F): "If there's a reason to feel f there's reason to do what feeling f characteristically disposes one to do" (74). For example, if there is a reason to feel gratitude, there is a reason to express this gratitude. Egoistic reasons are the products of F when desire is the feeling. Any impartial theory, because it goes beyond the feelings of a particular individual in a particular situation, cannot be a case of F and so counts as a principle of practical reason. True claims about reasons for action are either many or, if restricted to practical reason, one. (Skorupski adds that an impartial theory, since indefeasible, trumps egoism. For example, my reason to express gratitude is defeated by noting that general good is not served by expressing gratitude, but need not be defeated by noting that my own good is not served. This, however, seems mere assertion. I suspect it, and F, are best pursued in Skorupski's Ethical Explorations [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999].)Showing that an impartial theory is not a case of F does not, by itself, show that it is a principle of practical reason... (shrink)

This paper argues that Henry Sidgwick's theory of the good is a form of enlightened preference hedonism. In order to support this conclusion, the paper argues that the correct interpretation of his notorious passage about the 'ideal element' of the good should get tied to his views about weakness of the will. Sidgwick believes that reaching your own good requires overcoming weakness of the will. An applied section illustrates the practical significance of this finding. In cases in which shooting (...) down a passenger plane can save a greater number of people on the ground, and no other relevant considerations apply, the passengers should desire their own destruction-not only to promote the general good, but also in order to reach the only good they can still secure for themselves: giving their inevitable deaths a positive meaning. This utilitarian position regarding some one-versusthe-many cases has been overlooked in the German Supreme Court ruling on the destruction of 9/11 airplanes in 2006. (shrink)

The late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries have witnessed a remarkable resurgence of scholarly interest in the work of the Victorian era philosopher Henry Sidgwick, whose best-known work, The Methods of Ethics has been celebrated as “the best book on ethics ever written”. The term “Sidgwickian” now stands alongside such terms as “Kantian” and “Aristotelian” in the ethical philosophical lexicon. But rather than marking out a fixed metaethical or substantive ethical theoretical perspective, the designation is best construed as pointing (...) to a set of characteristic ethical philosophical strategies, concerns, and problems, such as the “dualism of practical reason,” and explorations of the forms and limits of utilitarianism and of a non-metaphysical, non-Idealist but still anti-subjectivist approach to ethical truth. Moreover, Sidgwick’s life and work more generally have proved to be of considerable interest across many academic fields, from Victorian Studies to Parapsychology. (shrink)

This is the first Italian translation of Bentham’s “Deontology”. The translation goes with a rather extended apparatus meant to provide the reader with some information on Bentham’s ethical theory's own context. Some room is made for so-called forerunners of Utilitarianism, from the consequentialist-voluntarist theology of Leibniz, Malebranche, John Gay, Thomas Brown and William Paley to Locke and Hartley's incompatible associationist theories. After the theoretical context, also the real-world context is documented, from Bentham’s campaigns against the oppression of women and cruelty (...) to animals to his projects of political reform. Another section illustrates the ideas of Bentham's followers as well as the objections raised by nineteenth- and twentieth-century critics of utilitarianism. -/- Table of contents I. BEFORE THE TEXT 1. Bentham’s legacy 2. Bentham the Reformer 3. Bentham and the enlightenment project of a reformed morality 4. The principle of utility 5. Deontology or private morality 6. Utilitarianism as «eudemonologism» -/- II. TEXT Deontology I. Deontology: theoretical II. Deontology: practical III. -/- III. CO-TEXT 1. Biography 2. The reform of legislation 3. The Philosophic Radicals between the French revolution and the Industrial revolution -/- IV. CONTEXT 1. Forerunners of Utilitarianism 2. Psychological associationism 3. The oppression of women 4. Cruelty against animals 5. Parsimony and industry in Hogarth’s prints 6. Followers 6.1. John Stuart Mill 6.2. Henry Sidgwick 7. Critics 7.1. Romantic, conservative, and Christian critics 7.2. Socialist critics 8. Consequences: neo-utilitarianism 9. Consequences: critics of utilitarianism 9.1. Deontological critics 9.2. Perfectionists critics 9.3. Sceptical critics 10. Bentham’s legacy for contemporary ethics, by Bikhu Parekh Bibliography Lexicon Index of names and concepts -/- READER'S GUIDE . (shrink)

