by Bart Schultz
. Schneewind, Sidgwick’s Ethics, p. .
. Mill to Sidgwick, Nov. , . The two letters that Mill wrote to Sidgwick
were first published in the Mill Newsletter, , no. (Summer ) and have since appeared in the collected late correspondence in Additional Letters of John Stuart Mill, vol. of The Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, ed. M. Filipirk, M. Laine, and J. M. Robson (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, ). The originals are
in the Sidgwick Papers, Wren Library, Cambridge University, Add.Ms.c...
. See D. E. Winstanley, Later Victorian Cambridge (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, ).
. See the relevant volumes of The Gladstone Diaries, volumes, ed. M. R. D. Foot and H. C. G. Matthew (Oxford: Clarendon Press, –).
. Chapter , especially, will bring out the affinities between Sidgwick’s thinking on conformity and subscription and his counsel to Symonds on sexual matters. However, it should also be noted that another (unintended) consequence of Sidgwick’s
resignation, and of his appointment as Praelector in Moral and Political
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Sciences, was that he was allowed to marry; he became an Honorary Fellow
in and regained his full Fellowship only in , when opposition to the
marriage ban on fellowships was finally triumphing.
. In The Letters of John Addington Symonds, –, ed. H. M. Schueller and R. L. Peters (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, ), p. .
Chapter . Consensus versus Chaos
. Fraser’s Magazine (March ), pp. –.
. For a helpful recent overview, see J. W. Burrow, The Crisis of Reason: European Thought, – (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, ). Such early
works in Victorian studies as W. Houghton, The Victorian Frame of Mind, –
(New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, ), and Richter’s The Politics of Conscience also remain quite useful.
. Chadwick, Victorian Church, pt. two, p. .
. The Greek means “useful either for the private or public good.” Horace was one
of Sidgwick’s favorite classical authors; the significance of this is discussed in
Chapter .
. This is in a letter to Dakyns dated Oct. , ; only part of the letter is
reproduced in the Memoir (M ), and it does not contain the quotation from
Descartes.
. F. H. Hayward, The Ethical Philosophy of Sidgwick (Bristol: Thoemmes Press,
; originally published in ), p. xix note.
. Sidgwick to Pearson, May , , Bodleian MS. Eng. Letters d.; .
. Very short and surprisingly restrained, this piece appeared in the Academy
(May , ).
. Sidgwick to Pearson, May , , Bodleian MS. Eng. Letters d.; .
. Quoted in Annan, The Dons, p. .
. The Greek means “and things connected with it.”
. Sidgwick Papers, Wren Library, Trinity College, Cambridge University,
Add.Ms.c...
. Mill, “The Utility of Religion,” in Three Essays on Religion, p. .
. See the further discussion of this letter in Chapter .
. Sidgwick was quite moving on his love for Cowell, whom he described as “one of
the very very few men I love” (M ).What Sidgwick found in him is perhaps not
surprising: “But one had to know him well to appreciate – it was some time before
I did myself – his unvarying graceful unselfishness carried out into the smallest
details, and his profoundly sympathetic considerateness, that was never in the
least superficial, but always so unreservedly given” (M ). See Chapters , ,
and for more about their special relationship.
. Skorupski, “Desire and Will in Sidgwick and Green,” in “Sidgwick ,” Utilitas
, no. (November ), p. .
. In Schultz, ed., Essays, p. .
. John Rawls, The Methods of Ethics (Indianapolis: Hackett, ), p. v. See also Rawls’s famous statement in “The Independence of Moral Theory.”
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. The allusion is to Rob Shaver’s excellent essay “Sidgwick’s Minimal Metaethics,”
in “Sidgwick ,” Utilitas , no. (November ), pp. –, but see Hurka,
“Moore in the Middle,” for some challenges to this reading of the differences
between Sidgwick and Moore.
. Some of Sidgwick’s most important commentary on his own Methods addresses the matter of principles: see, for example, “The Establishment of Ethical First
Principles,” Mind (), pp. –. For further discussion, and criticism of C. D. Broad’s account in Five Types of Ethical Theory, see Marcus Singer,
“The Many Methods of Sidgwick’s Ethics,” Monist (), pp. –, and
his introductory essay to his collection of Sidgwick’s essays, Essays on Ethics and Method (Oxford: Clarendon Press, ). Singer has also endorsed Janice Daurio’s claims in her essay “Sidgwick on Moral Theories and Common Sense Morality,”
History of Philosophy Quarterly (), pp. –.
