by Bart Schultz
are evidential but not final – for example, the “imperfect” certitude that
common sense enjoys because it represents the experience of many gen-
erations, experience suggesting some presumptive evolutionary success.
As Shaver has neatly put it, in defending the consistency of Sidgwick’s
approach, the basic point is simply:
I believe some self-evident proposition p on the basis of seeing its self-evidence
and seeing that it agrees with common-sense morality. If I have no reason to
trust common-sense morality other than noting p, seeing the agreement with
common-sense morality should not increase my confidence in p. But where there
is independent reason for believing in common-sense morality, agreement with it
increases my confidence in p.
To deny that there is any form of intuitionism that can countenance
progress and such means for enhancing our confidence in apparently self-
evident propositions would seem to be both arbitrary and ahistorical.
In fact, there is a larger point to be made here. Brink and Shaver are
agreed that Sidgwick deploys both an intuitionist and a dialectical line of
argument, and in this they part company with some earlier interpreters
who would claim that Sidgwick was really just relying on one or the other.
They differ over whether these arguments are compatible.
Now, Sidgwick himself sometimes allowed that there are two different
epistemological strategies operating in his work. In a late essay, “Public
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Morality,” included in Practical Ethics, he argues that there are “two dis-
tinct ways of treating ethical questions,” the first of which involves “estab-
lishing fundamental principles of abstract or ideal morality” and working
“out deductively the particular rules of duty or practical conceptions of
human good or well-being,” and the second of which involves contem-
plating “morality as a social fact” and endeavoring “by reflective analysis,
removing vagueness and ambiguity, solving apparent contradictions, cor-
recting lapses and supplying omissions, to reduce this body of current
opinions, so far as possible, to a rational and coherent system.” Sidgwick
observes, revealingly, that these methods are “in no way antagonistic” and
that it is reasonable to think that “they must lead to the same goal – a
perfectly satisfactory and practical ideal of conduct.” He also allows that,
unfortunately, given the current state of our knowledge, the results of the
two methods may diverge and a rough compromise may be called for.
(PE ) Given the practical prominence of social verification, there is that
much more reason to accept elements of common sense as a “working
philosophy.”
Sidgwick’s description of these two methods here does not quite corre-
spond to the distinction between the two methods described by Brink and
Shaver; still, there is a rough overlap, and many other commentators have
assumed that his intuitionism entailed something like the first method. But
what is especially important to note is his eclectic attitude, his sense that
truth is one and that our confidence in our beliefs can only be strength-
ened when different people committed to different views about truth and
inquiry end up with the same conclusions. There is a certain unity in his
determined effort to assault the deepest problems with every plausible
method available. Perhaps this is a rather Rawlsian attitude – after all,
even Rawls allows that we may end up wanting to call the convictions that
survive the process of wide reflective equilibrium “intuitive” truths, and,
as noted earlier, some have taken up the suggestion at least to the extent of
casting reflective equilibrium in foundationalist form. But whether or
not this ecumenicalism is in keeping with Rawls’s (shifting) arguments, it
represents a very sober recognition that even those with fairly hardened
and insulated foundationalist epistemological stances are susceptible to
the sense of intellectual progress that comes from discovering a larger
consistency and consensus in the web of belief. The Cartesian criterion
is important, but it is not enough on its own. In an important passage to
which Shaver has drawn attention, Sidgwick responds to the worry that
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self-evident principles cannot admit of “further substantiation”:
[T]his view does not sufficiently allow for the complexity of our intellectual pro-
cesses. If we have once learnt . . . that we are liable to be mistaken in the affirmation of apparently self-evident propositions, we may surely retain this general conviction of our fallibility along with the special impression of the self-evidence of any proposition we may be contemplating; and thus however strong this latter impression may be, we shall still admit our need of some further protection against
the possible failure of our faculty of intuition.