I discuss Whewell’s philosophy of morality, as opposed to systematic morality, not unlike Kant’s distinction between a pure and an empirical moral philosophy. Whewell worked out a systematization of traditional normative ethics as a first step before its rational justification; he believed that the point in the philosophy of morality is justifying a few rational truths about the structure of morality such as to rule hedonism, eudemonism, and consequentialism; yet a system of positive morality cannot be derived solely from (...) such rational truths but requires consideration of the ongoing dialectics between idea and fact in historically given moralities. Whewell’s intuitionism turns out to be both more similar to Kantian ethics and more different from Sidgwick’s idea of intuitionism. (shrink)

The dominant moral philosophy of nineteenth-century Britain was utilitarianism, beginning with Bentham and ending with Sidgwick. Though once overshadowed by his immediate predecessors in that tradition, Sidgwick is now regarded as a figure of great importance in the history of moral philosophy. Indeed his masterpiece, The Methods of Ethics, has been described by John Rawls as the 'most philosophically profound' of the classical utilitarian works. In this volume a distinguished group of philosophers reassesses the full range of Sidgwick's work, not (...) simply his ethical theory, but also his contributions as a historian of philosophy, a political theorist, and a reformer. (shrink)

This study examines Herbert Spencer's social and political thought by way of his principle of equal freedom. This principle reads, "The liberty of each, limited by the like liberty of each, is the rule in conformity with which society must be organized." ;Basically, this study attempts to demonstrate that Spencer was first and foremost an indirect utilitarian and that equal freedom was the central moral rule of his indirect utilitarianism. An attempt is also made to show how Spencer (...) conceived moral rights as derivations of equal freedom. For Spencer, moral rights were substantive specifications of equal freedom. Like their parent principle, they indirectly promoted happiness. Among other things, my analysis of equal freedom and rights endeavors to clarify how Spencer tried to accommodate a theory of stringent moral rights with utility and how negative freedom and virtue can be seen as compatible features of his theory of freedom. These two themes are meant to comprise some of the most promising rewards of this study. ;This study also explores Spencer's ethical naturalism via G. E. Moore's famous criticisms in Principia Ethica and via some of Henry Sidgwick's critical observations. While Moore's discussion is judged unsatisfactory, Sidgwick's analysis is deemed more successful. ;Finally, this study concludes by examining Spencer's theory of freedom and rights in terms of two fundamental moral rights and in terms of Spencer's vision of utopia. (shrink)

This is a book about moral reasoning: how we actually reason and how we ought to reason. It defends a form of 'rule' utilitarianism whereby we must sometimes judge and act in moral questions in accordance with generally accepted rules, so long as the existence of those rules is justified by the good they bring about. The author opposes the currently more fashionable view that it is always right for the individual to do that which produces the most good. Among (...) the salient topics covered are: an account of the utilitarian function in society of generally accepted moral rules; a discussion of how we interpret existing moral rules and create new ones; and a defence of 'rule' utilitarianism against the charge that it either commits one to irrational rule worship, or collapses into a form of 'act' utilitarianism. This is a book about moral reasoning: how we actually reason and how we ought to reason. It defends a form of 'rule' utilitarianism whereby we must sometimes judge and act in moral questions in accordance with generally accepted rules, so long as the existence of those rules is justified by the good they bring about. (shrink)

