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WorkHenry Sidgwick

The Methods of Ethics

Common-sense morality, examined rule by rule, turns out to be utilitarian — yet the case for self-interest survives the examination.

by Henry Sidgwick716 passages held

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First published
(aged 36)
Original language
English

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Overview

In 1862 Henry Sidgwick wrote to a friend that he was working out a theory of ethics that would reconcile the two camps of English moral philosophy. One camp, the intuitionists, held that conscience sees directly that lying or breaking a promise is wrong. The other, the utilitarians who followed Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill, judged every act by its effect on the general happiness. The two were taken to be enemies. The Methods of Ethics, published by Macmillan in 1874, treats the quarrel as a misunderstanding. Sidgwick examines the rules of common-sense morality one at a time — truthfulness, justice, keeping promises — and finds that wherever they turn vague or collide, people settle the case by asking what will do the most good: intuition, followed carefully, leads to utilitarianism. Rational egoism, the view that each person should pursue their own happiness, was the method he could not absorb: it seemed to him as reasonable as concern for everyone's, and only some moral order in the world could guarantee that the two never part. The first edition ended by admitting that without such a guarantee, duty falls apart into chaos; later editions softened the tone but kept the conclusion, a deadlock now known as the dualism of practical reason. F. H. Bradley, the Oxford idealist, attacked the book's main argument in a pamphlet in 1877. Sidgwick kept revising the book through five editions in his lifetime, and two more appeared after his death, the seventh in 1907. C. D. Broad later judged it the best treatise on moral theory ever written, and in 2014 Katarzyna de Lazari-Radek and Peter Singer took one of its phrases as the title of The Point of View of the Universe, a book arguing that the deadlock can be broken in utilitarianism's favour.

Key concepts

What are the three methods of ethics?

Three ways of deciding what one ought to do that Sidgwick finds at work in ordinary moral reasoning. Egoism aims at the agent's own greatest happiness; intuitionism holds that certain rules, such as telling the truth or keeping promises, are seen directly to bind; utilitarianism aims at the greatest happiness of all. The book examines each in turn, then asks how far the three can be brought together.

What does Sidgwick mean by the morality of common sense?

The moral rules accepted by thoughtful people in his own society, taken not as mere custom but as a claim to moral truth, backed by the agreement of those who combine enlightenment with a serious concern for morality. It is the material the book tests: if its rules were truly self-evident, they would be precise and would never conflict with one another.

Which moral principles does Sidgwick think are truly self-evident?

Only a few very abstract ones. What is right for one person is right for anyone similar in similar circumstances; a mere difference in time is no reason to care more about one part of one's life than another; and the good of any one individual matters no more, from the point of view of the universe, than the good of any other. None of them settles a particular case on its own.

What is the 'dualism of practical reason'?

The name now given to the deadlock on which the book ends. Reason seems to approve two ultimate aims, one's own greatest happiness and the greatest happiness of all, and nothing in ethics alone guarantees that they coincide. Sidgwick does not conclude that morality should be abandoned; he concludes that, without such a guarantee, the hope of making it completely rational would have to be given up.

Why does Sidgwick call ultimate good 'desirable consciousness'?

Because he finds that nothing is good in itself apart from conscious experience. Even the existence of human beings, prolonged to eternity, would not be desirable unless it were accompanied by consciousness that is on the whole desirable. He then identifies that consciousness with happiness, the surplus of pleasure over pain, which is what carries the argument towards utilitarianism.

What is 'esoteric morality'?

Sidgwick's term for an uncomfortable utilitarian conclusion: some acts might be right only if kept secret, and the very opinion that secrecy can make an act right should itself be kept among an enlightened few. Plain moral sense rejects the idea that secrecy can turn a bad act good, and he grants that there are strong utilitarian reasons for upholding that common opinion in general.

Themes of the book

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

Common Sense on Trial

Do the everyday rules of honesty, justice and promise-keeping hold without exception? Examined one by one, they blur at the edges, and where they blur people reach for the general good.

Sidgwick takes the morality of common sense at its word: if conscience saw directly what is right, its rules would be precise and would never collide. He tests them on hard cases. A promise binds only while a whole list of conditions holds; most people would deceive an invalid to spare a dangerous shock; no agreed formula says what justice requires. In the end the rules look like rough guides to the general happiness, and common sense turns out to have been unconsciously utilitarian all along.

  • intuitionism
  • common sense morality
  • moral rules
  • duty
  • justice
  • virtue
  • moral obligation
  • moral judgment
  • moral principles
  • law
  • utilitarianism
  • consequentialism

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Pleasure and What Is Worth Wanting

Is pleasure the only thing worth wanting for its own sake, and can anyone aim at it directly? The book answers yes to the first question and doubts the second.

Sidgwick first clears away the claim that people only ever desire pleasure: hunger aims at food, not at the agreeable feeling of eating, and a hunter fixed on his own enjoyment never catches the full zest of the chase. That is the paradox of hedonism, the impulse towards pleasure defeating its own aim. Yet the ethical claim survives. Beauty that no mind could ever contemplate is not worth producing, and when we sit down in a cool hour, only desirable consciousness can justify what we prize.

  • hedonism
  • pleasure
  • happiness
  • desire
  • pain
  • motivation
  • moral psychology
  • moral motivation
  • self-control
  • virtue ethics

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Self-Interest and the Point of View of the Universe

Is it more reasonable to pursue one's own happiness or everyone's? The book finds both reasonable, and only some moral order in the world could keep them from parting.

Sidgwick grants egoism a standing his utilitarian predecessors denied it. From the point of view of the universe no one's good counts for more than anyone else's; yet common sense insists that the distinction between one person and another is real and fundamental, so preferring one's own happiness is not simply irrational. Sympathy and conscience narrow the gap without closing it. Unless duty and self-interest are reconciled by some postulate about the order of the world, the book concludes, the hope of making morality wholly rational must be given up.

  • egoism
  • egoistic hedonism
  • prudence
  • practical reason
  • benevolence

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Free Will and Blame

Does deciding what to do depend on whether the will is free? Less than people fear, the book argues, though the question returns with punishment and with Kant.

When a person deliberates, Sidgwick observes, the metaphysics of freedom rarely changes what it would be reasonable to choose, and the practical needs of social order push punishment towards deterrence and reform whatever the truth about determinism. The appendix on Kant finds two notions tangled in his account: freedom as acting rationally, which only the good will shows, and freedom as the power to choose between good and evil, which a scoundrel exercises as fully as a saint.

  • free will
  • determinism
  • moral responsibility

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Within this work

passages held
716
distinct concepts
672
by passages held, corpus-wide
#94

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 “utilitarianism”.
Concept co-occurrence, strongest first 8 concepts, joined by 25 pairings. 85 pairings reach beyond these concepts and are not drawn.
ConceptPaired conceptShared passages
happinessutilitarianism31
hedonismpleasure26
intuitionismutilitarianism19
benevolenceutilitarianism15
happinesspleasure14
happinesshedonism11
happinessvirtue11
benevolencevirtue10
utilitarianismvirtue9
intuitionismvirtue8
moral psychologyutilitarianism8
hedonismutilitarianism7
intuitionismmoral psychology7
moral psychologyvirtue7
benevolencehappiness6
pleasureutilitarianism5
benevolenceintuitionism4
benevolencemoral psychology4
pleasurevirtue4
happinessintuitionism3
hedonismintuitionism3
benevolencehedonism2
hedonismvirtue2
benevolencepleasure1
moral psychologypleasure1

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 you are here 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

    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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