by Bart Schultz
he was not exactly a historical philosopher, and had nothing better to do, after
expounding the views of an author, than to try and condemn them by the standard
of the latest empiricism. Such a procedure naturally provokes a rejoinder ‘from
the Academy.’ But Mr. Grote’s results had attractions which the answer inevitably
lacks. In the first place, the modern adversary has much less temptation to blur
the outlines of ancient thought than the modern apologist. Further, Mr. Grote’s
manner of direct and simple controversy enhanced the fresh and vivid presen-
tation of the Athenian world which is the great charm of his work. We had the
English Benthamite in the market with Socrates, and in the garden with Plato: and
the result, though incongruous, was enlivening, and stimulative to the historical
imagination. Dr. Maguire’s commentation has no compensating interest: and we
cannot but regret that he has not devoted his scholarship and ability to a work
more adapted to the age in which he lives.
To give a somewhat tangled, but still useful, illustration of Sidgwick’s
position on the Socratic method, consider how he goes about explaining,
in his seminal essays on “The Sophists,” that although the Socrates of
the Gorgias tries to identify sophistical argument with rhetoric, he also
insists that the self-styled teachers of the art of conduct – many taken to
be sophists – are merely too superficial, rather than subversives promot-
ing “a speculative moral scepticism leading to pure egoism in practice”
(LPK ). At a time when popular opinion had become overtly hostile to
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all such “experts,” who were blamed for the decline of Athenian democ-
racy, Plato
has no sympathy whatever with the prevalent fury against the Professors of Con-
duct, the blind selfish impulse of the Athenian public to find some scapegoat to
punish for the general demoralisation which had produced such disastrous con-
sequences. He does not say – as posterity generally have understood him to say –
“It is not Socrates who has done the mischief, but other teachers of virtue with
whom you confound him.” On the contrary, he is anxious to show that the mis-
chief is not attributable to Professors of Conduct at all. It is with this view that
he introduces Callicles, the ‘practical man’ who despised professors, and thinks
that the art of private and public life is to be learnt from men of the world. This
is the sort of man who is likely to hold egoistic and sensual maxims of conduct.
His unaided reflection easily penetrates the incoherences and superficialities of
the popular morality: his immoral principles are weeds that spring up naturally
in the social soil, without any professional planting and watering, so long as the
sun of philosophy is not risen. (LPK –)
The same worry, he continues, is evident in the Republic, which is
eloquent on “the naturalness of the evolution of audacious unrestrained
egoism from conventional morality.” This is a worry that would loom very
large in Sidgwick’s Methods.
At any rate, the Platonic Socrates is not obsessed with the “Professors
of the Art of Conduct,” or with “shielding morality from their destructive
analysis, and reaffirming the objectivity of duty in opposition to their
‘Absolute Subjektivität’.” “Sophistik” is a “scarecrow” put together by
German commentators on Plato, including the illustrious Zeller. In fact,
in “one of the most brilliant and effective passages that Plato ever wrote,”
he “rings forth” that “You, the Public,” are the “Arch-Sophist, it is your
Public Opinion that corrupts youth” (LPK ). As Sidgwick recasts it, to
the charge of the demos against Socrates that he corrupts youth, who then
“make oligarchical revolutions,” the disciple of Socrates may respond, in
effect, “it is you who cause the demoralisation, by your low views of virtue
and of the gods. An acute and spirited youth pushes these to their logical
conclusions: he decides that consummate Injustice is one of the
which the proverb declares to be : and thus inspired he enters
clubs and plots revolutions.” (LPK )
It was not quite in Sidgwick to think that the degeneration of Athenian
politics into oligarchy was the result of the sun of philosophy having
risen, of youth being exposed to too much by way of the “art of words.”
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He rejected the view of German classicists that “the earliest professional
teaching of morality in Greece must have been egoistic and anti-social”
(LPK ). More problematic was the low state of popular morality, the
mocking irreverence toward religion, which led the brighter (and better-
off) youth not to take it seriously. This was a lesson, congenial to his
estimate of the state of Christian faith, that he would carry forth into many
departments of theory and practice. If, in , his friend Green could
chide him for being a “kind of mild Positivist,” this may have been in part
because, although he could not “swallow” Comte’s Religion of Humanity,
he did allow that Comte’s “arguments as to the necessity of Religion of
some sort have great weight with me” (M , ). To Sidgwick’s mind,
the Socratic street evangelist might too readily be supplied with a cross
for his troubles; popular morality was not to be trusted, which was one
of the things that made the dualism of practical reason that much more
disturbing.
