Sidgwick, Henry (1839–1900)

Henry Sidgwick made important contributions to ethics and economics. He argued that intuitive commonsense morality collapses into utilitarianism, comparing as he did so utilitarianism with alternative moral theories. Sidgwick also wrote on economics and argued against socialism.

Henry Sidgwick was born in Skipton, Yorkshire, in 1838; he died in 1900. He was educated at Trinity College, Cambridge, and remained at that university for his entire career. He was highly influenced by the work of J. S. Mill, especially Mill's The Subjection of Women, and was a great advocate of female education as well as the education of the working class. He was influential in establishing the all-female Newnham College, Cambridge, in 1871, which was one of the first colleges for women in England. Sidgwick is best known for his first major work The Methods of Ethics. His other works include The Principles of Political Economy, Outlines of the History of Ethics for English Readers, The Elements of Politics, and Practical Ethics: A Collection of Addresses and Essays.

Sidgwick's Methods of Ethics was an examination of what he took to be the three most basic methods of ethics to be found in people's common moral reasoning. The three methods of ethics—or ways of arriving through reason at an account of what should be done—were egoistic hedonism (e.g., Epicureanism), intuitional morality (understood mainly as commonsense deontology), and universalistic hedonism (e.g., utilitarianism). (Sidgwick unified both egoistic hedonism and universalistic hedonism under the term ethical hedonism.) In assessing these three methods of ethics, Sidgwick argued that intuitive commonsense morality collapses into utilitarianism, in particular a form of indirect utilitarianism by which it would be preferable to keep people ignorant of the utilitarian basis of morality if doing so would result in the greatest happiness for the greatest number in the long term. In addition to the substantive conclusions of The Methods of Ethics, this work also secured Sidgwick fame for its methodology, insofar as in it Sidgwick compared utilitarianism with its major alternatives, always ensuring that his account of each theory was historically well-informed.

Apart from his work on ethics, Sidgwick also wrote on economics, having been influenced by Mill's Principles of Political Economy, and has become best known for his microeconomic work on human capital and noncompetitive behavior. Although Sidgwick endorsed in broad form the claim of Adam Smith that the common welfare is best secured by each person attending to his or her own self-interest, this claim was qualified when Sidgwick addressed topics such as [Page 1926]education, poor relief, child care, and public goods such as national defense and certain types of public works. Such qualifications led Sidgwick to consider the arguments in favor of socialism, a doctrine that he rejected on the grounds that socialistic policies would undermine a person's economic incentives to produce. He did, however, pave the way, through his work on arguments on utilitarian grounds, for a greater degree of state interference aimed at securing the greater good. In addition to his academic work, Sidgwick was also actively involved in promoting religious freedom and education.

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