1、Sidgwick, Henry Singer, Marcus G. (Editor) , Professor Emeritus of Philosophy , University of Wisconsin, Madison Essays on Ethics and Method Print ISBN 0198250231, 2000 Contents Preface ix Abbreviations xiii Introduction: The Philosophy of Henry Sidgwick xiv A Note on the Contents xxxix A Note on Gr
2、ote xlv PART I. ETHICS 1. Utilitarianism (1873) 3 2. The Theory of Evolution in its Application to Practice (1876) 10 3. Professor Calderwood on Intuitionism in Morals (1876) 23 4. Mr. Barratt on The Suppression of Egoism (1877) 27 5. The Establishment of Ethical First Principles (1879) 29 6. Some F
3、undamental Ethical Controversies (1889) 35 7. Law and Morality (1891) 47 8. The Distinction between Is and Ought (1892) 59 9. The Relation of Ethics to Sociology (1899) 63 PART II. VALUE THEORY AND MORAL PSYCHOLOGY 10. Pleasure and Desire (1872) 79 11. Hedonism and Ultimate Good (1877) 89 12. The Fe
4、eling-Tone of Desire and Aversion (1892) 99 13. Unreasonable Action (1893) 107 PART III. METHOD: TRUTH, EVIDENCE, AND BELIEF 14. Verification of Beliefs (1871) 121 15. Incoherence of Empirical Philosophy (1882) 129 16. The Philosophy of Common Sense (1895) 139 17. Criteria of Truth and Error (1900)
5、151 18. Further on the Criteria of Truth and Error (1900) 166 PART IV. COMMENTS AND CRITIQUES 19. Grote on Utilitarianism I (1871) 173 20. Grote on Utilitarianism II (1871) 176 end p.vii21. Fitzjames Stephen on Mill on Liberty (1873) 181 22. Bradleys Ethical Studies (1876) 185 23. Sidgwick vs. Bradl
6、ey (1877) 190 24. Bentham and Benthamism in Politics and Ethics (1877) 195 25. Mr. Spencers Ethical System (1880) 219 26. Leslie Stephens Science of Ethics (1882) 228 27. Greens Ethics (1884) 243 28. Fowlers Progressive Morality (1885) 259 29. Idiopsychological Ethics (1887) 264 30. Spencer on Justi
7、ce (1892) 276 Notes on Sources 287 Bibliography and Bibliographical Notes 289 Index 331 end p.viiiPreface I first heard of Henry Sidgwick when, as an undergraduate at the University of Illinois right after World War II, in Fred Wills course on Theory of Knowledge I read some portions of William Pepp
8、erell Montagues Ways of Knowing and came across his glowing reference to Sidgwicks Methods of Ethics. A year or so later, when I was a graduate student at Cornell, Stuart Brown suggested that I read Sidgwicks History of Ethics and Broads Five Types of Ethical Theory. This was good advice, and I have
9、 ever since recommended these books to students beginning the study of ethics. The next year I signed up for Browns ethics seminar, on Hobbes, Butler, Sidgwick, and Bradley. This was a fascinating seminar; the counterpoint involved was marvelous. A paper I wrote for that seminar was entitled General
10、ization in Sidgwicks Ethics. As I later came to see, it was not really a good papereven though Brown thought well of it, but it was the beginning of a life-long interest in both Sidgwick and generalization.I first contemplated compiling a selection of Sidgwicks papers in 1961 or 1962, and broached t
11、he subject to my editors at both Knopf and Scribners. The response was the same in both cases: there was not enough interest in Sidgwick to warrant such a venture. After (the late) Eugene Freeman, editor of The Monist, arranged a special issue for 1974 to celebrate the centennial of the publication
12、of The Methods, he approached me with the idea of editing for the Open Court Publishing Company a collection of Sidgwicks essays in collaboration with Jerry Schneewind. Schneewind and I exchanged some ideas on contents, but then Professor Freeman decided that, given the relative lack of interest (at
13、 the time) in the Sidgwick Monist issue, there would not be enough interest to warrant Open Court in publishing a selection of Sidgwicks essays. A while later Bill Hackett, of Hackett Publishing Company, was in touch with Schneewind and me about editing a selection of Sidgwicks essays, but he decide
14、d that such a project would have to wait until Hackett reprinted The Methods of Ethics (1981), and then Bill Hackett died, and, independently of that, Schneewind lost interest in the project. And that was that, for quite a while. Meanwhile, I continued teaching Sidgwick in seminars and tutorials, in
15、cluded some Sidgwick material in my Morals and Values (Scribners 1977), and in a National Endowment for the Humanities Seminar for College Teachers that I directed in the summer of 1983 made available and assigned a number of Sidgwicks epistemological as well as some of his ethical essays.Bart Schul
16、tz, shortly after the publication of his Essays on Henry Sidgwickwhich in turn developed out of a conference on Henry Sidgwick as Philosopher end p.ixand Historian that he had arranged at the University of Chicago in 1990, almost certainly the first such conference ever heldsuggested that we collabo
17、rate on a selection of Sidgwicks essays. With my capacity for learning from the past not wholly obliterated, I at first demurred, but after a while, as Bart is very persuasive, I finally agreed. We started drawing up tentative tables of contents for discussion (and eventually discovered that we had