But the moral Sidgwick drew here was not one congenial to landed
aristocrats. Although he allowed that the public could be dangerous, the
attitude of Callicles was only a potential problem. Sidgwick never held that
the “tyranny of the majority” was a concern applicable to ancient Athens,
which showed “a remarkable maintenance of liberty in the strict sense
of individual liberty – power of doing what one likes, without dangerous
disorder.” Indeed, the end of Greece’s cultural greatness had nothing to
do with democracy, but was the result of the Macedonian conquest of
.. And besides, speaking of the great Greek philosophers, “while
agreeing that unbridled democracy is bad, our writers all seem to agree
that ordinary selfish oligarchy – the government of the rich minority in
their own interest – is worse.” All classes needed educating, all needed
the benefit of clerisy. And still more importantly, even the philosopher
could go only so far in rejecting common sense.
Indeed, Sidgwick was concerned, more than Mill or Grote, to draw out
a positive, constructive Socrates. At the lea
st, he argues, “there was a time
at which Plato attacked as Sophists rhetorical moralists and politicians,
a later time at which he defined a Sophist as a perverse disputer, and a
time between the two at which he contended against the same sort of
perverse disputations without identifying it with Sophistry.” And this
“seems strongly confirmatory” of the view “that this kind of disputatious
Sophistry is post-Socratic and a degenerative offshoot of Socratic method”
(LPK ). The true Socrates, as he would later put it, had a positive side,
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combining an ardent, skeptical search for knowledge of ultimate good with
a “provisional adhesion to the commonly received view of good and evil,
in all its incoherent complexity” and a “personal firmness, apparently as
easy as it was actually invincible, in carrying out consistently such practical
convictions as he had attained.” Thus,
it is really essential to the Socratic method that the perpetual particular scepticism it develops should be combined with a permanent general faith in the common
sense of mankind. For while he is always attacking common opinion, and showing
it, from its inconsistencies, not to be knowledge, still the premises of his arguments are always taken from the common thought which he shares with his interlocutors,
and the knowledge which he seeks is implicitly assumed to be something that will
harmonise and not overthrow these common beliefs. This is manifested in the
essential place which dialogue holds in his pursuit of truth: it is only through
discourse that he hopes to come to knowledge. (OHE , )
This was a vision of the Socratic method that fell midway between the
more destructive side emphasized by Mill and Grote and the positive, even
mystical unity emphasized by Maurice. And it fits well with recent read-
ings of the Socratic elenchus. Thus, for Gregory Vlastos, Socrates is less
interested in propositions than in lives, for that is the test of seriousness:
One can put on a solemn face, a grave voice, shamming an earnestness one does
not feel. But if one puts oneself on record as saying what one believes, one has
given one’s opinion the weight of one’s life. Since people consider their opinions
more expendable than their life, Socrates wants them to tie their opinions to their
life as a pledge that what they say is what they mean.
Thus, there is a double objective: “to discover how every human be-
ing ought to live and to test that single human being who is doing the
answering – to find out if he is living as he ought to live.” Philosophy and therapy are mixed, often in potent poetic form, and there is a personal risk
in asking “What is justice?” or “What is love?” when in such company.
This much the Apostles well knew – it was practically the foundation of
their faith, the new faith that shaped and was shaped by Henry Sidgwick.
Words were the way to the “true self.”
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() We may be over-conscientious about using words which do not to us convey
what we believe: we must remember that our ideas are more or less incommunicable
to uneducated minds and that what we have out-grown is actually not only ‘best
for them’ but perhaps brings them as near as they can be brought to the truth.
