Henry Sidgwick- Eye of the Universe
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inspired the work and proved to be too much for it, indeed was the chief
reason for Sidgwick’s postpartum sense of failure. Although it is certainly
correct that he worked through many of the arguments of the Methods in
connection with his resignation crisis, the larger conflict looming in the
background of that casuistical exercise was, after all, the familiar one of
self-sacrifice versus self-interest – or better, how far self-interest could
be expanded to cover self-sacrifice, reconciling the two. Here was a clear-
cut case of the uselessness of mundane experience in harmonizing the
discordant elements of human life. Here, too, was the main reason for the
distance that he felt from the earlier utilitarians, even from Mill.
What is missing from Sidgwick’s explications of how the Methods came
to be is not so much the core philosophical matter as its social significance,
and the personal side of its social significance. For the self-sacrifice of
“practical men who do not philosophise” was, to Sidgwick’s mind, bound
up with religion, and the future of religion was highly insecure. Besides,
even if the sentiments of humanity grew increasingly sympathetic as a
matter of sociology, this was not sufficient to rationally legitimate the
cultural changes that he had worked so diligently to further. Everything
he sought to advance, with his educational and cultural reformism, was
built around the hope that the sun of philosophy might rise without going
immediately into eclipse.
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II. The Methods of Ethics: Method, Good, Pleasure
The Methods departs from classical utilitarianism in a number of ways. It centers on an examination of the accepted moral opinions and modes of thought of
common sense. It involves a rejection of empiricism and dismisses the issue of
determinism as irrelevant. It emphasizes an attempt to reconcile positions seen
by utilitarians as deeply opposed to each other. It finds ethical egoism as rea-
sonable a utilitarianism; and it concludes with arguments to show that, because
of this, no full reconciliation of the various rational methods for reaching moral
decisions is possible and therefore that the realm of practical reason is probably
incoherent.
J. B. Schneewind, “Sidgwick and the Cambridge Moralists”
Among other things I am altered: and have a terror of time and change. I feel that
my Theism is rather like that of Beranger’s Epicurean: God has been so good to
me, or (as Clough says) “thank somebody.” But I certainly ought in one respect
to get the sympathy of the orthodox: as I do not much believe in my own practical
reason. I think that with great trouble one may come to calculate the sources of
such happiness as may then be found to be nearly valueless to us. Or better, in the
development of human nature, the incalculable element increases at a more rapid
ratio than the calculable, so that though the latter is always increasing it is (after a certain advance in intellect) always getting comparatively less.
And I am to lecture on Ethics next term! just when I am inclined to say to
Philosophy “malim cum poetis insanire, quam cum istis hominibus rationaliter
sentire.”
Sidgwick to H. G. Dakyns, (CWC)
The architectonic of the Methods is not user-friendly. Given the com-
plex composition and dense argument of Sidgwick’s masterpiece, the
hermeneutic circle of interpretation can quickly come to feel like a surreal
treadmill, with the parts melting into wholes and the wholes melting into
parts in an endless ordeal that never seems to involve forward movement.
The Preface to the first edition of the Methods begins rather disarmingly:
“In offering to the public a new book upon a subject so trite as Ethics, it
seems desirable to indicate clearly at the outset its plan and purpose.”
Sidgwick then proposes to sketch its distinctive characteristics “nega-
tively,” by saying what the book is not:
It is not, in the main, metaphysical or psychological: at the same time it is not
dogmatic or directly practical: it does not deal, except by way of illustration, with the history of ethical thought: in a sense it might be said to be not even critical,
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since it is only quite incidentally that it offers any criticism of the systems of
individual moralists (ME vii).
On the positive side, the book claims
to be an examination, at once expository and critical, of the different methods of
obtaining reasoned convictions as to what ought to be done which are to be found –
either explicit or implicit – in the moral consciousness of mankind generally: and
which, from time to time, have been developed, either singly or in combination,
by individual thinkers, and worked up into the systems now historical. (ME vii)
In pursuing this examination, Sidgwick avoids the venerable task of in-
quiring “into the Origin of the Moral Faculty” by appealing to the “simple
assumption (which seems to be made implicitly in all ethical reasoning)
that there is something under any given circumstances which it is right
or reasonable to do, and that this may be known.” The moral faculty he
will leave to psychology; moreover, he will make “no further assumption
as to the nature of the object of ethical knowledge,” so that his “treatise
is not dogmatic: all the different methods developed in it are expounded
and criticised from a neutral position, and as impartially as possible.”