Derek Parfit’s long-awaited work On What Matters is a very ambitious, very strange production seeking to defend both a nonreductive and nonnaturalistic but nonmetaphysical and nonontological form of cognitive intuitionism or rationalism and an ethical theory (the Triple Theory) reflecting the convergence of Kantian universalizability, Scanlonian contractualism, and rule utilitarianism. Critics have already countered that Parfit’s metaethics is unbelievable and his convergence thesis unconvincing, but On What Matters is a truly Sidgwickian work, the implications of which largely remain to be (...) worked out. Parfit does not go far enough in spelling out exactly what matters and why, what normative reasons we actually have, and where we should go from here, if we take him seriously. (shrink)

David Phillips’s Sidgwickian Ethics is a penetrating contribution to the scholarly and philosophical understanding of Henry Sidgwick’s The Methods of Ethics. This note focuses on Phillips’s understanding of (aspects of) Sidgwick’s argument for utilitarianism and the moral epistemology to which he subscribes. In § I, I briefly outline the basic features of the argument that Sidgwick provides for utilitarianism, noting some disagreements with Phillips along the way. In § II, I raise some objections to Phillips’s account of the epistemology (...) underlying the argument. In § III, I reply to the claim that there is a puzzle at the heart of Sidgwick’s epistemology. In § IV, I respond to Phillips’s claim that Sidgwick is unfair in his argument against the (deontological) morality of common sense. (shrink)

This is a critical review of Roger Crisp's The Cosmos of Duty. The review praises the book but, among other things, takes issue with some of Crisp's criticisms of Sidgwick's view that resolution of the free will problem is of limited significance to ethics and with Crisp's claim that in Methods III.xiii Sidgwick defends an axiom of prudence that undergirds rational egoism.

A rare academic study on what John Rawls, Peter Singer, and Derek Parfit acknowledge as the finest book in ethics -- The Methods of Ethics. With a rather shocking conclusion that "none of us can match Sidgwick," Mariko Nakano-Okuno lucidly analyzes Henry Sidgwick's impacts on contemporary ethics.

L’ouvrage célèbre de Henry Sidwick, The Methods of Ethics, avait pour objet de trouver un fondement intuitionniste à l’utilitarisme. Les six conférences qu’il donna à la Société Métaphysique sur pratiquement le même sujet permettent de mieux comprendre le cheminement des idées de Sidgwick sur ce point à l’aune des changements religieux, scientifiques et politiques de la période. Sa critique de ce qui allait devenir l’Idéalisme britannique et les critiques dont il fut l’objet par un idéaliste tel que Bradley eurent (...) des incidences sur les révisions successives de cet ouvrage. En essayant de concilier utilitarisme et intuitionnisme – deux méthodes éthiques opposées – il tentait de défendre une forme d’utilitarisme nouveau, à savoir un utilitarisme dans lequel serait incorporé une forme de moralité discrète. Le fait qu’il échoua n’est pas important en soi car il tenta de trouver des solutions à ce qui lui paraissait être irréconciliable dans l’utilitarisme et les six conférences qu’il donna à la Société Métaphysique permettent d’en saisir toute la portée et de comprendre sa définition de l’utilitarisme. (shrink)

A 27000 word survey of Russell’s ethics for the SEP. I argue that Russell was a meta-ethicist of some significance. In the course of his long philosophical career, he canvassed most of the meta-ethical options that have dominated debate in the Twentieth and Twenty-First Centuries — naturalism, non-naturalism, emotivism and the error-theory (anticipating Stevenson and Ayer on the one hand and Mackie on the other), and even, to some extent, subjectivism and relativism. And though none of his theories quite worked (...) out, there is much to be learned from his mistakes. Nor is this all. His ARGUMENTS as well as his THEORIES are often interesting and instructive. The ethical corollary to the argument of ‘Seems Madam? Nay, It Is,’ puts the kybosh on any attempt to resolve Sidgwick's Dualism of Practical Reason by arguing that although we are distinct beings with different interests in the world of Appearance, we are, in Reality, all one (§3). Russell's arguments against objectivism are often quite powerful, and one anticipates Gilbert Harman's influential argument that objective values can be safely dismissed since they lack explanatory power (§9.3-9.4). Russell's damning critique of Moore's analytic consequentialism led Moore to abandon the view and perhaps to give up his ‘unduly anti-reforming’ moral conservatism. Moreover Russell's INDIRECT influence on meta-ethics may have been profound since the Open Question Argument, was probably invented to deal with Russell's ideas. Finally, in the realm of normative ethics, Russell developed a sensible and humane version of consequentialism, which (despite its shaky meta-ethical foundations) is resistant, if not immune, to many of the standard criticisms, especially if combined — as Russell thought it should be combined — with a healthy dose of political skepticism. It provides a powerful tool for social and political criticism, a tool which Russell vigorously employed on a vast range of topics in his writings on practical ethics. (shrink)