18、some deep-seated disagreements about some of the items to be includedand God knows how they would have been resolved), and while we were in the discussion stage, Peter Momtchiloff of Oxford University Press told me that he had heard that I was preparing a selection of Sidgwicks essays, and that he w
19、ould like to consider it for publication. By this time, obviously, interest in Sidgwick had increased somewhat. So I sent Mr Momtchiloff a prospectus and tentative table of contents, and he eventually sent me a contract, with the result that you are now perusing. Sometime in the middle of this proce
20、ss, however, Bart Schultz decided to withdraw from the project, and so I was again alone with it. The end result, curiously enough, is very close to what I had first been planning in the early 1960s. So here it is, at last, Sidgwicks Essays on Ethics and Method.In 1983 or so I organized a Sidgwick S
21、ociety. Its goals were summed up in its original prospectus: The Society has been founded out of admiration for the character of Henry Sidgwick and the way he practiced philosophical inquiry: careful, cautious contemplation, considering all points and every possibility, along with his resolute aim a
22、t truth and clarity and clarified understanding, his widespread interest in nearly every area of philosophy and in so many other areas of inquiry and life, and his resolute good sense, good judgment, and good will. Thus the Society has as its object the pursuit and support and emulation of such idea
23、ls. A somewhat later statement read this way: The Society does not do anythingit holds no meetings, publishes no journals, papers, or newsletters, collects no dues. It engages in no activities of any sort whatever. It just is, and it exists as a tribute to Henry Sidgwick and the example he set in hi
24、s intellectual work and life. It does not consist of a group of disciples, nor does it set forth any ideology. The very ideas of discipleship and of ideology are altogether inconsistent with the ideals and practices of its namesake. Its members, rather, seek to honor and to emulate the disinterested
25、 and impartial search for truth and illumination that animated and stimulated Henry Sidgwick, and which serves for them as a model of disinterested search for understanding. The interest generated in this Society, and the number of requests received from people who wanted to be invited to be members
26、, was amazing. There was, starting in the 1980s at least, much greater interest in Sidgwick than we had previously known about, and we can be pretty sure the interest was not generated by there being no dues, no meetings, and no duties. A number of distinguished end p.xphilosophers told me that they
27、 were honored to be on the Board of Directors, or the Executive Committee, although a number of them have, unfortunately, since left us, possibly for a realm where they can carry on uninterrupted discussions with Henry Sidgwick. These include Brand Blanshard (the first president of the Sidgwick Soci
28、ety), Dick Brandt, Bill Frankena, and Alan Donagan (the chief member of the Whewell Wing of the Sidgwick Society). With the publication of this book, the Directorship will devolve elsewhereand there is a rumor that the Sidgwick Society will then have a web page, a sure sign, in the age of the Intern
29、et, of having arrived.I have, over the years, accumulated a number of debts in connection with Sidgwick, which it is here a pleasure to acknowledge. I have learned more about Sidgwick than I can readily specify from the four unhappily departed persons listed in the dedication, and also from Jack Raw
30、ls, Jerry Schneewind, Bart Schultz, Janice Daurio, A. Phillips Griffiths, Jim Griffin, and Jack Smart, as well as from a number of the writers listed in the bibliography. This does not relieve these personages from all responsibility for what is here included and what I have said herein about Sidgwi
31、ck, though it may relieve them from some. (A list of those from whom I have not learned anything of significance about Sidgwick would be, to be sure, much longer, too long to be included here. But even if the list were shorter it would almost certainly be inadvisable to publish it.)Over the years in
32、 which I have been teaching Sidgwicks ethics I received valuable stimulation from a number of outstanding students. These include William Langenfus and Michael F. McFall (both of whom served at different times as my research assistants and located Sidgwick and Sidgwick-related materials for me, maki
33、ng me aware of important papers and discussions I had not known of before), Storm Bailey, Robert F. Card, Margaret (Peggy) Carter, Norman Gillespie, Jennifer Hoepner, Abel Pablo Iannone, Bryce Jones, Lenore Gutenstein Kuo, Stephen Luebke, Maria Christina Lugones, Hans Oberdiek, Michael A. Reiter, Wa
