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iii., iv. of the Ethics. . . . What he gave us there was the Common Sense Morality of Greece, reduced to consistency by careful comparison: given not as something
external to him but as what “we” – he and others – think, ascertained by reflection.
And was not this really the Socratic induction, elicited by interrogation?
Might I not imitate this: do the same for our morality here and now, in the same manner of impartial reflection on current opinion?
Indeed ought I not to do this before deciding on the question whether I had
or had not a system of moral intuitions? At any rate the result would be useful,
whatever conclusion I came to.
So this was the part of my book first written (Book iii., chaps. i.-xi.), and a
certain imitation of Aristotle’s manner was very marked in it at first, and though I
have tried to remove it where it seemed to me affected or pedantic, it still remains
to some extent.
Sidgwick, ME xxi
Aristotelian virtue may have been rejected, but Sidgwick was, as has
been stressed, very much in the grip of Aristotelian inquiry, at least of this
Socratic and Apostolic variety. And nowhere is this more evident than in
his famous analysis of commonsense or dogmatic intuitional morality, from
which the ascent is made to the abstract axioms supporting utilitarianism.
But here again, there are so many different influences at work in
Sidgwick that one may easily find it difficult to locate him in line with philo-
sophical predecessors. The ancients, but also Descartes, Clarke, Butler,
Kant, Reid, and Whewell, in addition to Mill, all loom large in his work,
and one might also note that in the early s, when he was slaving away
again with his German, he found himself struggling to make sense of
Hegel and post-Kantian German philosophy: “Day after day I sit down to
my books with a firm determination to master the German Heraclitus, and
as regularly I depart to my Mittagsessen with a sense of hopeless defeat.
No difficulty of any other writer can convey the least conception even of
the sort of difficulty that I find in Hegel.” Still, “If Hegelianism shows
itself in England I feel equal to dealing with it. The method seems to me a
mistake, and therefore the system a ruin” (M , ).
The residue of this intense stretch of Germanism is clearly evident
in the Methods, especially in the first edition, which, as Schneewind has
noted, includes such transcendental lines as: “we may perhaps say that
this notion of ‘ought’, when once it has been developed, is a necessary
form of our moral apprehension, just as space is now a necessary form of
our sense perception” (ME ). Yet Schneewind is surely right to insist
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that, although “Sidgwick himself points out the Kantian affinities of his
position, he is by no means simply a Kantian. He is deliberately developing
a traditional mode of approach to basic axioms. In doing so, he brings
out distinctly new possibilities within it.” Indeed, so great are the new
possibilities that one suspects that the old Mauricean gambit was at work
in Sidgwick’s methods of composition, such that his own originality often
ended up being masked. Among other things, his intuitionism manages
to avoid most of the metaphysical entanglements usually associated with
that form of epistemology, and his framing of the dualism of practical
reason brings out the potential conflict between morality and self-interest
much more acutely than, say, the work of Butler does, despite his professed
indebtedness to Butler’s handling of the issue.
Now, Sidgwick recognizes that his way of approaching the subject of
ethics could lead to confusion. There is “difficulty in the classification and
comparison of ethical systems; since they often appear to have different
affinities according as we consider Method or Ultimate Reason.” Thus,
In my treatment of the subject, difference of Method is taken as the paramount
consideration: and it is on this account that I have treated the view in which
Perfection is taken to be the Ultimate End as a variety of the Intuitionism which
determines right conduct by reference to axioms of duty intuitively known; while
I have made as marked a separation as possible between Epicureanism or Egoistic
Hedonism, and the Universalistic or Benthamite Hedonism to which I propose
to restrict the term Utilitarianism.