Henry Sidgwick taught G.E. Moore as an undergraduate at the University of Cambridge. Moore found Sidgwick’s personality less than attractive and his lectures “rather dull”. Still, philosophically speaking, Moore absorbed a great deal from Sidgwick. In the Preface to the Trinity College Prize Fellowship dissertation that he submitted in 1898, just two years after graduation, he wrote “For my ethical views it will be obvious how much I owe to Prof. Sidgwick.” Later, in Principia Ethica, Moore credited Sidgwick with (...) having “first clearly exposed the [naturalistic] fallacy” – a fallacy putatively committed when one defines naturalistically or super-naturalistically “good” – which was one of the book’s main ambitions (PE 39; also 17, 59). It is therefore unsurprising that Moore remarks in the intellectual autobiography he wrote years later that “From…[Sidgwick’s] published works…I have gained a good deal, and his clarity and his belief in Common Sense were very sympathetic to me.” This influence did not, however, prevent Moore from registering disagreements with Sidgwick, the sharpest of which concern the viability of egoism and the nature of the good. The disagreements between Sidgwick and Moore speak to many important moral theoretical issues arising both within and without the utilitarian tradition in ethical thinking. Because the two share much in common, a critical comparison of them on a range of moral philosophical questions proves instructive. It will tell us in particular something about the general direction of ethical thinking in the utilitarian tradition at the dawn of the twentieth century. This chapter has four parts. Part I compares the versions of utilitarianism to which Sidgwick and Moore subscribed. Part II examines the arguments each provides for the view. Part III discusses their conflicting theories of value. Part IV sums things up. (shrink)

Henry Sidgwick regarded his failure to reconcile the claims of rational egoism with those of utilitarianism to reveal a fundamental contradiction within practical reason. However, the conflict that concerns him arises only in relation to a particular kind of agent. While Sidgwick construes his version of the problem to be a systematic formulation of a conflict that arises within the practical reasoning of ordinary people, it is actually an example of a worst-case scenario that reflects the common philosophical tendency (...) to deal with issues in their most challenging form. But such a transformation of ordinary conflicts between self-interest and morality into an insoluble philosophical problem obscures the nature of the more typical practical conflict. (shrink)

Sidgwick's seminal textThe Methods of Ethicsleft off with an unresolved problem that Sidgwick referred to as the dualism of practical reason. The problem is that employing Sidgwick's methodology of rational intuitionism appears to show that there are reasons to favour both egoism and utilitarianism. Katarzyna de Lazari-Radek and Peter Singer offer a solution in the form of an evolutionary debunking argument: the appeal of egoism is explainable in terms of evolutionary theory. I argue that like rational prudence, rational benevolence is (...) subject to debunking arguments and so problematic, but also – and more importantly – that debunking arguments are irrelevant in the debate over the dualism of practical reason on the view of reason and rational intuitionism that Lazari-Radek and Singer embrace. Either both egoism and utilitarianism are debunked, or neither are. If I am right, Sidgwick's dualism is left standing. (shrink)

