Henry Sidgwick- Eye of the Universe
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. This essay, part of a much larger set of manuscripts, has been edited and published by Louis Crompton in The Journal of Homosexuality, vol. , no. (Summer ) and vol. , no. (Fall ); all references are to that edition.
. Louis Crompton, Byron and Greek Love: Homophobia in th-Century England
(Swaffham: The Gay Men’s Press, ; first published in ), pp. –. I am
much indebted to Crompton’s classic work and to Richard Dellamora’s Masculine
Desire: The Sexual Politics of Victorian Aestheticism (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, ).
. Mary Lyndon Shanley, “The Subjection of Women,” in The Cambridge Compan-
ion to Mill, ed. J. Skorupski (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, ),
p. .
. “The Subjection of Women,” in Sexual Equality: Writings of John Stuart Mill,
Harriet Taylor Mill, and Helen Taylor, ed. A. Robson and J. Robson (London:
University of Toronto Press, ), p. .
. “John Stuart Mill’s Liberal Feminism,” Philosophical Studies (), pp. –
.
. When Russell, during the First World War, was composing his Principles of Social Reconstruction, he began by explaining how the traditional liberalism of Bentham and Mill too readily assumed that people generally knew what motivated them,
whereas in truth they generally did not. See Ray Monk, Bertrand Russell: The
Spirit of Solitude (London: Jonathan Cape, ), p. .
. Much as I disagree with Margaret Urban Walker’s remarks on Sidgwick, in
her Moral Understandings: A Feminist Study of Ethics (New York: Routledge,
), I am inclined to think that she raises many of the right questions. See my
“Sidgwick’s Feminism,” in “Sidgwick ,” Utilitas , no. (November ), pp. –.
. Bryce, “Henry Sidgwick,” in his Studies in Contemporary Biography (New York: Books for Libraries Press, ; first published ), p. . Bryce, as Chapter
will show, was a particularly important friend of Sidgwick’s, and his work often
affords more concrete understandings of issues that Sidgwick left dryly abstract.
. See, for example, the contributions by Schultz, Frankena, Mackie, Deigh, and
Brink in Essays on Henry Sidgwick, ed. Bart Schultz (New York: Cambridge Uni-
versity Press, ). It was my work on this volume that suggested to me most of
the interpretive questions addressed in the present work.
. See Crisp’s helpful recent defense of Sidgwick’s insights on this count, “The
Dualism of Practical Reason,” Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society , new series (/), pp. –. For a lucid short statement of Sidgwick’s dilemma, see
J. L. Mackie, The Miracle of Theism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, ),
pp. –.
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. These lines are from the chapter on “The Morality of Strife,” which was originally an address to the London Ethical Society. Ironically, Rawls’s account of
Sidgwick’s views appears not to recognize these elements of a theory of justice.
. The roots of the Jamesian view, evident in both his own Principles of Psychology () and the work of his student W. E. B. DuBois, have not often been traced
back to these works.
. See M. Foucault, The History of Sexuality (New York: Vintage, ), p. . Unfortunately, Foucault’s understanding of utilitarianism was slight, and he appears
not even to have known about Bentham’s work on pederasty.
. Symonds’s most revealing pronouncements are to be found in In the Key of
Blue (New York: Macmillan, ), Essays Speculative and Suggestive (London: Chapman and Hall, ), Studies in Sexual Inversion (New York: AMS, ,
a reprint of a privately printed edition of , bringing together “A Problem in
Greek Ethics” and “A Problem in Modern Ethics”), and, most importantly, his
memoirs, published as The Memoirs of John Addington Symonds: The Secret Homo-
sexual Life of a Leading Nineteenth-Century Man of Letters, edited and introduced by Phyllis Grosskurth (New York: Random House, ).
. LindaDowling’sexcellent HellenismandHomosexualityinVictorianOxford(Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, ) goes far to situate Symonds in the political
context of Jowett’s Oxford.
. The allusion here is to Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick’s Epistemology of the Closet
(Berkeley: University of California Press, ); her earlier work Between Men:
English Literature and Male Homosocial Desire (New York: Columbia University
Press, ) included a very dismissive account of Symonds that, like schol-
arly work on Sidgwick, quite neglected his actual political practices and circle
of friends.
. For a “textbook” treatment, see Utilitarianism and Its Critics, ed. J. Glover (New York: Macmillan, ). However, in considering the broader significance of this
issue, it is also important to locate Sidgwick within Habermas’s classic narrative
concerning the growth and decay of the liberal public sphere, as bringing into
sharper relief many of the tensions that Habermas finds in Mill between the quan-
tity and quality of public democratic discourse. See J. Habermas, The Structural
Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society, trans. T. Burger and F. Lawrence (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, ).