(ME vii–viii) Indeed, this by now familiar phrasing is absolutely central
to how he conceives his task:
[T]hus, though my treatment of the subject is, in a sense, more practical than
that of many moralists, since I am occupied from first to last in considering how
conclusions are to be rationally reached in the familiar matter of our common daily
life and actual practice; still, my immediate object – to invert Aristotle’s phrase –
is not Practice but Knowledge. I have thought that the predominance in the minds
of moralists of a desire to edify has impeded the real progress of ethical science:
and that this would be benefited by an application to it of the same disinterested
curiosity to which we chiefly owe the great discoveries of physics. It is in this spirit that I have endeavoured to compose the present work: and with this view I have
desired to concentrate the reader’s attention, from first to last, not on the practical results to which our methods lead, but on the methods themselves. I have wished
to put aside temporarily the urgent need which we all feel of finding and adopting
the true method of determining what we ought to do; and to consider simply what
conclusions will be rationally reached if we start with certain e
thical premises,
and with what degree of certainty and precision. (ME viii)
Such statements of purpose have been much admired by prominent
twentieth-century ethical theorists, notably by John Rawls. In his Foreword
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to the Hackett edition of the Methods, and elsewhere, Rawls praised the
work not only for its philosophically sophisticated presentation of classical
utilitarianism, but also for being “the first truly academic work in moral
philosophy which undertakes to provide a systematic comparative study
of moral conceptions, starting with those which historically and by present
assessment are the most significant.” But some caution must be exer-
cised in drawing such comparisons between the Methods and more recent
moral theory. If it is true that Sidgwick does in proto-Rawlsian fashion
seek to set aside many tangled metaphysical issues, appealing only to a
“minimal metaethics,” it is also true that he often conceives his project
in quite different terms from those of philosophers working in the “great
expansion” of substantive ethical theorizing in the late twentieth century.
For example, by a “method” Sidgwick means something rather differ-
ent from a “theory” or a “principle.” A method is a rational procedure
“for determining right conduct in any particular case,” which is to say, for
determining the rightness of one’s act by determining in a reasoned way
whether it has those right-making properties singled out by what is taken
to be justifiable principle. Just as an ultimate principle does not in and of
itself show how to determine whether some particular act is right, so a
method does not in and of itself vindicate the ultimate principle to which
reasoned appeal is made. One might think that the universe is the work
of a benevolent, utilitarian God, with everything tending to the greatest
happiness, but also hold that one’s own lot, practically speaking, is to fol-
low God’s commandments absolutely rather than try to second-guess the
Divine calculation of consequences – thus, one’s method would be deon-
tological, but this would rest on a (theological) utilitarian axiom. Similarly,
one might hold an egoistic ultimate principle, but think that one’s own
good is best secured not by empirical calculation of probable benefits but
by acting in strict accordance with certain evolutionary or psychological
directives (a case Sidgwick describes as “deductive hedonism”).
At any rate, this distinction is evident when Sidgwick explains that his
object is
to expound as clearly and as fully as my limits will allow the different methods
of Ethics that I find implicit in our common moral reasoning; to point out their
mutual relations; and where they seem to conflict, to define the issue as much as
possible. In the course of this endeavour I am led to discuss the considerations
which should, in my opinion, be decisive in determining the adoption of ethical
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first principles: but it is not my primary aim to establish such principles; nor,
again, is it my primary aim to supply a set of practical directions for conduct.
(ME )
He is, as it turns out, more concerned about ultimate principles than such
remarks let on, but it is nonetheless important to appreciate that he does not
simply collapse together the notions of method, theory, and principle. Al-
though a “method” is more abstract than a “decision-procedure” and can
encompass “indirect” strategies, this notion does give the book a practical,
“how is one to live” or “what is to be done” orientation, despite Sidgwick’s
aversion to practical edification.
