SIDGWICK, HENRY (1838–1900)

The British academic, Henry Sidgwick, was a prolific author on philosophical, political and economic issues throughout his adult life. His main contributions to nineteenth- century thought were challenging, but ultimately conservative, arguments on the controversial subjects of hedonism, individualism, democracy and collectivism.

In May 1838, Sidgwick was born in Skipton, Yorkshire; a member of a prosperous cotton-spinning family that also enjoyed a strong Anglican sacerdotal tradition. Thus, the death of his father in 1841 did not preclude a ‘middle-class’ education for Henry, culminating in successful studies at Rugby School and Cambridge University. In 1859 he was elected a fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, and—despite his subsequently controversial support for the admission of women to the university—after a series of promotions, he became Knightsbridge Professor of Moral Philosophy in 1883. In 1876 Henry married Eleanor Balfour (1845–1931), an industrious scholar, a campaigner for female education and Principal of Newnham College from 1892 to 1910. As well as producing a substantial ceuvre in philosophy, politics and economics (which included several posthumous works), Sidgwick shared his wife’s interest in the supernatural. As prominent members of the Society for Psychic Research, they toured the British Isles frequently during the 1880s and 1890s seeking evidence for a variety of psychic phenomena (cf. Blanshard 1984:213–18). Sidgwick’s four most significant publications were The Methods of Ethics (1874), Principles of Political Economy (1883), The Elements of Politics (1891) and The Development of European Polity (1903).

A correspondent of JOHN STUART MILL, Sidgwick lacked the direct personal connection with JEREMY BENTHAM necessary to be considered a ‘Philosophic Radical’. Nevertheless, the detailed and sympathetic discussion of the theories of Hume, Bentham and the younger Mill in The Methods of Ethics has led to the common

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assumption that Sidgwick represented the ‘next generation’ of British utilitarian thinkers. Against this, however, the leading twentieth-century commentator on Sidgwick has argued that ‘it is a mistake to view the book [Methods] as primarily a defence of utilitarianism’ (Schneewind 1977:192) and has emphasized its engagement with common-sense morality. Moreover, the frequent references to Aristotle, Plato, Butler, KANT and GREEN also seem irreconcilable with the view of Methods as a late- utilitarian manifesto.

Sidgwick expanded the idea of ‘rule-utilitarianism’ beyond the jurisprudential framework established by Bentham and Austin, and sought to show that moral intuitions (rules of common-sense morality) are an essential foundation for ethical calculation in everyday life. He argued that the role of a utilitarian philosopher should be limited to using the utility principle to develop criticisms of already existing rules—but in a manner that did not subvert society’s current consensus of moral belief (cf. Schneewind 1977:340–51). The same concern to promote consensus can be seen in his attempt to reconcile egoism (any theory that justifies actions in terms of an agent’s own happiness) and utilitarianism (‘the ethical doctrine that takes universal happiness as the ultimate end and standard of right conduct’) through a system of ‘universalistic hedonism’ that had certain Kantian features. However, Sidgwick’s academic approach led him to conclude that no complete reconciliation of these perspectives was possible—not even through reference to the ‘third position’ of common-sense morality.

In the years after 1886, Henry Sidgwick was associated politically with the Liberal Unionist party (which worked in alliance with the Conservatives). He shared with HERBERT SPENCER, ALBERT VENN DICEY and a variety of other late-Victorian ‘Individualists’ serious reservations about a fully universal suffrage and this helps us to understand his movement away from ‘Gladstonism’. Sidgwick seems to have originally favoured an ungendered household suffrage, but to have subsequently concluded (during the 1880s) that only single, propertied women should be entrusted with the vote, thereby reducing even further the proportion of the population that would enjoy political influence in his favoured form of polity. Democracy was both an unreliable philosophy of Government and a potential gateway to state collectivism.

The liberal component of Sidgwick’s empirical utilitarianism seemed radical in the third quarter of the nineteenth century, but by the 1880s he was unwilling to follow Mill in the direction of even a ‘qualified’ socialism. Sidgwick’s Principles of Political Economy (1883) was notable for its assertion that a strictly utilitarian view of economic efficiency could identify a number of ‘market failures’ that appeared to validate the case for increased state intervention in the economy, but Sidgwick qualified this collectivism by arguing that a democracy was barely competent to engage in national economic management. Moreover, his popular essay on ‘Economic Socialism’ (1886) reasserted the Smithite argument that wealth is produced most efficiently in a society where Government leaves private industry to its own devices.

Critical debate about Sidgwick has been conspicuously absent from recent literature on liberalism. Although there are clear discrepancies between the views of Sidgwick taken by scholars such as Schneewind and Rawls regarding the classification of Sidgwick as a utilitarian philosopher, there was no direct engagement between the two commentators. (Moreover, Rawls’s two-page introduction to the 1981 Hackett edition of Methods hardly constitutes a major piece of research.) Only Taylor (cf. Taylor 1992:221)

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can be said to have taken a ‘revisionist view’—he criticized the common assumption that Sidgwick sought to reconcile collectivism and individualism, and to place him firmly in the ‘Individualist’ camp—and Taylor’s work is completely ignored in the collection of essays edited by Harrison (cf. Harrison 2001). At the present time, a fully fledged Sidgwick revival seems possible, but unlikely.

SIDGWICK, HENRY (1838–1900)