. Williams, “The Point of View of the Universe: Sidgwick and the Ambitions of
Ethics,” reprinted in his Making Sense of Humanity, and Other Philosophical Essays (New York: Cambridge University Press, ), affords the prime example of such
criticism, cast in a purely theoretical mode.
. Some help can be gained from Christopher Harvie’s The Lights of Liberalism
(London: Lane, ); Stefan Collini, Donald Winch, and John Burrow, That
Noble Science of Politics: A Study in Nineteenth-Century Intellectual History
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, ); Stefan Collini, Public Moralists:
Political Thought and Intellectual Life in Britain, – (Oxford: Clarendon Press, ); and H. S. Jones, Victorian Political Thought (London: Macmillan,
).
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. On this count, it must be stressed that the works cited in the previous note are
wholly inadequate to the task. Even such recent pieces as Collini’s “My Roles
and Their Duties: Sidgwick as Philosopher, Professor and Public Moralist,” and
the response to it by Jonathan Rée (in Henry Sidgwick, ed. R. Harrison [Oxford: Oxford University Press, ]) succeed only in gracefully dodging all questions
of race and imper
ialism in connection with Sidgwick.
. See L. Zastoupil, John Stuart Mill and India (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, ), and G. Varouxakis, Mill and Nationality (London: Routledge, ).
. See Chapter ; for some brief remarks, see my “Snapshot: Henry Sidgwick,” The Philosopher’s Magazine (Winter ), p. .
. The subtleties of the different strands of imperialist philosophizing are quite
extraordinary, as later chapters will show. I am much indebted to such classic
works as Richard Symonds, Oxford and Empire: The Last Lost Cause? (New York:
St. Martin’s Press, ).
. In this way, the later utilitarians compare unfavorably with the earlier ones. For an insightful account of Bentham on these matters, see Jennifer Pitts, “Legislator of
the World? A Rereading of Bentham on Empire,” in Classical Utilitarianism and
the Question of Race, ed. B. Schultz and G. Varouxakis (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, ).
. My approach to the interpretation of philosophers is not unlike Said’s approach
to novelists, in Culture and Imperialism (New York: Knopf, ), and I share his sense that however disturbing it may be to discover imperialist and racist subtexts
in canonical works, there can be no avoiding such interpretive efforts.
Chapter . First Words
. In John Stuart Mill and Jeremy Bentham: Utilitarianism and Other Essays, ed.
A. Ryan (New York: Penguin Books, ), p. .
. For Balfour’s statement, see The Letters of Arthur Balfour and Lady Elcho, –
, ed. J. Ridley and C. Percy (London: Hamish Hamilton, ), p. ; for Mill’s, see Michael St. John Packe, The Life of John Stuart Mill (London: Secker and Warburg, ), p. .
. Frank Podmore, “Review: Henry Sidgwick, A Memoir,” Sidgwick Papers, Wren
Library, Cambridge University, Add.Ms.c.., pp. –.
. See his “A Lecture against Lecturing,” reprinted in MEA.
. Here I borrow from Alan Ryan’s Liberal Anxieties and Liberal Education (New York: Hill and Wang, ), p. . Ryan is right to claim that the notion of a vigorously
self-educating society, in which social intelligence is fostered by the fabric of the culture and not simply by certain educational institutions, is common ground for
Mill and Dewey. Unfortunately, he does not remark at all on how Sidgwick also
belongs in this camp, possibly as the most significant figure between Mill and
Dewey.
. See Brand Blanshard’s engaging study of Sidgwick in his Four Reasonable Men
(Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, ), pp. –, a shorter ver-
sion of which appeared in the symposium on Sidgwick in the Monist ().
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. F. W. Maitland, “Henry Sidgwick,” Independent Review (June ), pp. –.
It should be noted that, despite his earlier abstemiousness and lifelong aversion to
luxurious expenditure, the mature Sidgwick was not averse to oiling the conversa-
tional wheels: “He used to tell how, at one time, he had . . . severely simplified the entertainment at his dinner parties, cutting off the champagne or other expensive
wine, and generally reducing it below the prevailing standard. But an unforeseen
difficulty arose. He felt the need under these circumstances of making it up to his
guests by added conversational brilliance; and the strain of this weighed so heavily
upon him that he abandoned the effort and went back to the champagne!” Lord
Rayleigh, “Some Recollections of Henry Sidgwick,” Proceedings of the Society for
Psychical Research (), p. .
. Sorley, “Henry Sidgwick,” International Journal of Ethics (–), p. .
. A good survey of Russell’s jibes can be found in his Portraits from Memory.
