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as his claims about organic unities and intrinsic value. For Moore, intrinsic value
precludes relational properties – hence his famous “isolation test” for a purported
intrinsic value, asking whether a universe with nothing else in it would be good.
Sidgwick apparently allowed the possibility of relational properties – e.g., when
he allowed that “A man may prefer the mental state of apprehending truth to
the state of half-reliance on generally accredited fictions, while recognising that
the former state may be more painful than the latter, and independently of any
effect which he expects either state to have upon his subsequent consciousness”
(ME ).
. For Shaver, the implication is that “Sidgwick’s complaint against a full informa-
tion account, understood without a ‘proper reasoning’ addition, is that in cases
of weakness of will, such an account declares rational or good what is surely not
rational or good.” Furthermore, although Sidgwick does not explicitly admit that
adding the “proper reasoning” requirement compromises the naturalism of the
full-information view, “this, presumably, is why he highlights the naturalism of the
full information account he rejects.” See his “Sidgwick’s False Friends,” p. ,
p. . Schneewind focuses on a slightly different point, stressing how Sidg-
wick’s final account eliminates the possibility “that a particular decision about
what is good might be influenced by the desires one merely happened to have
at the present moment in a way that would not be reasonable if one took into
account all one’s future desires.” See Sidgwick’s Ethics, p. . Parfit, in Reasons and Persons, goes further than either in suggesting how Sidgwick might be approximating an “objective list” account of well-being, such that the best life is
that containing the things that are good for us, whether we want them or not (see
p. ). For an excellent overview, see Robert Merrihew Adams, Finite and Infi-
nite Goods: A Framework for Ethics (New York: Oxford University Press, ), pp. –, though Adams seems not to recognize how, at a more general level,
Sidgwick was so often engaging with precisely the Platonic perfectionist alternative
he favors.
. Roger Crisp, “Sidgwick and Self-Interest,” Utilitas (November ), pp. –
.
. Ibid., p. , pp. –.
. Ibid., p. .
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. Allan Gibbard, in such works as “Normative and Recognitional Concepts,”
Philosophy and Phenomenological Research (January ), pp. –, very interestingly seeks a subtle rehabilitation of Moore, though the result sounds rather
more like Sidgwick, in its metaphysical reticence.
. Interestingly, however, something close to classical hedonism is making a
comeback; see such works as Daniel Kahneman, “Objective Happiness,” in Well-
Being: The Foundations of Hedonic Psychology, ed. D. Kahneman, E. Diener, and N. Schwarz (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, ); and Allen Parducci,
Happiness, Pleasure, and Judgment: The Contextual Theory and Its Applications
(Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum, ). This hedonism is informed by the most sophisti-
cated tools of decision theory and experimental psychology, but in core respects it
marks a return to the views of F. Y. Edgeworth, who was the first to try to throw
Sidgwick’s hedonism into a formal decision-theoretic mode. See his New and Old
Methods of Ethics (Oxford: Parker & Co., ), which was one of the first extensive treatments of Sidgwick’s Methods.
. See Sumner, Welfare, Happiness and Ethics (Oxford: Clarendon Press, ), p. , p. .
. See his “Something in Between,” in Well-Being and Morality, ed. Roger Crisp and Brad Hooker (Oxford: Clarendon Press, ), p. ; the point is made at greater
length in Sumner, Welfare, Happiness, and Ethics, pp. –, p. .
. Sumner, Welfare, Happiness, and Ethics, p. .
. Shaver, “Sidgwick’s Minimal Metaethics,” p. .
. Schneewind, Sidgwick’s Ethics, pp. –.
. Indeed,theearliernineteenth-centuryintuitionists–Whewell,Grote,etc.–simply
did not parse moral theory in the way that has become so common in the twentieth
century, and were in fact closer to idealism than has been supposed. See, for
example, John Gibbins, “John Grote and Modern Cambridge Philosophy.”
. See, for Mill, Alan Ryan’s eloquent statement in “Mill in a Liberal Landscape,”
in Skorupski, ed., Cambridge Companion to Mill, pp. –.
. Again, see Sumner, e.g., Welfare, Happiness and Ethics, p. . See also Griffin, Well-Being: Its Meaning, Measurement, and Moral Importance (Oxford: Clarendon Press, ), for many of the classic arguments that Sumner takes as his point of
departure. Other especially useful works on these issues include Shelly Kagan,
Normative Ethics (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, ); R. B. Brandt (long a defender of quantitive hedonism), A Theory of the Good and the Right (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, ); and T. L. S. Sprigge, The Rational Foundations
of Ethics (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, ). It is, of course, the “mental state” aspect of Sidgwick’s view that has brought down upon it much of the
stock criticism of hedonism, such as the reductio argument having to do with
“experience machines” capable of simulating any and every experience and thus
of maximizing pleasure by wholly delusional means. See, e.g., Robert Nozick,
The Examined Life: Philosophical Meditations (New York: Touchstone, ),
Chapter .
