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WorkHenry Sidgwick

Philosophy, Its Scope and Relations

What philosophy is for, and why it is not just another science: an introductory course Sidgwick did not live to finish.

by Henry Sidgwick238 passages held

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(published posthumously)
Original language
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Overview

About three months before he died in August 1900, knowing that his illness was likely to be fatal, Henry Sidgwick asked his Cambridge colleague James Ward to take charge of some unfinished work, and dictated a note on each piece. He described this one as a course of lectures, three of them already printed, defining the scope of philosophy and its relation to other studies; it could be published, he said, but needed revision. The book grew out of his teaching alone. Sidgwick gave a short course under this title in 1892 and expanded it over the next two years. In 1897 he began turning it into a book and had three lectures printed privately, but from 1898 the full university course in metaphysics took over his time. The lectures argue that philosophy is not one more science. Its work is to bring the findings of the separate sciences into one coherent view, and to do the same for the many ends people pursue; its hardest task is to connect the two, what is with what ought to be. Ward brought the book out with Macmillan in 1902. He left some repetitions standing where cutting them would have damaged the text, and on his own responsibility added a twelfth lecture, on the relation of theoretical to practical philosophy, which he found only after searching through Sidgwick's ethical papers.

Key concepts

What does Sidgwick mean by calling philosophy 'scientia scientiarum'?

The science of the sciences. Each special science has its fundamental notions and principles, its own method and its main conclusions; philosophy examines these in order to co-ordinate them with those of the other sciences. It adds no new facts to any of them, but aims at a grasp of the whole body of knowledge as one coherent system.

What is a 'consensus of experts'?

Agreement on method and main conclusions among those who study a subject in substantially the same way. Geometry, physics and botany have it; philosophy, by Sidgwick's own admission, does not. Where it exists, a science can progress steadily and teach conclusions, rather than only an acquaintance with the arguments on each side.

What is natural dualism?

The view of ordinary thought and physical science that mind and matter are two distinct kinds of fact: my feelings and thoughts on one side, and what goes on in my brain, or in the table I see, on the other. Sidgwick holds that the distinction cannot be got rid of by saying that everything is consciousness, nor by reducing thought to nervous change.

What separates theoretical from practical philosophy?

Theoretical philosophy seeks to unify knowledge of what is, has been and will be; practical philosophy concerns the principles and methods of rationally determining what ought to be, in ethics and politics. Sidgwick includes both in philosophy's unifying work, and the book's last lecture, added by its editor James Ward from Sidgwick's ethical papers, takes up how the two are related.

Themes of the book

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

Philosophy as Knowledge Made Whole

If every science already has its own subject, what is left for philosophy? To bring their findings into one coherent view, and to connect what is with what ought to be.

Sidgwick calls philosophy in one sense the science of the sciences: it takes each science's principles, method and conclusions and co-ordinates them with the rest. He keeps Herbert Spencer's phrase 'completely unified knowledge' but faults Spencer for stressing likenesses, since a real unification, like Newton's union of falling bodies with the motions of the heavens, explains the differences too. And philosophy must also reach what ought to be, which a merely descriptive science of conduct leaves out.

  • philosophy
  • philosophy of science
  • scientific method
  • science
  • scientific knowledge
  • epistemology
  • metaphysics
  • knowledge
  • logic
  • truth
  • normativity
  • practical philosophy
  • ethics

Enter a dialogue

What History Does to Belief

Does learning how a belief came to be weaken its claim to be true? Only where experts still disagree, the lectures argue, which is why history unsettles ethics and leaves chemistry alone.

Historical study, Sidgwick argues, has a sceptical force only in fields still in fundamental controversy: the history of alchemy does not shake anyone's trust in chemistry. He doubts that sociology can yet forecast the course of opinion, because an inquirer who takes his own age's views as true must see the past as a passage from error to truth and any further change as a fall back into error. And he can foresee that the duty of gratitude may go the way of the duty of resentment without that settling whether it should.

  • historical method
  • philosophy of history
  • sociology
  • social progress
  • relativism
  • skepticism
  • belief
  • evolution
  • political philosophy

Enter a dialogue

Mind, Matter and the Brain

Is a thought nothing but a change in the brain, or is matter nothing but an idea? The lectures refuse both reductions and keep the plain person's two kinds of fact.

Sidgwick grants that every mental process is accompanied by some change in the brain, yet no one practised in reflection can admit that a thought simply is that change. Mind is tied to matter at two ends: to the brain that accompanies a perception, and to the table that is perceived, two very different material facts. Against materialism and against the mentalism that turns matter into feelings, he keeps a natural dualism, and finds that Darwin's account of human descent leaves the philosophical obstacles to materialism exactly where they were.

  • philosophy of mind
  • mind-body problem
  • materialism
  • matter
  • perception
  • psychology
  • causation
  • empiricism

Enter a dialogue

Within this work

passages held
238
distinct concepts
295
by passages held, corpus-wide
#313

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: “epistemology” and “metaphysics”.
Concept co-occurrence, strongest first 8 concepts, joined by 24 pairings. 87 pairings reach beyond these concepts and are not drawn.
ConceptPaired conceptShared passages
epistemologymetaphysics17
epistemologytruth11
metaphysicsphilosophy of science10
sociologytruth9
epistemologysociology8
metaphysicsphilosophy of mind7
epistemologyphilosophy of mind5
epistemologyphilosophy of science5
ethicssociology5
historical methodsociology5
philosophy of mindphilosophy of science5
philosophy of sciencesociology4
epistemologyhistorical method3
ethicsmetaphysics2
ethicsphilosophy of science2
historical methodphilosophy of science2
metaphysicssociology2
epistemologyethics1
ethicshistorical method1
ethicstruth1
historical methodmetaphysics1
historical methodtruth1
metaphysicstruth1
philosophy of sciencetruth1

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

    The historical companion to The Methods of Ethics: Sidgwick telling the story of the moral debates that book had tried to settle by argument.

     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 you are here 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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