The “methods” that come to the fore in this treatment are, of course,
egoism (that one ought to pursue one’s own greatest good), “dogmatic”
intuitionism (of the Whewellian variety, enjoining obedience to such com-
mon moral precepts or duties or virtues as veracity, promise keeping, jus-
tice, etc.), and utilitarianism (that one ought to seek the greatest good of
the whole, of all sentient creatures) – the primary topics, respectively, of
Books II, III, and IV. These books are bracketed by Book I, which gives
an initial survey of the entire line of argument to come, and a “Concluding
Chapter” on the “mutual relations of the three methods.”
This basic structure was manifest in the first edition and preserved in
every edition up to and through the last, seventh one (although Sidgwick’s
final revisions, for the sixth edition, went only through page of the
fifth). Some of the significant changes in later editions involved putting
the treatment of “Kant’s Conception of Free Will” in a separate appendix
(the only such appendix) and toning down the pessimism of the con-
cluding chapter (which is also retitled and set apart). But in fact, as will
be noted, there were many others as well, some especially important for
understanding Sidgwick’s shifting views on the nature of practical rea-
son and on ultimate good and its relation to virtue. In the Preface to the
second edition, for example, which was also included in the separately
published A Supplement to the First Edition of the Methods of Ethics, he
stated that he had, among other things, thought it desirable to explain
“further my general view of the ‘Practical Reason,’ and of the fundamen-
tal notion signified by the terms ‘right,’ ‘ought,’ etc.” and that this had
led him to rework Book III, Chapter on “Philosophical Intuitionism.”
This chapter “has been suggestively criticised by more than one writer,”
and Sidgwick “thought it expedient to give a more direct statement of my
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own opinions; instead of confining myself (as I did in the first edition)
to comments on those of other moralists.” Some commentators, notably
Earnest Albee and Schneewind, have remarked that after the first edition
Sidgwick eliminated some rather helpful references to, for example, Kant
and Clarke, though all admit that that edition was extremely minimalistic
in its treatment of such fundamental issues.
It has often been said, and with justice, that the treatment of utilitarian-
ism in the Methods is second in importance only to Bentham’s Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation and J. S. Mill’s Utilitarianism, and that
in terms of philosophical sophistication, it outstrips both together.
Yet, as previously remarked, and as the opening passage from Schneewind
so strongly urges, Sidgwick’s work often clashes with the earlier utilitar-
ian tradition. As Schneewind has encapsulated it, “the central thought of
the Methods of Ethics is that morality is the embodiment of the demands
reason makes on practice under the conditions of human life, and that
the problems of philosophical ethics are the problems of showing how
practical reason is articulated into these demands.” Put more fully:
The starting-point of Sidgwick’s argument is the demonstration, through rea-
soning and appeal to introspection, that we have a unique, irreducible concept of
“being a reason for” as it applies to action and to desire. From this concept we learn that our own ability to reason involves a unique kind of demand on both the active
and the sentient aspects of our nature, the demand that our acts and desires be
reasonable. Since, therefore, it must be possible to give reasons for our desires and actions, a complex argument involving the elimination of various principles which
might serve as the ultimate determinant of such reasons leads to the conclusion
that a maximizing consequentialist principle must be the most basic principle of
rationality in practice. Further eliminative argument shows that the end set for us
by this principle must be interpreted hedonistically. These arguments bring out
what the essence of rationality in practice is, given the facts of human existence.
Further argument shows that it is possible to embody this rationality in daily life
through a code like that exemplified in ordinary moral belief. At least it is possible up to a point.
The sticking point is, of course, the dualism of practical reason, which
forces Sidgwick “to the unhappy conclusion that the best that reason can
do in coping with the actuality of human nature in the world as it exists, is
to impose demands which in the end are incompatible” and to show “that
the problem his historical analysis leads him to take as central to modern
ethics cannot be fully resolved.”
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