In sum, the larger point to make in defense of the coherence of
Sidgwick’s approach is that Brink’s objections make it impossible to un-
derstand not only how Sidgwick could have attributed probative force to
certain elements of commonsense morality, but also how he could have
attributed justificatory force to the tests of coherence and consensus, and
how he could possibly have made sense of a progressive development in
the account of the self-evident axioms. An interpretive rupture of such
massive dimensions ought to suggest that something has gone awry in
the characterization of the position in question. And there is every reason
to think that this is so, in the case of the Apostolic inquirer who was so
convinced that he could and should learn from other sincere inquirers.
Sidgwick was obviously no Gramscian out to discredit the ideological
mystifications of common sense. But he was the Socratic inquirer who
could not see where else to begin and who had a certain faith in “things
in general” coupled with a terrific capacity for criticizing the particular
beliefs that came his way. His metaphysical reticence, combined with his
fertile skeptical probing, proved to be vastly inspiring for future genera-
tions of philosophers, however reluctant many of them were to recognize
his influence.
Part II. Chaos
I find that more than one critic has overlooked or disregarded the account of
the plan of my treatise, given in the original preface and in [section] of the
introductory chapter: and has consequently supposed me to be writing as an
assailant of two of the methods which I chiefly examine, and a defender of the third.
Thus one of my reviewers seems to regard Book iii. (on Intuitionism) as containing
mere hostile criticism from the outside: another has constructed an article on the
supposition that my principal object is the ‘suppression of Egoism’; a third has
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gone to the length of a pamphlet under the impression (apparently) that the ‘main
argument’ of my treatise is a demonstration of Universalistic Hedonism. . . . And as regards the two hedonistic principles, I do not hold the reasonableness of aiming
at happiness generally with any stronger conviction than I do that of aiming at
one’s own. It was no part of my plan to call special attention to this “Dualism of
the Practical Reason” as I have elsewhere called it: but I am surprised at the extent to which my view has perplexed even those of my critics who have understood it. I
had imagined that they would readily trace it to the source from which I learnt it,
Butler’s well-known Sermons. I hold with Butler that “Reasonable Self-love and
Conscience are the two chief or superior principles in the nature of man,” each of
which we are under a “manifest obligation” to obey: and I do not (I believe) differ
materially from Butler in my view either of reasonable self-love, or – theology
apart – of its relation to conscience.
Sidgwick, Preface to the second edition of The Methods of Ethics,
At any rate, somehow or other, morality will get on; I do not feel particularly
anxious about that. But my special business is not to maintain morality somehow, but to establish it logically as a reasoned system; and I have declared and published that this cannot be done, if we are limited to merely mundane sanctions, owing to
the inevitable divergence, in this imperfect world, between the individual’s Duty
and Happiness.
Sidgwick’s Journal to John Addington Symonds, March , (CWC)
IV. The Dualism of Practical Reason
Sidgwick’s response to his critics, in the Preface to the second edition of
the Methods, is rather puzzling, unless one recognizes that he genuinely
felt that he was struggling, in this book, to impartially negotiate three
methods, all of which he found within himself to some degree, albeit in
evolving form. Nothing made the “Point of View of the Universe” bristle
like the suggestion that he had somehow failed to sympathetically enter
into the views he criticized. Immanent argument was second nature to
him, despite his frustration with Hegel. Or rather, it was not Sidgwick the
man taking sides – it was simply the spirit of impartial criticism inexorably
working its way ahead. After all, although he disliked Hegel’s dialectical
method, he was drawn to his views about the rationality of the universe.
Yet the detachment was not quite sustainable. As we have noted, for all
his success in synthesizing utilitarianism, intuitional morality, and intu-
itionism, Sidgwick allowed that something had gone terribly wrong. The
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chief failure with the Methods, in his eyes, came when he tried to press the
critical examination of the axioms or principles still further, testing their
consistency. The “dualism of practical reason” results when the principle
of prudence is given a somewhat fuller (rather intricate) development, as
the basic principle of the method of rational egoism, which is then cast as
being in conflict with the fundamental principles yielding utilitarianism.
But typically, Sidgwick rather simplifies his presentation of the conflict.
His explication of this dualism in a later commentary on the Methods,
“Some Fundamental Ethical Controversies,” is clear and characteristic.