Sidgwick famously claimed that an argument in favour of utilitarianism might be provided by demonstrating that a set of defensible philosophical intuitions undergird it. This paper focuses on those philosophical intuitions. It aims to show which specific intuitions Sidgwick endorsed, and to shed light on their mutual connections. It argues against many rival interpretations that Sidgwick maintained that six philosophical intuitions constitute the self-evident grounds for utilitarianism, and that those intuitions appear to be specifications of a negative principle of universalization (...) (according to which differential treatments must be based on reasonable grounds alone). In addition, this paper attempts to show how the intuitions function in the overall argument for utilitarianism. The suggestion is that the intuitions are the main positive part of the argument for the view, which includes Sidgwick's rejection of common-sense morality and its philosophical counterpart, dogmatic intuitionism. The paper concludes by arguing that some of Sidgwick's intuitions fail to meet the conditions for self-evidence which Sidgwick himself established and applied to the rules of common-sense morality. (shrink)

Economic approaches to both social evaluation and decision-making are typically Paretian or utilitarian in nature and so display commitments to both welfarism and consequentialism. The contrast between the economic approach and any rights-based social philosophy has spawned a large literature that may be divided into two branches. The first is concerned with the compatibility of rights and utilitarianism seen as independent moral forces. This branch of the literature may be characterized as an example of the broader debate between the (...) teleological and deontological approaches. The second is concerned with the possibility that substantial rights may be grounded in utilitarianism with the moral force of rights being derived from more basic commitments to welfarism and consequentialism. This branch of the literature may be characterized as an exploration of the flexibility of the teleological approach, and, in particular, its ability to give rise to views more normally associated with the deontological approach. This essay is concerned with the second branch of the literature. (shrink)

The shape of contemporary ethics owes a great deal to Henry Sidgwick, through his influence on Rawls, Parfit, and others. No one who reads David Phillips’s outstanding book can be left in the slightest doubt about Sidgwick’s continuing significance for both metaethics and normative ethics. Phillips’s scholarship and his substantive arguments are powerful and insightful, and I find them largely persuasive. So in these remarks I intend merely to raise a few questions about each of his four main..

The article begins with a review of the structural differences between act consequentialist theories and human rights theories, as illustrated by Amartya Sen's paradox of the Paretian liberal and Robert Nozick's utilitarianism of rights. It discusses attempts to resolve those structural differences by moving to a second-order or indirect consequentialism, illustrated by J.S. Mill and Derek Parfit. It presents consequentialist (though not utilitarian) interpretations of the contractualist theories of Jürgen Habermas and the early John Rawls (Theory of Justice) (...) and of the capability theories of Sen and Martha Nussbaum. It also discusses two roles that well-being or a surrogate for well-being typically plays in theories of human rights: (a) well-being plays a role in the justification of at least some exceptions to human rights principles; and (b) some human rights seem to be best understood as rights to some level of well-being or expected well-being (or of a surrogate for one of them). It reviews two consequentialist challenges to the moral adequacy of non-consequentialist accounts of human rights, one based on a duty to relieve suffering and the other generated by Parfit's Non-Identity Problem, and concludes with a contrast between two ways of looking at the history of the development and implementation of human rights conventions and laws. Video abstract (click to view). (shrink)

This chapter discusses the life and ethical philosophy of Henry Sidgwick. His masterpiece, The Methods of Ethics, first published in 1874, marks the culmination of the classical and nontheological utilitarian tradition, which took ‘the greatest happiness’ as the fundamental normative demand. Sidgwick was also a reformer who always advocated education as the crucial issue for historical progress, in ethics, economics, politics, and other areas. His practical ethics, often only indirectly utilitarian, involved finding common ground despite foundational ethical differences, and (...) that common ground was the cultivation of humanity. (shrink)

This paper is dedicated to the relationship between ordinary moral thought and ethical theory in Sidgwick’s The Methods of Ethics. I suggest that different contents of ordinary moral thought play different roles and are lent different philosophical weight in Sidgwick’s arguments. I start by showing how Sidgwick appeals to certain features of ordinary moral thought, deduced from moral language and experience, both in criticising rival metaethical positions and in establishing his own claims. I then turn to the notion of common-sense (...) morality. After clarifying what Sidgwick means by this expression, I argue that common-sense morality has neither probative value in Sidgwick’s argument for the utilitarian principle nor independent validity, and that its authority is ultimately motivated on utilitarian grounds. Pointing out how different contents of ordinary moral thought play different argumentative roles in the foundation and defence of Sidgwick’s utilitarianism enables to ac- count more comprehensively for Sidgwick’s arguments and moral methodology and provides with a more articulated account of the dialectic between his utilitarian theory and ordinary moral thought. (shrink)