() We may often clothe new ideas in old words: the uneducated will not feel the
inconsistency, and will imbibe the new teaching unconsciously: Mr Maurice is an
excellent pattern in this species of useful ingenuity, though he carries it I think too far. () We must sometimes sacrifice our individuality to a system: if the teaching we are forced to give is better than what would otherwise be given, we must be
satisfied with having chosen the lesser evil.
I must say a word as to my phrase ‘Regulative Beliefs’. I did not mean by this
moral rules only but such parts of our creed as we believe to influence conduct: if we are only sceptical as to any of these beliefs, we should still, I think, teach them, if teaching be our duty: if we have rejected any of such beliefs, generally held, we
should not, except in a very urgent case – alluded to in () – As to speculative beliefs the Athanasian creed offers an excellent example of what I would avoid
teaching. If I had to teach a moral duty such as obedience I think I should teach
the broad rule at one time, and the limitations at another, as a suitable opportunity arose for introducing them. They would be more likely, I imagine, thus to combine
in due proportions in the rustic brain.
Henry Sidgwick, “Instructions for the ‘Initial Society’”
I. Serious Thought
The Initial Society was a very curious group. Formed around , it
included not only Sidgwick and such intimate Rugby friends as Henry
Graham Dakyns, but also such young women as Elisabeth Rhodes
and Sidgwick’s sister Mary. It was, that is, a rare co-ed venture and,
rather paradoxically, a “discussion by correspondence” society, meant to
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duplicate to some degree the virtues of live, candid discussion, in part by
having the members contribute their thoughts on various questions via
letters signed only with their initials. Protective anonymity for what might
prove to be embarrassing statements.
As the instructions just quoted suggest, Sidgwick was the ringleader of
this particular unit of the liberal clerisy. Especially noteworthy is the direct
invocation of Maurice, who had not yet returned to Cambridge, and the
various Mauricean themes – the painful necessity of sometimes sacrificing
individuality to system, the need to formulate educational strategies for
the “rustic brain,” and so forth. The Platonic note is sounded throughout.
Very earnest, very reforming, and very secure in the superiority that comes
through educational achievement of the right sort – such was the creed of
the academic liberal, who sought to liberalize academics and academicize
everyone else. The road to an ounce of humility would be a long and
difficult one, especially when it led through other cultures.
In some respects, Sidgwick’s baldly elitist instructions represent a dis-
tillation of the attitude that he would bring to his many reforming efforts,
and should be kept in mind when trying to reconstruct these. However,
also important is the recognition that the reforming activities themselves
sometimes proved better than the attitudes that set them in motion –
attitude
s that, at least occasionally, changed in consequence.
Much depended on context. Although Sidgwick would certainly be an
avid participant in any number of larger efforts at cultural reform, with
groups ranging from the Initial Society to the Metaphysical Society to
the Cambridge Cabinetmakers Cooperative, his special concern was aca-
demic reform, the field that he knew best and in which he felt he could
make a serious difference. Of course, his Apostolic vision of Socratic
searching was more or less destined to put him at odds not only with
family and such old friends as Benson, but also with the academic estab-
lishment that had established him. If the Apostles had taught him that
his true bent was the investigation of the “deepest problems of human
life,” they had also taught him that such investigations were often unwel-
come in the ancient universities. Both the older Apostles and the newer
academic liberals recognized this unpleasant fact. Donnishness was not
thought.
Thus, it is not surprising that some of Sidgwick’s earlier efforts at
reformism had to do with reforming classics, the very field in which he
lectured. He went public with what would prove to be a lifelong cause in
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the mid-sixties, agitating for the reform of the Classical Tripos to lay more
stress on philosophizing and less on memorization and versification:
[T]here are but few undergraduates who ‘generalize, classify and combine’ for
themselves or ‘collect into rules and principles’ the results of their own observa-
tion. But I do believe they learn close attention, accurate observation, subtlety
of discrimination, and the power of applying the generalizations of others with
judgment and tact, and moreover their verbal memory is cultivated to a consider-
able extent. But the habits of reading reflectively and intelligently, of combining
isolated facts into an organized whole, of following and appreciating a subtle and
continuous argument, of grasping new ideas with facility and just apprehension,
are at least equally valuable: and if they are more difficult to acquire, that is precisely the reason why the highest education in the country ought to make vigorous