Sidgwick, Henry

WORKS BY SIDGWICK

SUPPLEMENTARY BIBLIOGRAPHY

Henry Sidgwick (1838-1900), English economist, does not have an obvious place in the standard histories of economic or social thought. His name is not associated with any particular theory or policy, and much of his influence was exerted through his teaching and his participation in the affairs of Cambridge University.

Sidgwick was born at Skipton in Yorkshire, where his father was an Anglican clergyman and headmaster of the local grammar school. From his earliest years it was clear that Sidgwick was destined for academic success. After attending Rugby, he went to Cambridge and achieved distinction there, both in classics and mathematics. In 1859 he was elected to a fellowship at Trinity College; he remained at Cambridge for the rest of his life.

At the beginning of his academic career Sidgwick taught classics, but he was soon drawn into the field of social science and in 1867 exchanged his lectureship in classics for a lectureship in moral sciences (what would now be called social sciences). Much of his intellectual effort as a teacher at Cambridge was directed toward improving the curriculum: he was influential in raising the status of the social sciences, and he helped pave the way for the economics tripos. Thus, he may be regarded as one of the pioneers who facilitated the emergence of the “Cambridge school” of economics. He also furthered the cause of university education for women (his wife became principal of Newnham College in 1892), and he played a part in the movement for greater religious toleration at the university.

His writings ranged over a number of fields: in addition to his early classical studies, he wrote on politics, philosophy, and economics and, more remote from his central concerns, attempted to make research on psychic phenomena (then a particular vogue in England) scientifically respectable. All who came in contact with Sidgwick seem to have agreed about his intellectual and moral stature; Marshall spoke of him as his “spiritual father and mother,” and John Neville Keynes described him as the most intellectually gifted man he had ever met.

Sidgwick’s written contributions to economics are to be found mainly in his Principles of Political Economy (1883). This work is a useful bench mark by which to judge the state of the discipline in the period between J. S. Mill’s Principles (1848) and the first edition of Marshall’s Principles (1890). The text is primarily a re-exposition of Mill, with traces of the emergent marginalism of Jevons and Marshall. Like Marshall, Sidgwick had a strong desire to emphasize continuity in economic thinking, rather than his own originality. As he put it, “The special aim ... is to eliminate needless polemics by a guarded restatement of traditional doctrines, with due recognition of the advances made in economic theory by recent writers” ([1883] 1901, p. ix). The book contains some corrections and clarifications of Mill’s analysis (for example, the distinction between movements along a demand schedule and shifts from one demand schedule to another, which is so blurred in Mill, is clearly made and explained by Sidgwick), and the influence of Marshall is obvious.

The most important sections in Sidgwick’s Principles are those dealing with methodology and the analysis of government interference. Sidgwick restated the methodological position, first enunciated within the context of economics by Senior and Mill, whereby the “science” and the “art” of political economy are to be logically differentiated: “The first gives information as to what happens, without pronouncing whether it is good or bad; the second judges that what happens or would happen under certain conditions is the best thing that could happen” (ibid., p. 36). However, Sidgwick (ever a moderate) refused to adopt the extreme position of Cairnes, and later of Robbins, according to which the economist qua economist has no special qualifications in the normative area of his studies.

The core of Sidgwick’s major contribution is contained in his discussion of the art of political economy (book 3). He was at pains to dissociate economic science from the political doctrines of laissez-faire and suggested various conditions under which state interference in the productive process may become desirable: one important condition is the divergence of private and social benefits. Here Sidgwick’s analysis constitutes the prototype of the Marshall-Pigou approach. However, he did not present a general a priori case for government ’ interference whenever this divergence obtains—each situation has to be considered on its own. He stated the case for interference with the distribution of income—necessitated by an unregulated economic system—with much more generality, except for reservations about the possible effects of interference on production. He argued for much greater equality of income, to be achieved by deliberate government fiscal policy, basing his argument on the “general acceptance” of two propositions of Bentham’s, which may be summarized as follows: utility increases as wealth increases, but at a decreasing rate. Sidgwick did not make clear the methodological status of these propositions; we are not told whether they are judgments or testable (and tested) hypotheses.

Sidgwick’s influence on social thought and policy is difficult to assess. Although he expressed grave doubts about the feasibility of a total socialist solution, his rejection of any general theoretical reasons for nonintervention and his emphasis on the need to look at every case individually place him squarely in the English Fabian tradition.

Bernard Corry

[For the historical context of Sidgwick’s work, see the biographies ofMillandSenior; for discussion of the subsequent development of Sidgwick’s ideas, see the biographies ofMarshall and Pigou.]

WORKS BY SIDGWICK

(1874) 1901 The Methods of Ethics. 6th ed. London: Macmillan.

(1883) 1901 The Principles of Political Economy. 3d ed. New York: Macmillan.

(1891) 1908 The Elements of Politics. 4th ed. London: Macmillan.

SUPPLEMENTARY BIBLIOGRAPHY

Keynes, John Neville 1900 Henry Sidgwick [obituary]. Economic Journal 10:585-591.

Keynes, John Neville (1908) 1963 Henry Sidgwick. Volume 3, pages 757-759 in Robert Palgrave, Palgrave’s Dictionary of Political Economy. New York: Macmillan.