. Sidgwick published these, with Macmillan, for both the first and second editions, and he offered to do so again for the third edition, but Macmillan demurred (the
relevant correspondence is in the Macmillan papers, British Library). Sidgwick’s
half-completed notes for his projected sixth edition are in the Sidgwick Papers,
Wren Library, Cambridge University, Add.Ms.b..
. See Schneewind, Sidgwick’s Ethics, p. and p. , to be discussed in the next section. Schneewind suggests, controversially, that after “the second edition no
philosophically important changes occurred, despite a fair amount of condens-
ing and rearranging of the text” (p. ). Albee, in his workmanlike section on
Sidgwick in A History of English Utilitarianism (New York: Macmillan, ), also has a keen eye for changes between the different editions, remarking that probably “it is not without significance that chapter iii. of Book I. . . . has successively borne the titles ‘Moral Reason,’ ‘Reason and Feeling,’ and ‘Ethical Judgments,’ ”
though he agrees that the “more important changes . . . seem to have been made in the second edition ()” (p. ). Still, Albee prudently cautions that it is
important to keep in mind that the work was carefully revised five times, “for
the numerous references to current ethical literature in the later editions of the
Methods might give the impression that the book in its present form had been more recently planned and wri
tten than is actually the case” (p. ). My own treatment, in the text of this chapter, follows the example of Albee and Schneewind,
appealing to the final edition but with cautionary references to changes from earlier ones.
. Schneewind, Sidgwick’s Ethics, pp. –.
. Ibid., pp. –.
. See Hayward, “A Reply,” International Journal of Ethics (–), p. .This is a reply to E. E. Constance Jones’s reply to Hayward’s “The True Significance of
Sidgwick’s ‘Ethics,’ ” all in the same issue. Constance Jones was one of Sidgwick’s
prize students in later life, and edited some of his posthumous work. Sadly, her
views on Sidgwick have been almost entirely neglected in scholarly commentary
on him.
. Though such works as P. J. Kelly’s Utilitarianism and Distributive Justice: Jeremy Bentham and the Civil Law (Oxford: Clarendon Press, ) powerfully suggest
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that Bentham’s moral psychological theory was not as simplistic as the common
understanding has it.
. Schneewind observes that he grew less tentative about this in the second edition
of the Methods; see Sidgwick’s Ethics, p. .
. It has often been noted that the references to Sidgwick in Moore’s Principia Ethica are by far the most numerous of all his references. For some excellent comparisons
between the Methods and the Principia, see Bernard Williams’s “The Point of View of the Universe,” in his Making Sense of Humanity (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, ), pp. –; and Hurka, “Moore in the Middle.” As I
stressed in Chapter , Hurka’s argument is largely the line that I have taken in this book, insofar as he maintains that “Principia Ethica is best seen, not as starting a new era, but as coming near the middle of a sequence of ethical writing that runs
roughly from the first edition of Sidgwick’s Methods of Ethics in to Ross’s Foundations of Ethics in ” (p. ).
. See Brink, “Sidgwick and the Rationale for Rational Egoism,” in Schultz, ed.,
Essays, p. ; and “Sidgwick’s Dualism of Practical Reason,” Australasian Journal of Philosophy (), pp. –. As Brink notes, William Frankena, in such works as “Sidgwick and the Dualism of Practical Reason,” Monist (),
pp. –; and “Sidgwick and the History of Ethical Dualism,” in Schultz, ed.,
Essays, has provided a more internalist reading. But see also Frankena’s “The Methods of Ethics, Edition , Page , Note ,” in “Sidgwick ,” Utilitas , no. (November ), pp. –. Brad Hooker has suggested classing Sidgwick
along with Nagel and others as an “internalist cognitivist,” which seems justifiable.
See his “Is Moral Virtue a Benefit to the Agent?” in How Should One Live? ed., R. Crisp (Oxford: Oxford University Press, ), p. , note .
. A point stressed by Schneewind throughout Sidgwick’s Ethics, pursued by Schultz in Essays on Henry Sidgwick, and developed further by Shaver in “Sidgwick’s
Minimal Metaethics” and Rational Egoism (New York: Cambridge University
Press, ), particularly with respect to twentieth-century metaethics.