. James Bryce, “Henry Sidgwick,” in his Studies in Contemporary Biography
(London: Macmillan, ), pp. –.
. Myers Papers, Wren Library, Cambridge University, ..
. E. E. C. Jones, “Review: Henry Sidgwick, A Memoir,” The Journal of Education (April ), p. .
. F. W. H. Myers, Fragments of Poetry and Prose, ed. E. Myers (London: Longmans, Green, ), pp. –.
. Ryan, Liberal Anxieties, p. .
. Ibid., p. .
. It is worth remarking on just how enduring most of Sidgwick’s major intellectual
interests were; he would continue his enthusiastic reading in all of these areas for
the rest of his life, and of course in such areas as parapsychology.
. During Sidgwick’s early period of active membership, the Society included James
Clerk Maxwell, Henry Montagu Butler, Henry Brandreth, Roden Noel, E. E.
Bowen, C. H. Tawney, Oscar Browning, J. J. Cowell, George Trevelyn, and Richard
Jebb. His younger brother Arthur was elected in . Among the most valuable
studies of the Apostles are Paul Levy, Moore: G. E. Moore and the Cambridge
Apostles (Oxford: Oxford University Press, ); Peter Allen, The Cambridge Apostles: The Early Years (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, ); and
William Lubenow, The Cambridge Apostles, –: Liberalism, Imagination,
and Friendship in British Intellectual and Professional Life (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, ).
. Remarks made during a dinner toast by Donald MacAlister, an Apostle from
the s. Quoted in Allen, Apostles, p. .
. Sheldon Rothblatt, The Revolution of the Dons (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, ), p. .
. See Chapter and my essay “Sidgwick’s Feminism,” in “Sidgwick ,” Utilitas
, no. (November ), pp. –.
. Actually, as important as the Memoir is, what follows draws on a variety of other sources as well, including A. C. Benson’s The Life of Edward White Benson
(London: Macmillan, ); Ethel Sidgwick, Mrs. Henry Sidgwick, A Memoir
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(London: Sidgwick and Jackson, ); and the many obituaries of Sidgwick and
reviews of the Memoir, for which see Bart Schultz and J. B. Schneewind, “Henry Sidgwick, A Bibliography,” in The Cambridge Bibliography of English Literature,
rd ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, ).
. Some of the notes from this genealogical inquiry are preserved in the miscellaneous Sidgwick materials held by University Library, Cambridge University. F. Galton
regarded the Sidgwicks as an impressive case of family genius.
. William Everett, “Henry Sidgwick,” The Atlantic (), p. .
. ”The Ural Mountains: A New Parlour Game,” Macmillan’s Magazine (M
arch
), p. . I am indebted to Dr. C. A. Stray, of Swansea University, for remind-
ing me of Sidgwick’s reference to this piece in his correspondence with Dakyns;
he deserves the credit for correcting the Wellesley Index in its attribution of the
essay solely to Bowen.
. Sidgwick’s two best-known poems are “The Despot’s Heir” and “Goethe and
Frederika,” both published in the Memoir; see Chapters and for more exam-
ples of his work. A poetic sensibility was also a defining Apostolic trait, and in
this respect Sidgwick certainly continued the Millian reaction against Bentham’s
supposed distaste for the genre.
. Though there should be little doubt that the “low moral tone” that con-
cerned Sidgwick senior had to do with sexuality, and that Rugby, (like Harrow,
Eton, Clifton, etc.) continued to house the homoerotic activities described in
Chapter .
. Bowen to Arthur Sidgwick, Sidgwick Papers, Wren Library, Cambridge
University, Add.Ms.b...-.
. Benson, Life of Benson, p. .
. Sidgwick to Minnie Sidgwick, , Sidgwick Papers, Wren Library, Cambridge
University, Add.Ms.c..
. See E. F. Benson, Mother (London: Hodder and Stoughton, ), especially pp. –. The entire dreary account makes it evident that Mary, like her brother
Henry, suffered from periods of serious depression. There are other sources of
evidence concerning the Sidgwicks’ early family life that I am researching for
a future essay on “Young Sidgwick,” including Mary Benson’s diaries, Arthur
Sidgwick’s diaries, and other recollections by friends and family members.
The Benson family has, in fact, been the object of considerable research. Two
especially helpful works for understanding the unhappy fate of “Minnie” Sidgwick
are Betty Askwith, Two Victorian Families (London: Chatto and Windus, )
and Brian Masters, The Life of E. F. Benson (London: Chatto and Windus, ).
My construction of Sidgwick’s life and work owes much to these and other works
dealing with the Bensons versus the Sidgwicks. Indeed, it has often struck me that