by Bart Schultz
with Mr. George Wyndham acted as secretary, and later Professor James Ward.
Sidgwick had early in its progress been asked to join the Society, but the tendency
of an exciting evening to produce a wakeful night made him hesitate. However,
his interest in the questions discussed, and his old love of good discussion, were
irresistible, and he was elected a member, first joining in the discussion in .
(M )
Wilfrid Ward (–) is often described as a “biographer and
Catholic apologist,” in part because of his massive, loving biography of
his father, William George Ward, known as “Ideal” Ward, who had been
a leader of the Oxford Movement. Ward and Sidgwick knew each other as
members of their London club, the famous Athenaeum, and grew friendly
during the nineties. Sidgwick much admired the two-volume biography,
William George Ward and the Oxford Movement () and William George
Ward and the Catholic Revival (), and contributed some reminiscences
to the latter volume, based on his participation with Ward senior in the
old Metaphysical Club.
Clearly, the Synthetic Society featured many of the old comrades. It
was in connection with his contributions to the Society, of which he
became the “heart and soul” (as well as vice president), that Gore had
praised Sidgwick’s “perpetual hopefulness.” The designation was cer-
tainly apt, at least in this context, for here was Sidgwick again engaging the
“deepest problems,” rather than trying to forget the “blackness of the end.”
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There was much highly philosophical back-and-forth with Ward, and with
Balfour. Thus, he wrote to the latter, on April , :
I agree broadly with your attack on Haldane: except that I do not, I fear, grasp his
position sufficiently to judge precisely how far your attack hits. I thought it was a fundamental doctrine of Hegelian Logic that what is logically prior is – being more abstract – less real than what is logically posterior. Yet H’s argument seems based on the opposite assumption. The Neo-Hegelian epistemology is a Proteus that
eludes my grasp: it is always appearing in new form! . . . I also agree with much of Rashdall, whose turn of mind suits mine – only I am more realistic & common
sensical as regards the physical world than he, or perhaps than you – I mean than
you would be if forced to dogmatize.
Whatever “realism” Sidgwick may have contemplated was of course
only of the mildest and most nonreductive form. In some very inter-
esting (slightly earlier) notes on Balfour’s theological/ethical views, he
stated:
But is Reverence incompatible with Naturalism? It did not seem so to me years
ago when I wrote M. of E. p. .
It still seems to me that the feeling with which we contemplate the essential
condition of the wellbeing of that larger whole of which the individual feels himself a member will be not without an element of what we call reverence.
Reverence, a prayerful attitude, these were things Sidgwick would not
give up, elements of what he took to be the religiously oriented psychology
of human beings. A materialistic science dismissive of such things was
simply another form of dogmatism. In a letter to Ward from the same
year, Sidgwick elaborated:
As regards the two points mentioned in your letter, I think I agree mainly with
Balfour on the first, and with you, to a great extent on the second.
That is () I am not able to separate my conception of the external world into
“physical” and “metaphysical,” in the manner which you seem to regard as simple
and accepted. I do not say that a distinction may not be drawn between the two ways of regarding and investigating matter; but that it is much more difficult
to draw than is commonly supposed by students of physical science who have
a turn for philosophizing, and who find it a convenient way of gliding over the
contradictions into which their philosophizing tends to involve them, to put their
view into two compartments. This kind of dualism always reminds me of the more
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simpleminded people who are content to regard a proposition as “true in theory
but not in practice.”
I do not of course say this with regard to your view, but only to indicate “where I am” in the matter.
On the other hand, as regards Reason and Authority, I am on the whole de-
cidedly with you: I am thinking of printing something on the subject. If I do,
I will send it you; if not, I will send you the rough notes suggested by your
article.
The work referred to in this last paragraph is surely what became
“Authority, Scientific and Theological,” a paper read to the Synthetic
Society on February , , and included, along with another paper for
the Society, “On the Nature of the Evidence for Theism,” in the Memoir.
