Henry Sidgwick
Cambridge utilitarian who named the "paradox of hedonism": seeking pleasure too much keeps you from finding it.
Life
Henry Sidgwick (1838-1900) was professor of moral philosophy at Cambridge and a founder of Newnham College, one of the university's first colleges for women. In The Methods of Ethics he examines egoism, intuitionism and utilitarianism with rare rigour, and defends a utilitarianism based on a principle of universal benevolence. He also finds that a conflict remains between self-interest and the general good.
Main works
Compares egoism, intuitionism and utilitarianism; defends utilitarianism but leaves its conflict with egoism unresolved.
An economics treatise discussing the moral foundations of economic choices.
Studies the functions of the state and the principles of political life.
In his own words
« the good of any one individual is of no more importance, from the point of view (if I may so say) of the Universe, than the good of any other; unless, that is, there are special grounds for believing that more good is likely to be realized in the one case than in the other. »
« if we find an ultimate and fundamental contradiction in our apparent intuitions of what is Reasonable in conduct, we seem forced to the conclusion that they were not really intuitions after all »
Positions
click a row to see the evidenceHe left Christian orthodoxy (resigning in 1869) and stayed undecided about theism, which he thought ethics needed but could not prove.
A. and E. Sidgwick, Henry Sidgwick: A Memoir (1906)
Right action is the one that produces the greatest total happiness, which he takes to be the rational basis of common-sense morality.
Sidgwick, The Methods of Ethics (1874)
He holds that some moral truths, such as the axiom of impartial benevolence, are self-evident to reason and objectively true.
Sidgwick, The Methods of Ethics (1874), Book III and IV