I am aware that these two latter methods are commonly treated as closely
connected: and it is not difficult to find reasons for this. In the first place, they agree in prescribing actions as means to an end distinct from, and lying outside
the actions; so that they both lay down rules which are not absolute but relative,
and only valid if they conduce to the end. Again, the ultimate end is according
to both methods the same in quality, i.e. pleasure; or, more strictly, the maximum
of pleasure attainable, pains being subtracted. Besides, it is of course to a great
extent true that the conduct recommended by the one principle coincides with
that inculcated by the other. Though it would seem to be only in an ideal polity that
‘self-interest well understood’ leads to the perfect discharge of all social duties,
still, in a tolerably well-ordered community it prompts to the fulfilment of most
of them, unless under very exceptional circumstances. And, on the other hand, a
Universalistic Hedonist may reasonably hold that his own happiness is that portion
of the universal happiness which it is most in his power to promote, and which
therefore is most especially entrusted to his charge. And the practical blending
of the two systems is sure to go beyond their theoretical coincidence. It is much
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easier for a man to move in a sort of diagonal between Egoistic and Universalistic
Hedonism, than to be practically a consistent adherent of either. Few men are so
completely selfish, whatever their theory of morals may be, as not occasionally to
promote the happiness of others from natural sympathetic impulse unsupported
by Epicurean calculation. And probably still fewer are so resolutely unselfish as
never to find “all men’s good” in their own with rather too ready conviction. . . .
Nevertheless, it seems to me undeniable that the practical affinity between
Utilitarianism and Intuitionism is really much greater than that between the two
forms of Hedonism. . . . many moralists who have maintained as practically
valid the judgements of right and wrong which the Common Sense of mankind seems
intuitively to enunciate, have yet regarded General Happiness as an end to which
the rules of morality are the best means, and have held that a knowledge of these
rules was implanted by Nature or revealed by God for the attainment of this end.
Such a belief implies that, though I am bound to take, as my ultimate standard in acting, conformity to a rule which is for me absolute, still the natural or Divine reason for the rule laid down is Utilitarian. On this view, the method of Utilitarianism is certainly rejected: the connexion between right action and happiness is not
ascertained by a process of reasoning. But we can hardly say that the Utilitarian
principle is altogether rejected: rather the limitations of the human reason are
supposed to prevent it from apprehending adequately the real connexion between
the true principle and the right rules of conduct. This connexion, however, has
always been to a large extent recognised by all reflective persons. Indeed, so clear
is it that in most cases the observance of the commonly received moral rules
tends to render human life tranquil and happy, that even moralists (as Whewell)
who are most strongly opposed to Utilitarianism have, in attempting to exhibit
the “necessity” of moral rules, been led to dwell on utilitarian considerations.
(ME –)
There is a great deal of Sidgwick packed into the above passage. The
view that “practical conflict, in ordinary human minds, is mainly between
Self-interest and Social Duty however determined” is virtually a defin-
ing theme of the Methods, as is the view that the intuitionist method of
someone like Whewell tacitly appeals to utilitarian considerations, which
may, indeed, be more or less unconscious. Also evident here is the con-
troversial way in which Sidgwick subsumes the moral content of ancient
perfectionism – insofar as it is at all determinate – under intuitionism, and
the way in which he is really concerned, in the final analysis, with both
methods and principles. For it is one of the most prominent theses of the
book that intuitionism of the Whewellian variety does not deliver on its
claims for the validity of commonsense moral rules. In fact, running in
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parallel with the three methods we find several different understandings
of the term “intuitionism,” and the shifting between the use of the term to
designate the Whewellian method of ethics and the use of it to designate
the form of epistemology that Sidgwick endorses and applies to ultimate
principles is one of the least felicitous features of Sidgwick’s organization
of his subject matter. But because he did organize his material in this way,
it is easier to get a handle on the drift of his argument by tracking the va-
rietes of intuitionism to which he makes reference. In this connection one
confronts what Sidgwick, at least, regarded as the more definite results of
his inquiry.