. The historical dimensions of Sidgwick’s account of the Right and the Good will
be considered more fully in connection with the dualism of practical reason. But
it is important to stress throughout how emphatic he was about this: “Virtue
or Right action is commonly regarded as only a species of the Good: and so,
on this view of the moral intuition, the first question that offers itself, when
we endeavour to systematise conduct, is how to determine the relation of this
species of good to the rest of the genus. It was on this question that the Greek
thinkers argued, from first to last. Their speculations can scarcely be understood
by us unless with a certain effort we throw the quasi-jural notions of modern
ethics aside, and ask (as they did) not ‘What is Duty and what is its ground?’
but ‘Which of the objects that men think good is truly Good or the Highest
Good?’ or, in the more specialised form of the question which the moral intuition
introduces, ‘What is the relation of the kind of Good we call Virtue, the qualities of conduct and character which men commend and admire, to other good things?’ ”
(ME ).
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. Recently given brilliant coverage in J. B. Schneewind’s The Invention of Autonomy (New York: Cambridge University Press, ). Schneewind has long urged that
Sidgwick’s basic historical account is right as far as it goes and only requires adding some depth and detail. See his “Modern Moral Philosophy: From Beginning to
End?” in Philosophical Imagination and Cultural Memory, ed. P. Cook (Durham,
NC: Duke University Press, ), pp. –. Schneewind’s sympathetic reading
of Sidgwick’s historical work has received weighty support from many quarters,
perhaps most importantly from T. H. Irwin, in, e.g., his “Happiness, Virtue, and
Morality,” Ethics , no. (), pp. –.
. In Utilitarianism, Mill infamously advanced an inappropriate analogy with vision in this connection, the visible being that which is seen. See the discussions
in Crisp’s Mill on Utilitarianism, Chapter , and Berger’s Happiness, Justice, and Freedom (Berkeley: University of California Press, ), Chapter . Although Moore typically receives credit for spotting the confusions in this (not very characteristic) section of Mill’s work, Sidgwick (and indeed, John Grote and James
Ward) anticipated him on nearly every count. I am grateful to J. B. Schneewind
for stressing to me that there is “nothing” new in Moore’s criticism.
. See Connie Rosati, “Persons, Perspectives, and Full Information Accounts of
the Good,” Ethics (), pp. –; and David Soble, “Full Information Accounts of Well-Being,” Ethics (), pp. –. Schneewind, Shaver,
Parfit, and Hurka are united in rejecting any such interpretation, and Hurka goes
so far as to insist that Sidgwick’s notion of “good” is distinct from contemporary
interpretations of it in terms of “well-being.”
. See his Introduction to his edition of Principia Ethica (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, ), p. xv, note .
. See Rob Shaver, “Sidgwick’s False Friends,” Ethics (), pp. –.
. Seealso,e.g.,ME,pp.–,whereSidgwick’sresistancetothefull-information
view is somewhat clearer.
. Schneewind, Sidgwick’s Ethics, is particularly good on the changes in Sidgwick’s treatment of ultimate good through the various editions. It is not often noted, for
example, that in the first edit
ion neither “the distinctive arguments in support
of the rationality of moral judgements nor the definition of ‘good’ as ‘what is
reasonably desired’ are presented” (p. ). See also Stephen Darwall, “Sidgwick,
Concern, and the Good,” in “Sidgwick ,” Utilitas , no. (November ), pp. –. I am also grateful to Thomas Hurka for impressing upon me the
significance of Sidgwick’s revisions concerning “good” even in later editions.
. Schneewind, Sidgwick’s Ethics, p. ; see also the discussion in Parfit, Reasons and Persons, pp. –.
. Sidgwick’s concern to address the charge that utilitarianism neglected the im-
portance of agency may well have stemmed, in significant measure, from his
constant exposure to the views of John Grote, who, again, was George Grote’s
younger brother and the Grote behind the “Grote Club.” See Grote’s posthu-
mously published An Examination of the Utilitarian Philosophy, ed. J. B. Mayor (Cambridge: Deighton Bell, ), for a remarkably prescient and penetrating
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series of criticisms of utilitarianism, including the claim that it speaks only to half of our nature.
. Hurka, “Moore in the Middle,” pp. –.
. Hastings Rashdall, The Theory of Good and Evil, vol. (London: Oxford University Press, ; st ed. ), pp. –, note . I would like to thank Thomas Hurka
for stressing the importance of this passage to me; see his “Moore in the Middle,”
p. , note .
. This was the basis for the powerful criticisms of Moore’s position advanced by
William Frankena, who, not coincidentally, thought very highly of Sidgwick’s
Methods. See Stephen Darwall’s “Learning from Frankena,” Ethics (July ), pp. –, for a lucid overview of Frankena’s work on both Moore and Sidgwick.
. Though, as Hurka notes, Moore was perhaps more original on some counts, such