Sidgcandle

Lately I've been reading me some Sidgwick. Henry Sidgwick. For those unfamiliar with the name (most people), he was a Victorian ethicist, sometimes thought of as the last of the early Utilitarians, or perhaps the first of the modern Utilitarians. His great treatise Methods Of Ethics is among my top 2 favourite works of philosophy, and formed the basis of much of my honours thesis. According to Wikipedia, John Rawls called it the "first truly academic work in moral theory," which probably hints at both the book's great strengths and flaws. On the one hand, it is a wonderfully clear, precise, well reasoned, and fair piece of work. On the other hand, it's widely held to be incredibly dull in style. In fact, Sidgwick probably puts it best: "... it is essentially an attempt to introduce precision of thought into a subject usually treated in a too loose and popular way, and therefore I feel cannot fail to be somewhat dry and repellent." Thankfully, I like my Victorian moralists the way I like my wit: Dry.

In actual fact: a) I find Sidgwick fairly easy to read, at least in comparison to other authors where I have to puzzle over what exactly they mean every couple of sentences (but then, I put a high value on clarity), and b) I think that Parfit later showed with Reasons & Persons that it is possible to write a very intellectually precise treatise on ethics while at the same time being engaging and imaginative, though he did have the advantage over Sidgwick of there already existing a well developed tradition of academic ethics behind him.

Anyway, despite leaning so heavily on Methods Of Ethics for my honours thesis, I actually never read anything else by Sidgwick, until I recently borrowed a collection of his shorter essays. It's pretty good. Here's a few Sidgwick quotes which I quite enjoyed:

"I hate the History of Philosophy even more than any other history; it is so hard to know what any particular man thought, and so worthless when you do know it." - This is from a letter he wrote when only 27, and he later went on to write a history of ethics, so I suppose he mellowed a bit. Still, I do appreciate any support for my own distaste for the history of philosophy

"No difficulty of any other writer can convey the least conception even of the sort of difficulty I find in Hegel. My only consolation is... that every other philosophical work I take up seems to be easy. But no amount of difficulty alone would distress my spirit if there was not added the paralysing doubt whether, after all, I am not breaking my head over highly profound nonsense." - I knew that Sidgwick was heavily into Kant, but I was surprised to learn that he also studied Hegel. Sounds to me like he nailed it, too.

"It is a horrid nuisance to have to put one's principles into practice." - I couldn't agree more. This is in reference to the major ethical dilemma of Sidgwick's life, which prompted the writing of the Methods. He was a fellow of Trinity college at Cambridge, and one of the conditions of this fellowship was that he believed in the articles of the Church of England. However, in the 1860s, he realised that he no longer could believe, and spent much time deliberating whether or not he should resign his position. He finally did so in 1869. Then parliament scrapped those requirements in 1871, apparently owing in part to Sidgwick's reputation, and so he got his job back. So... Not such a nuisance after all, I suppose.

"It is said that an undergraduate once, being asked in examination to describe the economic conditions of the inhabitants of the Hebrides, stated that they 'earn a precarious livelihood by washing one another's clothes.' It has often seemed to me that... That phrase would aptly describe a considerable part of the industry of modern metaphysicians." - Double Lols.


Some other amusing quotes, by others, about the Methods Of Ethics:

"I have never found so dull a book so absorbing" - John Maynard Keynes (Edit: Actually, turns out this quote is refering to a memoir compiled by Sidgwick's brother and widow, and not refering to the Methods. As compensation, here is another amusing Keynes quote about Sidgwick: "He never did anything but wonder whether Christianity was true and prove that it wasn't and hope that it was.")

"To most types of reader, Sidgwick is irredeemably dull, while writers with far feebler intellectual powers who speak in terms of prophecy, like Nietzsche and Kierkegaard, are listened to with a respect they ill deserve" - Brand Blanshard. Buuuurn!

"He read The Methods Of Ethics as a young man and found it so stodgy that he had been deterred from ever reading any book on ethics since" - Said of... Alfred North Whitehead. Because formal logic isn't stodgy at all?

"Sidgwick's account of the methods of ethics misses questions beyond those which he explicitly discusses" - Alasdaire MacIntyre... What!?