Henry Sidgwick: Philosophy, Quotes & Legacy

Biography

Henry Sidgwick was born on May 31, 1838, in Skipton, Yorkshire, England. He was educated at Rugby and Trinity College, Cambridge, where he became a fellow in 1859 and where he remained for the rest of his life. He was one of the most influential figures of the Victorian university: a brilliant teacher, a founder of the Society for Psychical Research, and a tireless reformer who campaigned for the admission of women to the university and co-founded Newnham College, the second Cambridge college for women. His masterpiece, The Methods of Ethics, was first published in 1874 and revised through seven editions over thirty years. He was elected to the chair of moral philosophy at Cambridge in 1883. He died on August 28, 1900, in Cambridge.

Historical Context

Sidgwick worked at the intersection of the two great currents of Victorian moral philosophy: the utilitarian tradition of Bentham and Mill, and the intuitionist tradition of the Cambridge moralists. His project was the systematic examination of both, and the result — The Methods of Ethics — is the most rigorous work of moral philosophy between Aristotle and the twentieth century. The context was also the crisis of faith: Sidgwick had abandoned the Christianity of his youth, and the book is the search for a rational foundation of ethics in a world without the divine law. His honesty about the difficulty of the search — his admission of the unresolved dualism of practical reason — made him the model of the philosophical conscience.

Core Ideas

The Three Methods

The Methods of Ethics examines the three great methods of arriving at reasoned convictions about what ought to be done. Egoism: the method of rational self-interest, the pursuit of one's own good. Intuitionism: the method of the moral truths known by intuition — the self-evident axioms of justice, prudence, and benevolence. Utilitarianism: the method of the greatest happiness of all. Sidgwick's examination shows that the intuitionist axioms, properly formulated, lead to utilitarianism — the axiom of benevolence, that the good of any one individual is of no more importance than the good of any other, is the foundation of the greatest-happiness principle. His account of the "axioms" of practical reason — justice (impartiality), prudence (the equal regard for all parts of one's own life), and benevolence (the equal regard for the good of all) — remains the most careful analysis of the foundations of utilitarianism in the literature.

The Dualism of Practical Reason

The most famous feature of the book is its conclusion: the dualism of practical reason. Sidgwick argued that the rational case for egoism and the rational case for utilitarianism are both sound, and that the two cannot be reconciled within the ethical method. The practical reason is "divided against itself": the rational egoist, who seeks their own good, and the rational utilitarian, who seeks the good of all, are both following the reason, and the conflict between them is not resolvable by the reason alone. Sidgwick called the dualism "the profoundest problem in ethics," and his admission of it — his refusal to pretend that the problem had been solved — is the mark of his philosophical integrity.

Philosophy

Sidgwick's philosophy is the model of the impartial examination. His method is the method of the "fundamental question": every moral conviction is examined, its grounds are sought, and the self-evident axioms — the principles that cannot be doubted without contradiction — are identified. The method produced the most rigorous defense of utilitarianism ever written, and the most honest statement of its limits. His philosophy is also the philosophy of the philosophical life: the conviction that the examination of the foundations of ethics is the highest task of the reason, and that the honesty of the examination — the willingness to admit the unresolved problem — is the first duty of the philosopher. The dualism is not a failure of the method but its proof: the reason is honest enough to report the conflict it cannot resolve.

Major Works

Sidgwick's major works are The Methods of Ethics (1874), his masterpiece; The Principles of Political Economy (1883); The Elements of Politics (1891); and the posthumous Outlines of the History of Ethics (1902), still one of the best short histories of moral philosophy.

Famous Quotes

Sidgwick's most quoted lines are the statement of the axiom of benevolence: "The good of any one individual is of no more importance, from the point of view (if I may say so) of the Universe, than the good of any other"; his statement of the dualism: "The practical reason may be said to be divided against itself, in the conflict between the rational egoist and the rational utilitarian"; and his account of the method: "It is my object to examine, at once expository and critical, the different methods of obtaining reasoned convictions as to what ought to be done."

Related Thinkers

Sidgwick's philosophy engages Mill and the utilitarian tradition, which he placed on its most rigorous foundations; Kant, whose categorical imperative he examined and whose ethics he regarded as the rival of utilitarianism; and Aristotle, whose ethics he studied and whose work he considered the great predecessor of his own. His influence runs through the whole of the later ethics: G.E. Moore acknowledged his debt, John Rawls called him "the most able moral philosopher since Aristotle," and Derek Parfit's Reasons and Persons is a direct descendant of his method.

Sources

• Sidgwick, Henry. The Methods of Ethics. London: Macmillan, 1874; 7th ed. 1907.
• Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, "Henry Sidgwick" (plato.stanford.edu/entries/sidgwick)