Henry Sidgwick

Henry Sidgwick (1838-1900), British moral philosopher whose chief contribution was in the field of ethics. Sidgwick developed one of the most complex, systematic, ambitious, and, at times, controversial accounts of ethical issues—in particular utilitarianism—in the 19th century.

Sidgwick was born in Skipton, Yorkshire. Educated at Rugby School and Trinity College, Cambridge University, he was elected professor of moral philosophy at Cambridge in 1883. However, on appointment to the position, he found himself unable, on conscientious grounds, to subscribe to the orthodox (Anglican) articles of Christian faith hitherto required of all candidates. This requirement was effectively waived through his election to the post despite his holding out against the pressures of doctrinal adherence. Thus he stood as a striking representative of the wider crisis of religious belief that afflicted many 19th-century intellectuals.

Much of Sidgwick’s writing focuses on the problems with different ethical theories—in particular utilitarianism—and he reached the conclusion that these problems might be resolved through the appeal to God or some transcendent source of value. However, he could not, in conscience, allow himself to make use of any such appeal. For Sidgwick, the difficulties arose in trying to reconcile some version of a utilitarian ethic—that is, one based on the maximization of human pleasure or fulfilment—with a wider sense of the ethical good informed by “universal” values. Starting with common sense, Sidgwick identified three ways in which it was possible to reach a rational basis for action and choice: individual hedonism (or egoism), universal hedonism (or utilitarianism), and intuitionism. If common sense must be our guide in such matters—albeit a common sense tried and tested through the rigours of ethical theory—then it cannot be reduced to the kinds of utilitarian thinking that would simply equate the moral good with whatever best conduces to the sum total of human satisfactions.

Sidgwick continued the effort of earlier thinkers, like John Stuart Mill, to reformulate the precepts of a utilitarian ethical and social outlook in such a way as to redeem it from the charge of elevating self-interest—individual or collective—above the dictates of moral conscience. Thus, on his account, there are “absolute practical principles” that require that we should always expand the range of relevant considerations so as to encompass future as well as present goods and also, more problematically, to evaluate those goods from “the point of view of the Universe”. The strong affinity between Sidgwick’s beliefs and that strain of late 19th-century British idealism, whose chief representatives were Francis Herbert Bradley, Thomas Hill Green, and John McTaggart is clear. This movement took its chief inspiration from German philosopher G. W. F. Hegel and espoused a metaphysical thesis—that of “internal relations”—which stressed the atemporal nature of “absolute reality”, the illusory character of the subject/object distinction, and the interdependence of all those partial (temporally limited) perspectives that were none the less destined to converge upon truth at the end of enquiry. It was famously eclipsed by the rise of early analytic philosophy and by the adamant rejection—on the part of Bertrand Russell and its erstwhile adherent G. E. Moore—of any such (to them) hopelessly vague and obscurantist doctrine.

Of late there has been a marked revival of interest in the British Idealists, one that has gone along (scarcely by coincidence) with the sense of a deepening malaise in the mainstream analytic tradition. Sidgwick’s work has also received an increasing amount of attention, perhaps because it is now seen to anticipate certain recent (post-1980) developments in ethical theory. Among them—most notably—is Derek Parfit’s qualified version of moral consequentialism that would likewise seek to enlarge its horizons by so far as possible discounting the interests of particular individuals (or specific communities) and adopting a viewpoint premised on the universality of ethical values. Besides, one might suggest that Sidgwick’s implicitly monist doctrine—his conception of ethics as striving to transcend any limited human perspective—looks forward to the kinds of argument advanced by ecologically minded philosophers who have engaged with issues of environmental concern or sustainable development. Also there has been a growing receptiveness to the kinds of large-scale systematic theorizing—in moral theory as in other branches of philosophy—that were firmly ruled out by the once-dominant analytic consensus.

Thus Sidgwick’s treatise can now be seen as raising (if not resolving to his own satisfaction) many of those issues that have come to preoccupy recent ethical theory. Above all, it speaks to the continuing need for a justification of moral values in the absence of any source or guarantee in the edicts of religious faith.

Sidgwick was a proponent of higher education for women and was one of the founders of Newnham College, one of the first colleges for women at Cambridge University. He also founded the British philosophical journal Mind and served as the first president of the Society for Psychical Research. His most notable works include The Methods of Ethics (1874), Principles of Political Economy (1883), and Elements of Politics (1891).