. Principia Ethica, p. ; as Thomas Hurka has stressed to me, this element of Moore’s (early) views was not shared by such figures as Rashdall and McTaggart
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and should not be taken as essential to perfectionism – see his Virtue, Vice and
Value (Oxford: Oxford University Press, ), Chapter .
. See Peter Singer, Animal Liberation, nd ed. (New York: New York Review/
Random House, ), and his very Sidgwickian How Are We to Live? Sidgwick’s views on this point (to my mind a great strength of the utilitarian tradition) will
be considered in a different context in Chapters and .
. See, for the type of argument that I have in mind, the contributions by Crisp and Hooker in Crisp and Hooker, eds., Well-Being and Morality, along with Griffin’s replies. I am inclined to agree with Crisp that Griffin, even in such works as Value Judgement: Improving Our Ethical Beliefs (Oxford: Clarendon Press, ) with its call for modesty in ethical theory, is after all much more Sidgwickian than he
allows. See also John Skorupski, Ethical Exp
lorations (Oxford: Oxford University Press, ).
. It is a delicate question just how independent the issues of what is good and whether good is to be sought indirectly ultimately are. Some, such as Thomas Hurka, treat
them as altogether independent, but on the broad, holistic view of argument and
justification described by Shaver it is not plain why this should be so.
. Though some, notably Brad Hooker, argue powerfully that the distinction survives.
See his contributions to Crisp and Hooker, eds., Well-Being and Morality, and to
“Sidgwick ,” Utilitas , no. (November ), and his important book
Ideal Code, Real World: A Rule-Consequentialist Theory of Morality, in all of which he urges that Sidgwick is not best regarded as an indirect consequentialist. Most
of what I urge in this chapter is consistent with Hooker’s description of Sidgwick
as a “direct consequentialist,” since he recognizes how this view finds a place for
indirect optimizing strategies involving the internalization of various dispositions, decision procedures, etc.
. Williams, “Point of View,” pp. –.
. I hasten to add that I am not suggesting that all of these critics share a positive ethical perspective, only that they share certain reservations about Sidgwick.
. Rashdall, “Prof. Sidgwick’s Utilitarianism,” Mind, old series (), p. .
Rashdall was one of Sidgwick’s keenest critics on issues of conformity and sub-
scription, the virtual model of the admirable defender of pious fraud. Their ex-
changes in the s will be discussed in later chapters, but it is curious how
they could share so much by way of ethical theory and so little when it came to
casuistry.
. For a good summary statement, see Roger Crisp’s Introduction to his edited
volume How Should One Live? Many of the contributions to this collection, such as those by Irwin, Hooker, and Driver, point to the dilemmas that arise from the
confrontation between Sidgwick and most forms of virtue ethics.
. See Schneewind, Sidgwick’s Ethics, Chapter , for an excellent treatment (and a testament to scholarship, since Martineau was surely one of Sidgwick’s most
tedious controversialists).
. The extent of his response is in descending order of magnitude, since he obviously had comparatively little opportunity to respond to Moore’s work. However, he
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had some; Tom Regan’s edition of Moore’s early work, the basis for Principia
Ethica, reveals much about their interaction – see Moore, The Elements of Ethics, ed. T. Regan (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, ). Among other things,
Regan notes that Moore delivered the Elements as a lecture series in at the London School of Ethics and Social Philosophy, an institution with Sidgwick as
one of its vice presidents. See also Regan’s Bloomsbury’s Prophet: G. E. Moore and the Development of His Moral Philosophy (Philadephia: Temple University Press,
) for a full account of their interaction, including Sidgwick’s views on Moore’s
fellowship dissertations.
. T. H. Irwin, “Eminent Victorians and Greek Ethics: Sidgwick, Green and Aristo-
tle,” in Schultz, ed., Essays, pp. –. Irwin nicely brings out the Sidgwickian obsession with clarity and determinateness.
. Ibid., pp. –; Irwin is at some pains to urge that Green gives the better reading of Aristotle.
. Ibid., p. .
. Ancient theories, he argues, held “that all our rationally justified concerns must be fitted into some harmonious and coherent set of values” and were thus monistic
about practical reason. See Irwin, “Happiness, Virtue, and Morality.”