Indeed, Sidgwick allows that the three methods might be called “natu-
ral methods rationalised,” since plain persons “commonly seem to guide
themselves by a mixture of different methods, more or less disguised un-
der ambiguities of language” (ME ). In part, therefore, his task is to sort
out the jumble of different and incompatible methods that often get mixed
together in ordinary moral reasoning, and to make it clear how these are
alternatives between which we are “necessarily forced to choose” when
we attempt “to frame a complete synthesis of practical maxims and to act
in a perfectly consistent manner” (ME ). Although many seem to think
that conscience delivers immediate judgments on the rightness of par-
ticular acts (“perceptional” or “ultra” or even “aesthetic” intuitionism),
Sidgwick himself has “no doubt that reflective persons, in proportion to
their reflectiveness, come to rely rather on abstract universal intuitions
relating to classes of cases conceived under general notions.” That is, the
particular judgment, or truth, depends upon the more general truth, in a
familiar form of abstract ascent from cases to rules. There is no one system
of this type, but rather a range of views of different degrees of sophisti-
cation, from the commonsense morality of the Ten Commandments to
the philosophically more developed “dogmatic intuitionism” of Whewell,
which shares much with the better-known Kantian system.
The basic idea of this form of intuitional morality, which is not unlike the
commonsensical view of the deliverances of conscience prevalent today, is
that “the practically ultimate end of moral actions” is “their conformity to
certain rules or dictates of Duty unconditionally prescribed,” which rules
are discerned with a “really clear and finally valid intuition” (ME ,
). One ought to do one’s duty because one can just see that duty is
something that ought to be done, that it is fitting to one’s nature as a
rational being. Every rational being can apprehend this, though the moral
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theorist can still play a special role in refining and developing the system
of basic moral duties, rendering it a progressively better approximation
to the truth. Whewell, for instance, holds that the general moral rules –
such rules as telling the truth (veracity), promise keeping (good faith), and
justice – are
implicit in the moral reasoning of ordinary men, who apprehend them adequately
for most practical purposes, and are able to enunciate them roughly; but that to
state them with proper precision requires a special habit of contemplating clearly
and steadily abstract moral notions. It is held that the moralist’s function then
is to perform this process of abstract contemplation, to arrange the results as
systematically as possible, and by proper definitions and explanations to remove
vagueness and prevent conflict. (ME )
Of course, for Sidgwick, this is precisely what the dogmatic intuitional
moralists do not succeed in doing; the process of the philosophical re-
finement of common sense needs to go much further. As he explains in
a response to a review of the Methods by Henry Calderwood, another
dogmatic intuitional moralist:
If I ask myself whether I see clearly and distinctly the self-evidence of any par-
ticular maxims of duty, as I see that of the formal principles “that what is right
for me must be right for all persons in precisely similar circumstances” and “that
I ought to prefer the greater good of another to my own lesser good”: I have no
doubt whatever that I do not. I am conscious of a strong impression, an opin
-
ion on which I habitually act without hesitation, that I ought to speak truth, to
perform promises, to requite benefits, &c., and also of powerful moral sentiments prompting me to the observance of these rules; but on reflection I can now clearly
distinguish such opinions and sentiments from the apparently immediate and cer-
tain cognition that I have of the formal principles above mentioned. But I could
not always have made this distinction; and I believe that the majority of moral
persons do not make it: most “plain men” would probably say, at any rate on the
first consideration of the matter, that they saw the obligations of Veracity and
Good Faith as clearly and immediately as they saw those of Equity and Rational
Benevolence. How then am I to argue with such persons? It will not settle the
matter to tell them that they have observed their own mental processes wrongly,
and that more careful introspection will show them the non-intuitive character
of what they took for intuitions; especially as in many cases I do not believe that
the error is one of misobservation. Still less am I inclined to dispute the “primi-
tiveness” or “spontaneousness” or “originality” of these apparent intuitions. On
the contrary, I hold that here, as in other departments of thought, the primitive
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spontaneous processes of the mind are mixed with error, which is only to be re-
moved gradually by comprehensive reflection upon the results of these processes.
Through such a course of reflection I have endeavored to lead my readers in chaps.
– of Book III of my treatise: in the hope that after they have gone through it
they may find their original apprehension of the self-evidence of moral maxims
importantly modified.
Such remarks might well suggest how, for all his critical commentary on
ancient perfectionism, Sidgwick’s procedure does indeed, as he insisted,
have distinct affinities with Aristotle’s. Indeed, Sidgwick was ever ready
to insist that we must accept
Aristotle’s distinction between logical or natural priority in cognition and priority in the knowledge of any particular mind. We are thus enabled to see that a proposition may be self-evident, i.e. may be properly cognisable without being viewed