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Sidgwick, Concern, and the Good

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 January 2009

Stephen Darwall
Stephen Darwall*
Affiliation:
University of Michigan, [email protected]
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Abstract

Sidgwick maintains, plausibly, that the concept of a person's good is a normative one and takes for granted that it is normative for the agent's own choice and action. I argue that the normativity of a person's good must be understood in relation to concern for someone for that person's own sake. A person's good, I suggest, is what one should (rationally) want for that person in so far as one cares about him, or what one should want for him for his sake. I examine Sidgwick's defence of the axioms of rational prudence and argue that it is powerless to convince anyone who lacks self-concern or thinks he has no reason to care for himself. To the extent that Sidgwick is persuasive, I argue, it is because he insinuates an assumption of self-concern. Similarly, Sidgwick's defence of the axiom of rational benevolence tacitly assumes, not just impersonality, but equal concern.

Type
Research Article
Information
Utilitas , Volume 12 , Issue 3 , November 2000 , pp. 291 - 306
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2000

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References

1 At least, he is ‘for English readers’. Sidgwick, Henry, Outlines of the History of Ethics for English Readers, 6th edn., London, 1931 Google Scholar.

2 G. E. Moore, Principia Ethica, rev. edn., with the Preface to the second edition and other papers, ed. Thomas Baldwin, Cambridge, 1993, p. 150.

3 For Moore's argument that egoism is incoherent, see Moore, pp. 150–6. Sidgwick, Henry, The Methods of Ethics 7th edn., London, 1907, pp. 507–9Google Scholar. Further references to The Methods will be placed parenthetically in the text.

4 John Stuart Mill, Utilitarianism, ch. 1, para. 3.

5 Moore, p. 57.

6 According to Moore, although intrinsic goodness is not itself an intrinsic property, it nonetheless depends only on the intrinsic properties of whatever has it. See ‘The Conception of Intrinsic Value’, which is included in the revised edition of Principia Ethica, p. 295.

7 This is an important theme of Frankena, William K., ‘Obligation and Value’, The Philosophy of G. E. Moore, ed. Schilpp, Paul A., Salle, La, IL, 1968 Google Scholar. For a discussion of this essay, see Darwall, Stephen, ‘Learning From Frankena: A Memorial Essa’, Ethics cvii (1997)Google Scholar.

8 Principia Ethica p. 34.

9 See, for example, Brink's, David interpretation of Sidgwick along these lines in ‘Sidgwick's Dualism of Practical Reason’, Australasian Journal of Philosophy lxvi (1988)Google Scholar.

10 For a more extended defence of this claim, see my ‘Self-Interest and Self-Concern’, Self-interest ed. Paul, Ellen F., Cambridge, 1997 Google Scholar, and Social Philosophy & Policy xiv (1997)Google Scholar;‘Empathy, Sympathy, Care’, Philosophical Studies lxxxix (1998)Google Scholar; and ‘Valuing Activity’, Social Philosophy & Policy xvi (1999)Google Scholar and Human Flourishing, ed. Paul, Ellen F., Cambridge, 1999 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

11 Here I mean only that this conclusion would be reasonable ‘hypothetically’, that is, on the assumed premise that there is no reason to care about someone (or oneself). Moreover, it must also be the case that one does not think that the lack of reason for self–concern (or reason for lack of self-concern) is itself grounded in reasons of one's own good and the necessity of pursuing that end indirectly. I am indebted to Roger Crisp for reminding me of this latter point, which is important to Sidgwick under the title of the ‘paradox of egoistic hedonism’, and which he takes from Butler.

12 Utilitarianism, ch. 4, paras. 6–7.

13 For the idea that valuing a person's welfare comes from valuing the person, see Anderson, Elizabeth, Value in Ethics and Economics, Cambridge, MA, 1993, pp. 26–30 Google Scholar.