The aim of this work is to bring analytically to light Sidgwick’s complex views on sexual morality. Sidgwick saw nothing intrinsically, self-evidently, and even derivatively wrong in getting sexual pleasure for its own sake. However, the overall consequences of attempting to modify common sense in matters of sexual ethics seemed to him to be worse, at his time, than retaining the moral category of purity. Sidgwick’s view is then contrasted with John Stuart Mill’s, whom he directly mentions in this connection. (...) Finally, I discuss how Sidgwick’s ethics of sex relates closely to his claims about esoteric morality and to the dualism of practical reason. (shrink)

A short presentation of the first Italian translation of a classic of Modern Ethics ignored by Italian philosophers for more than a century.

Thomas Hurka presents the first full historical study of an important strand in the development of modern moral philosophy. His subject is a series of British ethical theorists from the late nineteenth century to the mid-twentieth century, who shared key assumptions that made them a unified and distinctive school. The best-known of them are Henry Sidgwick, G. E. Moore, and W. D. Ross; others include Hastings Rashdall, H. A. Prichard, C. D. Broad, and A. C. Ewing. They disagreed on (...) some important topics, especially in normative ethics. Thus some were consequentialists and others deontologists: Sidgwick thought only pleasure is good while others emphasized perfectionist goods such as knowledge, aesthetic appreciation, and virtue. But all were non-naturalists and intuitionists in metaethics, holding that moral judgements can be objectively true, have a distinctive subject-matter, and are known by direct insight. They also had similar views about how ethical theory should proceed and what are relevant arguments in it; their disagreements therefore took place on common ground. -/- Hurka recovers the history of this under-appreciated group by showing what its members thought, how they influenced each other, and how their ideas changed through time. He also identifies the shared assumptions that made their school unified and distinctive, and assesses their contributions critically, both when they debated each other and when they agreed. One of his themes is that that their general approach to ethics was more fruitful philosophically than many better-known ones of both earlier and later times. (shrink)

What does the idea of taking 'the point of view of the universe' tell us about ethics? Lazari-Radek and Singer defend objectivism in ethics, and hedonistic utilitarianism, following Henry Sidgwick's lead. They explore how to justify an ethical theory; conflicts of self-interest and universal benevolence; and whether we should discount the future.

In this paper, we provide a game-theoretic examination of indirect utilitarianism by comparing the expected payoffs of attempts to apply a deontological principle and a utilitarian principle within the context of the Prisoner’s Dilemma (PD). Although many of the best-known utilitarians and consequentialists have accepted some indirect form of their respective views, the results in this paper suggest that they have been overly quick to dismiss altogether the benefits of directly enacting utilitarian principles. We show that for infallible (...) moral agents, what we call ‘non-autonomous agents’, direct utilitarianism dominates indirect utilitarianism via deontology in terms of achieving the maximized utilitarian outcome, but only in underlying games where the maximized utilitarian outcome involves unequal payoffs. In other situations, indirect utilitarianism implemented through Kantian deontology either ties or dominates direct utilitarianism in terms of achieving the maximized utilitarian outcome. We also examine the two different moralities on the assumption that fallibility, which is a form of autonomy, is an aspect of moral agency by introducing Endogenized Morality Models (EMM’s). We believe that just as indirect utilitarians worry about the cost of applying moral principles, so too they should worry about the fact that humans have both pro-social and materialistically selfish motivations and hence are fallible moral agents. We show that there are conditions under which fallible autonomous utilitarians achieve higher expected material and psychic payoffs than fallible autonomous deontologists and conditions under which they do not. (shrink)