Both papers testify to the continuity of Sidgwick’s thinking on the “deep-
est problems.” By “authority,” he maintains, is usually meant “a ground or
source of human belief,” the “implied antithesis” of which is not “Reason
simply” but “the independent reason of one or more individuals.” Thus,
in theological debates, the contrast between propositions that one believes
because, for example, they are “self-evident” and those that one believes
“because of the decisions of other persons that they ought to be believed”
ends up getting muddled because of confusion over the meaning of the
second view. The authority involved in the latter view can be understood
“in two essentially distinct ways: either (a) because I believe them to be
held by others with better knowledge than myself of the matters in ques-
tion, or (b) because other persons command me to hold them, and I am
afraid that they will do me some harm if I do not obey.” (M ) Naturally,
as ever, Sidgwick links the latter to a supposed theological “consensus.”
And he even goes on to appropriate some of the wording from his earlier
writings:
Taking Authority in this sense [as opposed only to “the independent exercise of
private reason”], I think that its place in determining the actual beliefs, speculative and practical, of ordinary educated persons, is not only very large, but tends to
grow with the growth of science and civilisation, on account of the increasing
specialisation in the pursuit of knowledge which is an inevitable accompaniment
of this growth. Probably there never was a time when the amount of beliefs held
by an average educated person, undemonstrated and unverified by himself, was
greater than it is now. But it is no less true – and it much concerns us here to
no
te – that men are more and more disposed only to accept authority of a particular
kind: the authority, namely, that is formed and maintained by the unconstrained
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agreement of individual experts, each of whom is believed to be seeking truth with
unfettered independence, and declaring what he has found with perfect openness
and the greatest attainable precision. This authority, therefore, is conceived as
the authority of the living mind of humanity, and as containing within itself, by
the very nature of its composition, adequate guarantees for the elimination of
error by continual self-questioning and self-criticism; it is not an authority – such as that of our Supreme Court of Appeal was once held to be – that refuses to
question its own past decisions; on the contrary, it encourages to the utmost any
well-reasoned criticism of the most fundamental among them. It is for this kind
of authority that the wonderful and steady progress of physical knowledge leads
educated persons to entertain a continually increasing respect – accompanied,
I think, by a corresponding distrust of any other kind of authority in matters
intellectual. (M –)
As he put it in another letter to Ward, the
struggle between Freedom and Authority, in this department, must certainly go on,
and I do not pretend to forecast its ultimate issue, though quite willing to discuss
sympathetically any suggestion of a modus vivendi between the two principles: but my special point is that it will be carried on under better conditions, intellectual
and moral, if we uphold and enforce the simple ethical demand for sincerity in
solemn utterances of theological beliefs. (CWC)
Deference to genuine Apostolic inquirers who say what they mean
was what Sidgwick had in mind, for a culture cultivating both literature
and science, and the social epistemological point is underscored by the
more formal treatment given in other late essays, notably “The Criteria of
Truth and Error,” with appendix, reprinted in the posthumous Lectures
on the Philosophy of Kant and Other Philosophical Lectures and Essays.
These works – some of Sidgwick’s clearest on formal epistemology –
reiterate many of the explications of his Methods that he had supplied
in earlier years. Thus, there are extensive discussions of Descartes and
the failings of the Cartesian criterion: “perhaps the most important case
of the kind is a conflict between a universal judgment accepted as self-
evident, and the particular judgments of perception, or inference from
these.” Consider, he urges, the “fate of the belief that ‘a thing cannot act
where it is not’.” This apparently self-evident belief “was found to con-
flict apparently with the hypothesis of universal gravitation, which rested
on a multitude of particular observations of the position of the heav-
enly bodies; and this has, I think, destroyed any appearance of intuitive
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certainty in it for most of us.” (LPK ) By way of further illustration, he
recalls
the method by which in my work on Ethics Common Sense is led to Utilitarianism.
This was, indeed, suggested by the method of Socrates, whose ethical discussion
brought to light latent conflicts of this kind. It was evident (e.g.) to Polemarchus
that ‘it was just to give every man his own’; but being convinced that it is not just to restore to a mad friend his own sword, his faith in his universal maxim was
shaken.
