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WorkHenry Sidgwick

Outlines of the History of Ethics for English Readers

From the Greek moralists to the Victorians in one small volume, with the modern centuries told through English thinkers.

by Henry Sidgwick332 passages held

  • English, the original language, and your language
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First published
(aged 48)
Original language
English

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Overview

For the ninth edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, Henry Sidgwick wrote the article on ethics. People whose judgement he trusted told him it would serve English students who wanted a general history of moral thought, so he reprinted it, considerably altered and enlarged, and Macmillan published it as this small book in 1886. It runs from the Greeks through Christian and medieval ethics to the modern period, and the English readers of the title is meant literally. Sidgwick kept the modern chapter mainly to English moralists, starting from Thomas Hobbes and the replies Hobbes provoked, and brought in French and German thinkers only where they had shaped English thought; he judged that a full treatment of them would break the book's unity. He also kept away from the living debates he was himself engaged in, aiming at a treatment as impartial as he could make it. The history carries one large claim. Greek philosophers asked what is good for a human being; modern moralists think of morality as a code of rules, much like law. Sidgwick traces the change chiefly to Christianity, which treated right conduct as obedience to a divine law, and partly to Roman jurisprudence. Five editions appeared by 1902, the last after his death, and an enlarged sixth followed in 1931. After The Methods of Ethics, it became the most widely read of his books.

Key concepts

What is the 'jural' view of ethics?

Sidgwick's term for thinking of morality as a code of rules, much like law, rather than as an inquiry into what is good for a person. He treats it as the characteristic modern view, owed chiefly to Christianity, which made right conduct obedience to a divine law, and partly to Roman jurisprudence. Its close neighbour is abstract jurisprudence: rules of law held valid by reason alone, independent of any legislator.

What is casuistry?

The working out of doubtful cases of conscience: deciding, case by case, where the line falls between what is forbidden and what is allowed. In Sidgwick's history it grew from early lists of sins and their church penalties into the manuals compiled for confession in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, some of which shrank morality to alphabetical collections of questions and answers.

What did the Stoics mean by calling things 'indifferent'?

That health, wealth, pleasure, beauty and good fame make no difference to a person's true good, which lies wholly in wisdom and virtue. Things outside that good can neither benefit nor harm the sage. Sidgwick notes the difficulty this left both Cynics and Stoics: neither held that what the sage chooses to do is indifferent, so each needed some method for choosing among such things.

What is the 'moral sense'?

A faculty, in the view of Shaftesbury and Hutcheson, by which people approve or disapprove of actions and characters directly, without first calculating their own advantage. Against Hobbes, they held that this sense, like benevolence, is a natural spring of action and not a disguised form of self-love, and Sidgwick follows how Butler's idea of conscience took the thought up and sharpened it.

Themes of the book

What this book returns to, gathered into themes and ordered by how much of the text each one occupies.

From the Good Life to the Moral Code

Why did ethics stop asking what is good for a person and start asking what the moral law commands? The book traces the change chiefly to Christianity and partly to Roman law.

Greek moralists asked what is good for a human being, and virtue was part of the answer. Modern moralists, Sidgwick argues, think of morality as a code of rules much like law, and the change came chiefly from Christianity, which made right conduct obedience to a divine law, and partly from Roman jurisprudence, through which the Stoic law of a commonwealth of rational beings reached later thought. The jural view brought its own questions: where the moral faculty comes from, and whether the will is free.

  • christian ethics
  • natural law
  • conscience
  • history of ethics
  • moral obligation
  • free will
  • moral responsibility
  • ethics
  • virtue
  • happiness

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Socrates and His Heirs

If virtue is knowledge, can anyone do wrong knowingly? The Greek schools all start from Socrates and part ways over what follows from his answer.

Sidgwick follows the Greek schools as heirs of Socrates. Diogenes the Cynic, scorning every conventional need, caricatured one side of the Socratic pattern. Aristotle drew his high-minded man, indifferent to the honour the common herd pays him. The Stoics returned to the identification of virtue with knowledge and faced its dilemma: either vice is involuntary or ignorance is voluntary, and they chose the second as less dangerous to morality. Epicurus found the highest pleasure in the calm of a life untroubled by pain or anxiety.