Marshall, Alfred (1890) 1961 Principles of Economics. 9th ed. 2 vols. New York and London: Macmillan.

Mill, John Stuart (1848) 1965 Principles of Political Economy, With Some of Their Applications to Social Philosophy. 2 vols. Edited by J. M. Robson. Collected Works, Vols. 2, 3. Univ. of Toronto Press.

Sidgwick, Arthur; and Sidgwick, Eleanor 1906 Henry Sidgwick: A Memoir. London and New York: Macmillan.

Henry Sidgwick

The English philosopher and moralist Henry Sidgwick (1838-1900) was the author of The Methods of Ethics, which has been described as the "best treatise on moral theory that has ever been written."

Henry Sidgwick was born in Yorkshire and attended Rugby before entering Trinity College, Cambridge. After a distinguished undergraduate career, he was elected a fellow in 1859. Because he could not in conscience subscribe to the Thirty-nine Articles as a condition for holding a fellowship, Sidgwick resigned but remained at Cambridge as a lecturer. He became Knightbridge professor of moral thought in 1883. Together with his wife, Eleanor, a sister of Arthur Balfour, the British prime minister, he helped to establish Newnham, the Cambridge University college for women. Sidgwick was also one of the founders and the first president of the influential Society for Psychical Research. In addition to the classic The Methods of Ethics (1874), Sidgwick's writings include Principles of Political Economy (1883), Outlines of the History of Ethics for English Readers (1886), The Elements of Politics (1891), Practical Ethics (1898), Philosophy: Its Scope and Relations (1902), and Lectures on the Philosophy of Kant and Other Philosophical Lectures and Essays (1905). During his long association with Cambridge, Sidgwick taught and influenced several important future thinkers, including John McTaggart, G. E. Moore, and Bertrand Russell.

Ethical methodology concerns the ways in which men make decisions about how they should act. Sidgwick, as an ethical historian, saw that ethical decisions resulted from a particular conception of the end or purpose of life. Philosophers have been divided into two groups on this subject: those who think that happiness is the chief purpose of existence, and a minority group that acknowledges that there are ends other than happiness, such as self-realization or perfection, that are also intrinsically desirable.

The methods of non-Eudamonistic ethics rest on some type of intuition into the nature of moral principles that extend beyond happiness. The philosophic difficulty of intuitionalism is its inability to establish the universal validity of such insights as transcendent values. Sidgwick described happiness ethics as utilitarian and distinguished between systems that aim at the happiness of individuals (egoistic hedonism) and those that aim at happiness for all. In these systems, methodology consists of designating actions as right or wrong in terms of the amount of happiness produced for the self or for others. Sidgwick admitted that he distrusted intuitional systems because of their subjectivity, and he considered himself to be a utilitarian until he came to perceive "the profound discrepancy between the natural end of action, private happiness, and the end of duty, general happiness."

Thus the central problem of ethics for Sidgwick was located in the conflict between personal inclination and duty toward others. Eventually Sidgwick admitted that without some sort of religious sanction, the attempt rationally to demonstrate the ethical necessity of extending self-love to love for others was a failure.

Further Reading

A biography by A. and E. M. Sidgwick, Henry Sidgwick: A Memoir (1906), contains useful sources and a complete bibliography. The best secondary references are C. D. Broad's Five Types of Ethical Theory (1930) and Ethics and the History of Philosophy (1952).

Additional Sources

Schneewind, J. B. (Jerome B.), Sidgwick's ethics and Victorian moral philosophy, Oxford; New York: Clarendon Press, 1977. □

Henry Sidgwick , 1838–1900, English philosopher. He studied at Trinity College, Cambridge, and taught moral philosophy there from 1869 until 1900. The basis of his thought was British utilitarianism. Analyzing the intuitionist and utilitarian arguments, he indicated their interrelationship by showing how the doctrine of common sense rests on the principles of utilitarianism. In The Methods of Ethics (1874) he distinguished between actions performed with a view toward the general happiness and those performed with a view toward the agent's own self-interest. After comparing ethical systems based on intuitionism, and utilitarianism, and egoism, he concluded that intuitionism and utilitarianism could be integrated into a single ethical system, but that no rational explanation could be found for preferring it to egoism. Sidgwick was interested in the advancement of women's rights, aiding in the planning and founding of Newnham College for women. He was also a founder of the Society of Psychical Research. Other major published works are Principles of Political Economy (1883), Philosophy: Its Scope and Relations (1902), and The Development of European Polity (1903).

Bibliography: See J. B. Schneewind, Sidgwick's Ethics and Victorian Moral Philosophy (1977).

Sidgwick, Henry (1838–1900), professor of moral philosophy at Cambridge from 1883. A follower in economics and politics of J. S. Mill, his attitude on the question of our knowledge of the external world resembles that of Reid. His reputation rests on The Methods of Ethics (1874). Here he considers three ‘methods’ of determining the right course of action: intuitionism, according to which we have direct apprehension of moral principles; egoism, according to which an agent's own interests determine what he should do; utilitarianism, according to which right and wrong are fixed by considerations of the interests of everyone affected by our actions.

Sidgwick, Henry (1838–1900), moral philosopher. At Cambridge he supported the movement for abolishing religious tests. His Methods of Ethics (1874), a study of moral philosophy on mainly hedonistic lines, had considerable influence.