. Similar points have been forcefully presented by John Skorupski, e.g., in his review of Schultz, ed., Essays in the Times Literary Supplement (July ).
. Thomas Hurka, “Review: Essays on Henry Sidgwick,” Canadian Philosophical Reviews , no. (October ), p. .
. Hurka, Virtue, Vice and Value, p. .
. Ibid., p. . Thus, Michael Stocker and Julia Annas, among others, would be
open to such charges.
. Brink’s recent “Eudaimonism, Love and Friendship, and Political Community,”
Social Philosophy and Policy (), pp. –, nicely brings out many of the problems that arise from the unstable Greek combination of virtue and egoism,
though Brink in fact provides a defense of indirect forms of, e.g., friendship that
would apply in various respects to Sidgwick. At any rate, this essay conveys some
sense of the richness and vastness of the debates over the issue of whether one can
value friends for their own sake and as a crucial element of one’s own good.
. This is, of course, only a bare sketch of some central issues. See Crisp, How Should One Live? and Hurka, Virtue, Vice and Value, for trenchant discussions of the various strategies of (and differences between) perfectionists and virtue ethicists.
Some very interesting philosophical rehabilitation of Green is currently under
way: see, e.g., David Brink, “Perfectionism and the Common Good: Aristotelian
Themes in T. H. Green”; and Avital Simhony, “The Reconciliation Project: T. H.
Green and Henry Sidgwick,” both unpublished papers delivered at the conference
ISUS , held at Wake Forest University, March .
. As previously noted, however, hedonism is in fact enjoying something of
a revival. In addition to the works by Parducci and Kahneman cited ear-
lier, see Torbjorn Tannsjo, Hedonistic Utilitarianism (Edinburgh: Edinburgh
University Press, ); and Fred Feldman, Utilitarianism, Hedonism, and Desert
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(New York: Cambridge University Press, ). Good critical overviews of the
sorry development of rational choice and utility theory in general can be found in
such works as D. P. Green and I. Shapiro, Pathologies of Rational Choice Theory:
A Critique of Applications in Political Science (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, ); Richard Thayer, Quasi-Rational Economics (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, ); and Sen, On Ethics and Economics, though there is of course a vast and highly technical literature in this area. Again, the various works by and
on James Griffin cited in previous notes afford excellent insights into how such
debates bear on Sidgwick’s arguments.
. One should also mention here the works of Russell Hardin, e.g., Morality within the Limits of Reason (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, ).
. Schneewind, Sidgwick’s Ethics, p. .
. “Professor Calderwood on Intuitionism in Morals,” Mind, no. (), pp. –
at, p. .
. This explication is from “The Establishment of Ethical First Principles,”
. Sidgwick, “Establishment,” pp. –.
. See T. H. Irwin, Aristotle’s First Principles (Oxford: Oxford University Press, ), p. , note . Irwin, as we shall see, is highly critical of this form of intuitionism.
. See Jeff McMahan, “Moral Intuition,” in The Blackwell Guide to Ethical Theory, ed. H. LaFollette (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, ), pp. –. This is noteworthy in part because McMahan takes himself as presenting an alternative to
Sidgwick’s view.
. Unfortunately, much of the recent Rawlsian-inspired discussion of Sidgwick’s
method has been warped by the extremely simplistic description of “rational
intuitionism” given in Rawls’s later work; see The Cambridge Companion to Rawls, ed. A. Freeman (New York: Cambridge University Press, ), p. , for a case
in point.
. These core claims were quite consistent across the different editions.
. Schneewind, Sidgwick’s Ethics, pp. –, pp. –.
. Ibid., p. .
. See Mill, Utilitarianism, p. .
. Ibid., p. .
. It certainly provoked G. E. M. Anscombe, anyway; her tirade on “Modern Moral
Philosophy” took Sidgwick as the kind of “corrupt mind” emblematic of the
failings of all modern moral theory. This tradition of abuse has been carried on
by Alasdair MacIntyre in his Three Rival Versions of Moral Inquiry (Notre Dame, IN: Notre Dame University Press, ), though with little gain in plausibility.
. Mill, Utilitarianism, p. , p. .
. Henry Sidgwick, “Utilitarianism,” reprinted in “Sidgwick ,” Utilitas , no.
(November ), p. .
. However, see Chapter for some suggestions on how Mill was indebted to Bentham
even on the matter of the unconscious utilitarianism of common sense, and on much
else besides. The designation of Hume and Smith as “contemplative utilitarians”
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