34、lter Schaller, John R. Schmidt, and the late Hardy Jones. Kenneth Cooley provided special stimulation in several seminars. And these are just the people whose names I remember, at the moment; there must be at least as many whose names have eluded me. Despite the reputation Sidgwicks Methods has acqu
35、ired over the years for being dull or boring, these seminars were always very lively; none of the people who stayed the course thought the book dull.Bart Schultz supplied me with copies of papers that I did not already have, in particular Chapter 1, the unpublished paper on Utilitarianism, and I am
36、of course grateful as well for his advice and counsel. He should be regarded as the unlisted second editor, as the voice behind the scenes. Terry Penner supplied me with the Latin transliterations of some Greek terms, for which I am duly grateful. Nancy LeDuc faithfully transcribed on to computer di
37、sk some of the essays that could not be adequately photocopied for publication and was also a ready and steady hand with the photocopier. And Tom Maloney, of the Interlibrary Loan end p.xiDepartment of the University of Wisconsin Memorial Library, rendered service above and beyond the call of duty o
38、n an occasion when time was of the essence. The photographs of Sidgwick, one taken (probably) in 1856 when he was an undergraduate of 18, the other taken circa 1877 were sent to me some time ago by Ann Baer, a great-niece of Sidgwick and honorary member of the Sidgwick Society, taken from her grandf
39、ather Arthur Sidgwicks album. She gave me freedom to use these items as I thought best. I am sure she would be happy at their reproduction here. My wife, Blanche Ladenson Singer, as she has often done in the past, scrutinized a good deal of what I have written, and with her talent for spotting redun
40、dancies, obscurities, and infelicities of style enabled me to eliminate a number I otherwise might not have seen. And I am pleased to express my appreciation for the excellent copy editing of Virginia Williams of Oxford University Press, whose sharp eyes saved me from a number of blunders and who ma
41、de a number of very helpful suggestions for improvement of wording. Finally, my gratitude, and that of all Sidgwick scholars, to Charlotte Jenkins, philosophy editor at Oxford University Press, for her invaluable help and assistance.It should be acknowledged that there has been some silent editing o
42、f Sidgwicks text: an occasional deletion of an excess word, supplying of a word inadvertently omitted in the original, or some refinement of punctuation. Often when a word judged inadvertently omitted in the original has been inserted, the insertion is enclosed in square brackets. But there has been
43、 no extensive modification. The quintessentially Sidgwickian style remains. In 1885 Sidgwick said about J. S. Mill, for whom of course he had great admiration in general: What I really envy him is his style; whenever I have by accident tried to say something that he has said before, without knowing,
44、 his way of saying it always seems indefinitely better (Memoir, 420-1). I think Sidgwick was right on this. None the less, Sidgwick was able to write certain things that Mill did not and could not. This book is evidence of that, along with The Methods of Ethics and his other works.Derek Parfit wrote
45、 to me some time ago (I hope he does not mind my quoting him here): I firmly believe that if there is any single book which it would be for the best that everyone doing moral philosophy could assume that everyone thoroughly knew, it would be The Methods, a thought with which I have some tendency to
46、agree, and which I have tried to apply in my teaching of moral philosophy. It is to be hoped that the present assemblage of Sidgwicks lesser-known writings will stimulate the interest, and the consequent knowledge, that Parfit hoped for.MGSMadison, WisconsinSeptember 1999 and March 2000end p.xiiAbbr
47、eviations The titles of Sidgwicks books, and of three journals in which his writings appeared with some frequency, are abbreviated as follows. Full bibliographical details on the books are provided in Section I of the Bibliography at the end of the book. DEP The Development of European Polity (1903)
48、 EP The Elements of Politics (1891) GSM Lectures on the Ethics of Green, Spencer, and Martineau (1902) HE Outlines of the History of Ethics (1886) IJE International Journal of Ethics JSPR Journal of the Society for Psychical Research LPK Lectures on the Philosophy of Kant and other Philosophical Lec
49、tures and Essays (1905) ME The Methods of Ethics (1874) MEA Miscellaneous Essays and Addresses (1904) Mem. Henry Sidgwick: A Memoir (1906) PE Practical Ethics (1898) Phil. Philosophy, Its Scope and Relations (1902) PPE Principles of Political Economy (1883) PSPR Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research end p.xiiiIntroduction: The Philosophy of Henry Sidgwick Pure white light! exclaimed a British philosopher in my hearing some fifty years ago when the conversation turned to Henry Sidgwick. That sums up
