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Sidgwick on Consequentialism and Deontology: A Critique

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 May 2014

THOMAS HURKA
THOMAS HURKA*
Affiliation:
University of Toronto, tom.hurka@utoronto.ca
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Abstract

In The Methods of Ethics Henry Sidgwick argued against deontology and for consequentialism. More specifically, he stated four conditions for self-evident moral truth and argued that, whereas no deontological principles satisfy all four conditions, the principles that generate consequentialism do. This article argues that both his critique of deontology and his defence of consequentialism fail, largely for the same reason: that he did not clearly grasp the concept W. D. Ross later introduced of a prima facie duty or duty other things equal. The moderate deontology Ross's concept allows avoids many of Sidgwick's objections. And Sidgwick's statements of his own axioms equivocate in exactly the same way for which he criticized deontological ones. Only if they are read as other things equal can they seem intuitive and earn widespread agreement; but that form is too weak to ground consequentialism. And in the form that does yield consequentialism they are neither intuitive nor widely accepted. Sidgwick's arguments against a rival view and for his own were, in multiple ways, unfair.

Type
Research Article
Information
Utilitas , Volume 26 , Issue 2 , June 2014 , pp. 129 - 152
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2014 

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References

1 Rashdall, Hastings, ‘The Commensurability of All Values’, Mind 11 (1902), pp. 145–61, at 148CrossRefGoogle Scholar; also The Theory of Good and Evil, 2 vols. (London, 1907), vol. 1, p. 217; vol. 2, p. 41.

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4 Moore, Ethics (London, 1965), p. 77; that the principle is synthetic is affirmed on pp. 25–6, 73, 76.

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8 For similar present-day accounts see Audi, Robert, The Good in the Right: A Theory of Intuition and Intrinsic Value (Princeton, 2004), pp. 48–9Google Scholar; Parfit, Derek, On What Matters, 2 vols. (Oxford, 2011), vol. 2, pp. 490, 508–9Google Scholar.

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23 Ross, Right and the Good, p. 31, also pp. 29–30, 34n., 142–4; Foundations, pp. 183, 189.

24 See also his Lectures on the Ethics of T. H. Green, Mr. H. Spencer, and J. Martineau, ed. E. E. Constance Jones (London, 1902), pp. 146–77.

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33 Shaver, ‘Sidgwick's Axioms’, pp. 174–84.

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38 The first edition of The Methods introduced its axioms through a discussion of Kant and Clarke (ME1 357–64), and though in later editions Sidgwick gave a ‘more direct’ statement of his views (ME ix), the material on these philosophers remained.

39 This point about Kant is also made in Irwin, The Development of Ethics, vol. 3, p. 518. If Kant lacked the concept of prima facie duty, his principle of benevolence would have included exception clauses but would still not have been a consequentialist one.

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44 Material in this article is extracted from chapters 5 and 7 of my book British Moral Philosophers from Sidgwick to Ewing (Oxford, forthcoming). For helpful discussion I am indebted to Roger Crisp, Brad Hooker, Robert Johnson, Derek Parfit, David Phillips, Rob Shaver, Wayne Sumner and Peter Vallentyne.