Now it is possible that what I have called the Intuitive Verification might ex-
clude error in some of these cases, one of the conflicting intuitions being due to
inadvertence. If we had examined more carefully the supposed universal truth,
or the supposed particular fact of observation, we might have detected the inad-
vertence, or at any rate have seen that we had mistaken for an intuition what was
merely inference or belief accepted on authority. But the history of thought shows
that I cannot completely rely upon the Intuitive Verification alone. (LPK )
What is crucial, of course, is to supplement “the Intuitive or Cartesian
Verification” with “a second, which I will call the Discursive Verification,
the object of which is to exclude the danger of the kind of conflict I have
indicated.” And this in turn calls for the third epistemological criterion.
The Cartesian criterion “lays stress on the need of clearness, distinct-
ness, precision, in our thought,” and the discursive criterion “brings into
prominence the value of system” – of special interest to philosophers, since
this “is the kind of service which Philosophy may be expected to render
to the sciences.” What to do, however, when the conflict is not simply be-
tween two apparently self-evident beliefs held by one person, but rather
involves the beliefs of different persons? Then the philosophic mind de-
mands that “the conflicting intuitor has an inferior faculty of envisaging
truth in general or this kind of truth,” and if this cannot be shown, then
one “must reasonably submit to a loss of confidence in any intuition of his
own that thus is found to conflict with another’s.”
We are thus led to see the need of a third Verification, to supplement the two former; we might call it the Social or Oecumenical Verification. It completes the process
of philosophical criteria of error which I have been briefly expounding. This last,
as we are all aware, with many persons, probably the majority of mankind, is the
Criterion or Verification practically most prominent; if they have such verification
in the case of any belief, neither lack of self-evidence in the belief itself, nor lack of consistency when it is compared with other beliefs, is sufficient to disturb their
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confidence in it. And its practical importance, even for more reflective and more
logical minds, grows with the growth of knowledge, and the division of intellectual
labour which attends it; for as this grows, the proportion of the truths that enter
into our systematisation, which for any individual have to depend on the consensus of experts, continually increases. In fact, in provisionally taking Common Sense as the point of departure for philosophical construction, it was this criterion that we
implicitly applied. The Philosopher, I conceive, at the present day, starts with the
particular sciences; they give the matter which it is his business – I do not say his whole business, but a part of his business – to systematise. But how is he to know
what matter to take? He cannot, in
this age, be an expert in all sciences; he must,
then, provisionally accept the judgment of Common Sense. Provisionally, I say, not finally; in working out his Epistemological principles in application to the sciences, he may correct or define more precisely some fundamental conception, point out a
want of cogency in certain methods, limit the scope of certain premises and certain
conclusions. Especially will he be moved to do this when he finds confusion and
conflict in comparing and trying to reduce to system the fundamental conceptions,
premises, and methods of different sciences. (LPK )
But this is to say that the growth of modern science and academic spe-
cialization reinforces the old Socratic lesson, absorbed by the Apostles, that
one can and must seek to learn from others, in a fellowship of high-minded
inquiry. Philosophy specializes in employing the discursive criterion, aim-
ing at system, but the “special characteristic” of Sidgwick’s philosophy
“is to keep the importance of the others in view.” Given the nature of the
controversies surrounding the Methods, addressed in Chapter , it would
be very difficult to deny that this was a special characteristic of his work
throughout.
Hence, the more or less constant – and, alas, sometimes all-too-sinister –
invocation of the “consensus of experts” in his political work concerned
with spiritual expansion. Coupled with this, however, is the slight but
increasing endorsement of a kind of practical pluralism, a faint proto-
political liberal sense of the enduring nature of difference. In March of
, he would write to Ward that he was glad to hear that the discussion
of Oliver Lodge’s paper seemed to Lodge to “make for approximation to
agreement,” since “the phrase exactly expresses what I think we ought to
aim at: it would be idle to expect more” (CWC). And coupled with this
is some growing sense, still faint, of the limits of the philosopher in his
study. Thus, he has not forgotten his message in “The Aims of an Ethical
Society,” which enjoined the moral philosopher to “study with reverent
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