Research:
Henry Sidgwick is now widely regarded as one of the most influential moral philosophers of the last two centuries. This recognition is largely due to the work of contemporary scholars such as Roger Crisp, David Phillips and Bart Schultz who, since the 1970s, have profoundly revised the traditional image of Sidgwick, which until then had been determined mainly by critical comparison with G. E. Moore.
However, this more recent wave of studies on Sidgwick has also tended to focus almost exclusively on The Methods of Ethics (1874), undoubtedly Sidgwick's masterpiece, while neglecting his other works, including The Principles of Political Economy (1883) and The Elements of Politics (1891). Sidgwick, like the other great classical utilitarians – Jeremy Bentham and James and John Stuart Mill – was not only a moral philosopher but also a leading social theorist and economist, whose moral system was designed to respond to these broader social interests and fit into a general scheme, thus giving rise to what John Rawls called a “comprehensive moral doctrine”.
In Sidgwick's case, however, this “global doctrine” has received much less critical attention than, for example, Bentham and Mill. Only in recent years have economic historians such as Steven Medema and Roger Backhouse begun to propose a more systematic interpretation of Sidgwick's contributions to political economy, albeit with little attention to the link between these and moral philosophy.
The aim of my research project, in line with this critical trend, is therefore to broaden the normal field of study on Sidgwick by examining The Methods of Ethics in close relation to Sidgwick's political and economic works. I thus attempt to outline a more comprehensive picture of Sidgwick as a moralist, economist and politician, in line with the approach already adopted by scholars towards other great classical utilitarians.
This does not, of course, mean to diminish the centrality of The Methods of Ethics, which remains Sidgwick's most significant contribution. On the contrary, it means to suggest that the Methods themselves can be better understood when considered within Sidgwick's broader philosophical project. In particular, Sidgwick's political and economic theory offers important insights into what is perhaps his most famous and debated idea: the dualism of practical reason. His interpretation of the market, central to earlier utilitarians as a means of harmonising individual and collective interests, reveals the specificity of Sidgwick's overall doctrine compared to that of other utilitarians, marking a decisive turning point that would also have a major influence on economics.
Sidgwick has, in fact, sometimes been seen, from a political point of view, on the one hand, as a conservative utilitarian—his utilitarianism being a form of “tamed” Benthamism, devoid of the aggressive reformism that characterised the Philosophical Radicals—and, on the other hand, as the moral philosopher who, more than any other, inspired the birth of Pigou's Welfare Economics, which formed the basis of many social reform programmes in the 20th century. Which of these seemingly opposing but perhaps not irreconcilable views best represents Sidgwick's political philosophy? This is one of the key questions of my research project.
Rawls also argued that utilitarianism and liberalism are incompatible. The ensuing debate focused mainly on the conflict between utilitarianism and liberalism in the political philosophy of Bentham and Mill, largely neglecting that of Sidgwick. This is in line with the general tendency I have already highlighted to neglect Sidgwick as a political philosopher. Another key question in my research project therefore attempts to examine Rawls' classic problem of the compatibility between utilitarianism and liberalism, but unlike most scholars, it focuses specifically on Sidgwick's political philosophy. This is particularly important both because Sidgwick distances himself significantly from the political philosophy of Bentham and Mill, and because Rawls describes him as “the best expositor of the classical utilitarian system” and therefore as the classical utilitarian whose political philosophy, more than any other, should, in my view, be taken into account in answering his classic question about the compatibility of utilitarianism and liberalism. This is highly relevant to the current debate on liberal philosophy.