As he explains, his philosophical intuitionism is such that, along with
(a) a fundamental moral conviction that I ought to sacrifice my own happiness,
if by so doing I can increase the happiness of others to a greater extent than I
diminish my own, I find also (b) a conviction – which it would be paradoxical to
call ‘moral’, but which is none the less fundamental – that it would be irrational
to sacrifice any portion of my own happiness unless the sacrifice is to be somehow
at some time compensated by an equivalent addition to my own happiness.
Each of these convictions has as much clarity and certainty “as the pro-
cess of introspective reflection can give,” not to mention a preponderant,
if implicit, assent “in the common sense of mankind,” and Sidgwick con-
sequently regards this as a “fundamental contradiction in our apparent
intuitions of what is Reasonable in conduct.” Egoism, far from being sup-
pressed, could rival utilitarianism as an independent principle of practical
reason. A substantially similar account can be found in the little essay on
“Utilitarianism,” which could be taken as a summary of his thinking at
the very point when he was completing the first edition of the Methods.
He observes that the relation between utilitarianism and egoism is simpler
than that between utilitarianism and intuitionism, though
it seems hard to state it with perfect exactness, and in fact, it is formulated very
differently by different writers who appear to be substantially agreed, as Clarke,
Kant, and Mill. If the Egoist strictly confines himself to stating his conviction that he ought to take his own happiness or pleasure as his ultimate end, there seems no
opening for an argument to lead him to Utilitarianism (as a first principle). But
if he offers either as a reason for this conviction, or as another form of stating it, the proposition that his happiness or pleasure is objectively ‘desirable’ or ‘a good’, he gives the requisite opening. For the Utilitarian can then point out that his
happiness cannot be more objectively desirable or more a good than the happiness
of any one else; the mere fact (if I may so put it) that he is he can have nothing to do
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with its objective desirability or goodness. Hence starting with his own principles,
he must accept the wider notion of universal happiness or pleasure as representing
the real end of Reason, the absolutely Good or Desirable: as the end, therefore, to
which the action of a reasonable agent ought to be directed.
It is to be observed that the proof of Utilitarianism, thus addressed to the Egoist, is quite different from an exposition of the sanctions of Utilitarian rules; i.e., the pleasures and pains that will follow respectively on their observance and
violation. Obviously such an exposition cannot lead us to accept Utilitarianism as
a first principle, but only as a conclusion deduced from or a special application of
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Egoism. At the same time, the two, proof and sanction, the reason for accepting the
greatest happiness of the greatest number as (in Bentham’s language) the ‘right
and proper’ end of action, and the individual’s motives for making it his end, are
very frequently confused in discussion.
Interestingly, the concluding chapter of the first edition was titled
“The Sanctions of Utilitarianism.” This chapter, which in all editions
has been the main statement of the dualism, was changed in the sec-
ond edition to “The Mutual Relations of the Three Methods,” the title
in all later editions. In the preface to the second edition, he remarks
that “I have yielded as far as I could to the objections that have been
strongly urged against the concluding chapter of the treatise. The main
discussion therein contained still seems to me indispensable to the com-
pleteness of the work; but I have endeavoured to give the chapter a new
aspect by altering its commencement, and omitting most of the concluding
paragraph.”
From this and the other statements just cited, one might conclude that,
to Sidgwick’s mind, the critics had objected to his statement of the dualism
as a problem but had done nothing to solve it. Such frustration may well
have been appropriate, at least in many cases. Consider the conclusion of
Leslie Stephen’s review, from :
The contradiction, in short, which Mr. Sidgwick discovers between different
courses of conduct, both of which are equally reasonable, comes to this: First, he
regards that conduct to be reasonable which would be approved by a perfectly
impartial spectator, that is, by a being whose views would not be coloured by his
own passions. This leads, as he says, to intuitional utilitarianism, or, as I should say, to pure Godwinism. Then he says that that conduct is reasonable which would be
pursued by a man of private affections, but elevated above considerations of time.
Any equal period of existence would be equally valuable to him. And thence, as
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