Guest Editor's Preface. SIDGWICK AND THE UNIVERSE: AN INTRODUCTION (original) (raw)

2008

Sidgwick famously claimed that an argument in favour of utilitarianism might be provided by demonstrating that a set of defensible philosophical intuitions undergird it. This paper focuses on those philosophical intuitions. It aims to show which specific intuitions Sidgwick endorsed, and to shed light on their mutual connections. It argues against many rival interpretations that Sidgwick maintained that six philosophical intuitions constitute the self- evident grounds for utilitarianism, and that those intuitions appear to be specifications of a negative principle of universalization (according to which differential treatments must be based on reasonable grounds alone). In addition, this paper attempts to show how the intuitions function in the overall argument for utilitarianism. The suggestion is that the intuitions are the main positive part of the argument for the view, which includes Sidgwick's rejection of common-sense morality and its philosophical counterpart, dogmatic ...

Sidgwick on Virtue

A More Reasonable Ghost: Further Reflections on Henry Sidgwick and the Irrationality of the Universe

Available for free at https://roundedglobe.com/html/34a3e7ff-778f-48d5-bca0-ed4e10132715/en/A%20More%20Reasonable%20Ghost:%20Further%20Reflections%20on%20Henry%20Sidgwick%20and%20the%20Irrationality%20of%20the%20Universe/ Henry Sidgwick (1838-1900) has often been cast as the most philosophically astute of the classical utilitarians and as an epistemological foundationalist who defended a non-metaphysical form of cognitive intuitionism and, in general, set a new standard for academic philosophical ethics. Such perspectives, increasingly prominent since the revival of interest in Sidgwick in the 1970s, do capture important elements of his philosophy. But they do not fully capture Sidgwick’s reflexive, agnostic notion of reasonableness, the concerns he shared with his Idealist opponents, and his larger existential anxieties about the irrationality of the cosmos and the meaning of modernity. This essay presents and further develops claims first made in my keynote address delivered to the conference on “Transcendence, Idealism, and Modernity” held at New College, Oxford in 2011. It sets out, in light of those themes, a number of difficulties for the standard interpretations of and philosophical engagements with the philosophy of Sidgwick.

Sidgwickian Ethics, by David Phillips

David Phillips’s Sidgwickian Ethics is an important work for Sidgwick scholars, joining a very promising revival of interest in the thought of one of the most important moral philosophers. Phillips sets out his goals right in the very first sentence. ‘My aim in this book is to interpret and evaluate the central argument of Sidgwick’s The Methods of Ethics, in a way that brings out the important conceptual and historical connections between his views and contemporary moral philosophy’ (p. 3). In the following pages this central argument is divided into four chapters on the following areas: metaethics, epistemology, the relation between utilitarianism and dogmatic intuitionism, and the relation between utilitarianism and egoism. On most of these issues, Phillips presents new and interesting arguments that will, no doubt, stimulate further discussion among those studying the thought of this great Victorian philosopher.

Guest Editor's Preface. SIDGWICK AND THE UNIVERSE: AN INTRODUCTION (original) (raw)

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