14 I am indebted to David Velleman for the term ‘indirect object’ in this context.

15 Mencius trans. Lau, D. C., London, 1970, p. 82 Google Scholar.

16 ‘From these two rational intuitions we may deduce, as a necessary inference, the maxim of Benevolence in an abstract form: viz. That each one is morally bound to regard the good of any other individual as much as his own, except in so far as he judges it to be less, when impartially viewed, or less certainly knowable or attainable by him’ (p. 382).

17 Schneewind distinguishes four different axioms (or four different formulations of the axiom) of prudence: (PI) ‘One ought to have impartial concern for all parts of one's conscious life’; (P2) ‘Hereafter as such is to be regarded neither less or more than Now’; (P3) ‘Mere difference in priority and posteriority in time is not a reasonable ground for having more regard to the consciousness of one moment than to that of another’; (P4) ‘A smaller present good is not to be preferred to a greater future good’. Schneewind, J. B., Sidgwick's Ethics and Victorian Moral Philosophy Oxford, 1977, pp. 293–6Google Scholar.

18 Rawls, John, A Theory of Justice Cambridge, MA, 1971, pp. 293–8Google Scholar.

19 Note, at this point we are considering hedonistic versions of these axioms.

20 This is a metaethical theory of the concept of a person's good or of what a person's good is (as opposed to what is good for her). Sidgwick's normative theory of a person's good is a version of hedonism: nothing can benefit a person intrinsically other than her own pleasurable mental states.

21 Ignoring, of course, interactive or ‘organic’ effects.

22 This is the ‘rational care’ account of a person's good or welfare that I develop in ‘Self-Interest and Self-Concern’. A natural objection is that it may seem we cannot define what it is to care for someone without an independent notion of a person's good. In ‘Empathy, Sympathy, Care’, I argue that we don't need to define concern for someone for that person's sake in order to make use of it in a rational care theory of welfare if, as I argue is plausible based on the psychological literature, sympathetic concern is something like a psychological natural kind. I am grateful to Bart Schultz for pressing me on this point.

23 Robert Shaver has suggested to me that Sidgwick might plug the gap with the axiom that ‘I am bound to aim at good generally’ (p. 382). To accept this, however, is already to accept that one's own good makes a claim on one (and anyone) from an agent-neutral perspective.

24 At least, as giving such a reason to any being who is capable of responding with sympathetic concern. I argue for these claims in Impartial Reason Ithaca, NY, 1983, pp. 161–3Google Scholar.

25 Geach, Peter, ‘On Belief About Oneself’ Analysis xviii (1957)Google Scholar; Castafieda, Hector-Neri, ‘“He”’ A Study in the Logic of Self-Consciousness’, Ratio, viii (1966)Google Scholar; Boer, Steven and Lycan, William G., ‘Who, Me?’ Philosophical Review, lxxxix (1980)Google Scholar; Lewis, David, ‘Attitudes De Dicto and De Se ’, Philosophical Review lxxxviii (1979)Google Scholar; and Perry, John, ‘The Problem of the Essential Indexical, Nous xiii (1979)Google Scholar.

26 It is important to bear in mind that I am making these claims not about just any intrinsic desire for one's own good, but about any such desire that springs from self-concern, i.e., a desire for one's good for one's sake.

27 This doesn't mean, of course, either that one cares equally about all people or conscious beings, or even necessarily that one should care equally, in every relevant sense. That care is equally warranted for all does not entail that equal care is warranted.

28 Of course, it might be possible to conceive of the point of view of the universe as itself a benevolent perspective as in various religious conceptions. Bart Schultz reminds me that Sidgwick frequently emphasizes the importance of empathy and sympathy. See, for example, Sidgwick's favourable references to Smith, Adam on sympathy in Methods, pp. 434–44Google Scholar and his remarks on sympathy in Practical Ethics: A Collection of Essays and Addresses ed. Bok, Sissela, Oxford, 1998, p. 61 Google Scholar.

29 I am indebted to Roger Crisp, Robert Shaver, and Bart Schultz for very helpful comments on an earlier draft of this essay.