  • stoicism
  • platonism
  • platonic ethics
  • aristotelian ethics
  • socrates
  • epicureanism
  • asceticism
  • hedonism
  • pleasure
  • virtue ethics
  • moral psychology

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Hobbes and His English Answerers

Can morality be built on self-interest alone? The modern chapter tells its story largely as the English answer to Hobbes, from Shaftesbury and Butler to Bentham and Mill.

Sidgwick tells the modern story chiefly through English moralists, beginning from Hobbes and the replies he provoked, and brings in French and German thinkers only where they shaped English thought. Shaftesbury, Butler and Hutcheson agreed against Hobbes that benevolence and conscience are natural springs of action, not disguised self-love; Butler's greater caution about their harmony with self-interest marked a new departure. The line runs on through Paley to Bentham and Mill, whose utilitarianism he traces partly to Helvétius and Comte.

  • utilitarianism
  • benevolence
  • sympathy
  • self-interest
  • moral motivation
  • political philosophy
  • kantian ethics
  • moral education

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Within this work

passages held
332
distinct concepts
481
by passages held, corpus-wide
#226

What this book thinks together

The wheel takes this book’s leading concepts and shows how often they come up together. The wider the band between two, the more of its passages speak of both. Among them, most often together: “happiness” and “virtue”.
Concept co-occurrence, strongest first 8 concepts, joined by 21 pairings. 88 pairings reach beyond these concepts and are not drawn.
ConceptPaired conceptShared passages
happinessvirtue13
stoicismvirtue11
happinessstoicism7
moral psychologyvirtue6
consciencemoral psychology5
consciencevirtue5
happinessmoral psychology5
happinessutilitarianism5
moral psychologyutilitarianism4
utilitarianismvirtue4
justicemoral psychology3
justicestoicism3
christian ethicsmoral psychology2
christian ethicsstoicism2
conscienceutilitarianism2
justicevirtue2
christian ethicsjustice1
christian ethicsvirtue1
consciencehappiness1
happinessjustice1
justiceutilitarianism1

Works held

The author's work in order, this book marked in place. Your-language title first, the original beneath it where the two differ; side chips show which full texts are held.

  1. 1870 The Ethics of Conformity and Subscription

    His answer in print to the question his own resignation from Trinity had raised the year before, published four years before The Methods of Ethics.

     EN
  2. 1874 The Methods of Ethics

    Revised through five editions in Sidgwick's lifetime, this is the book he is read for; his editor called his later Cambridge lectures on Green, Spencer and Martineau supplementary to it.

     EN
  3. 1886 Outlines of the History of Ethics for English Readers you are here EN
  4. 1891 The Elements of Politics

    A two-part treatise — the principles of legislation first, then the structure of government — that carries the utilitarian reasoning of The Methods of Ethics from private conduct into politics.

     EN
  5. 1898 Practical Ethics: A Collection of Addresses and Essays

    Written mostly for the ethical societies of London and Cambridge between 1888 and 1897, these are Sidgwick's applications of his ethics to questions of everyday conduct, for listeners outside the university.

     EN
  6. 1902 Lectures on the Ethics of T. H. Green, Mr. Herbert Spencer, and J. Martineau

    Course lectures never meant for print, in which Sidgwick defended the position of The Methods of Ethics against the schools that had risen since it first appeared.

     EN
  7. 1902 Philosophy, Its Scope and Relations

    Where The Methods of Ethics works inside ethics, these lectures map how ethics, metaphysics, psychology and history fit together — the frame around the rest of Sidgwick's philosophy.

     EN
  8. 1905 Lectures on the Philosophy of Kant and Other Philosophical Lectures and Essays

    The fullest record of Sidgwick's work outside ethics — on Kant, on the theory of knowledge and on the Scottish philosophy of common sense.

     EN
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