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Sidgwick's Feminism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 January 2009

Bart Schultz
Bart Schultz*
Affiliation:
University of Chicago, [email protected]
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Abstract

Henry Sidgwick shared many of the feminist concerns of John Stuart Mill and was an active reformer in the cause of higher education for women, but his feminism has never received the attention it deserves and he has in recent times been criticized for promulgating a masculinist epistemology. This essay is a prolegomenon to a comprehensive account of Sidgwick's feminism, briefly setting out various elements of his views on epistemology, equality, gender, and sexuality in order to provide some initial sense of how he carried on and developed the Millian project.

Type
Research Article
Information
Utilitas , Volume 12 , Issue 3 , November 2000 , pp. 379 - 401
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2000

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References

1 See Morales, Maria, Perfect Equality, Lanham, ME, 1996 Google Scholar, and Boralevi, Lea Campos, Bentham and the Oppressed, New York, 1984 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

2 For example, there is no mention of him in the recent Cambridge Companion to Feminism in Philosophy, ed. Fricker, M. and Hornsby, J., Cambridge, 2000 Google Scholar.

3 Walker, M. U., Moral Understandings, New York, 1998 Google Scholar.

4 Ibid., p. 20.

5 Ibid., pp. 37 f.

6 Ibid., pp. 8 f.

7 Ibid., pp. 9 f.

8 Ibid., p. 203.

9 Ibid., p. 217.

10 Ibid., p. 220.

11 Ibid., pp. 222, 210.

12 Ibid., p. 44.

13 Ibid., pp. 45 f.

14 This essay is reprinted in Williams, , Making Sense of Humanity, New York, 1995, pp. 152–71CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

15 Walker, , Understandings, p. 43 Google Scholar.

16 Ibid., p. 43.

17 Banks, Olive, ‘Sidgwick, Henry’, in Dictionary, ed. Banks, O., New York, 1985, p. 187 Google Scholar.

18 Sidgwick, Henry, A Memoir, ed. Sidgwick, E. M. and Sidgwick, A., London, 1906 Google Scholar, remains important, but for a less guarded account see The Complete Works and Select Correspondence of Henry Sidgwick, 2nd edn., ed. Schultz, B., Charlottesville, , VA, 1999 Google Scholar.

19 ‘The Verification of Beliefs’, p. 1, reproduced in Schultz, ed., Complete Works.

20 Ibid., p. 4.

21 Roger Crisp's recent ‘Griffin's Pessimism’ is suggestive of the complexity of Sidgwick's approach — see Weil-Being and Morality: Essays in Honour of James Griffin, ed. Crisp, R. and Hooker, B., Oxford, 2000 Google Scholar as is Schneewind's, J. B. classic study, Sidgwick's Ethics and Victorian Moral Philosophy, Oxford, 1977 Google Scholar.

22 Sidgwick, , Practical Ethics, ed. Bok, S., New York, 1998, p. 27 Google Scholar.

23 Sidgwick's approach resembles John Skorupski's recent claims that the ‘connection between morality and reason cannot be quite as simple as a pure rationalism about morality would suggest’, that cognitivism in ethics need not be realism, and that the epistemology of the normative is ‘discursive or dialogical’. See his Ethical Explorations, Oxford, 1999, pp. 29, 3Google Scholar.

24 Sidgwick, and Sidgwick, , Memoir, pp. 34 fGoogle Scholar.

25 See Allen, Peter, The Cambridge Apostles: The Early Years, Cambridge, 1978 Google Scholar, and Dowling, Linda, Hellenism and Homosexuality in Victorian Oxford, Ithaca, 1994 Google Scholar.

26 Conformity and Subscription', p. 49, reproduced in Complete Works, ed. Schultz. Similar passages occur in his later writings.

27 Practical Ethics, p. 52.

28 Hobsbawm, , Age of Empire, New York, 1987, p. 88 Google Scholar.

29 Shanley, , ‘Subjection’, in The Cambridge Companion to Mill, ed. Skorupski, J., NewYork, 1998, p. 419 Google Scholar.

30 Mill, , ‘Subjection’, in Sexual Equality: Writings by John Stuart Mill, Harriet Taylor Mill, and Helen Taylor, ed. Robson, A. P. and Robson, J. M., Toronto, 1994, pp. 327 fGoogle Scholar.

31 On pragmatist feminism, see Seigfried, Charlene, ‘Socializing Democracy: Jane Addams and John Dewey”, Philosophy of the Social Sciences, xxix (1999)Google Scholar.

32 Thus, his views are distorted by those feminists, such as Catharine MacKinnon, who disregard his critique of laissez-faire; see Morales, ch. 5.

33 Initial Society Papers', Sidgwick Papers, Wren Library, Cambridge University, Add.Ms.c.96.4.46–48.

34 See Sidgwick, and Sidgwick, , Memoir, p. 73 Google Scholar.

35 Sidgwick, , Elements, 2nd edn., London, p. 385 Google Scholar.

36 ‘Initial Society Papers’, Add.Ms.c.96.4.29 f.

37 Sidgwick, and Sidgwick, , Memoir, p. 205 Google Scholar.

38 Tullberg, McWilliams, Women at Cambridge, Cambridge, rev. edn., 1998 Google Scholar.

39 Ibid., p. 53.

40 Hunt, F. and Barker, C., Women at Cambridge: A Brief History, Cambridge, 1998, p. 9 Google Scholar.

41 See Sidgwick, Sidgwick and, Memoir, pp. 394–6Google Scholar.

42 Tullberg, McWilliams, Women, p. 104 Google Scholar.

43 Sidgwick, E. M., Flysheet dated 12 February 1896, Newnham College Archives, reproduced in Ethel Sidgwick, Mrs. Henry Sidgwick: A Memoir, London, 1938 Google Scholar.

44 Oppenheim, , ‘A Mother's Role, a Daughter's Duty: Lady Blanche Balfour, Eleanor Sidgwick, and Feminist Perspectives’, Journal of British Studies, xxxiv (1995), 198 Google Scholar.

45 Sidgwick, E. M., ‘University Education of Women’, Manchester, 1913, pp. 16 fGoogle Scholar.

46 Ibid., p. 20.

47 Ibid., p. 7.

48 Ibid., p. 18.

49 The foregoing passages are from Eleanor's 1913 pamphlet, but identical claims are made in such earlier works as ‘University Education of Women’, Cambridge, 1897 Google Scholar. Henry was in full accord with these views.

50 Oppenheim, , ‘Daughter's Duty’, 226 Google Scholar.

51 Sidgwick, and Sidgwick, , Memoir, pp. 522 fGoogle Scholar.

52 Sidgwick, , Practical Ethics, pp. 22 fGoogle Scholar.

53 Ibid., p. 24.

54 In Eye of the Universe: Henry Sidgwick and the Quest for Certainty, unpubl., I deal at length with Sidgwick's views on civilization, race, and imperialism, including his connections to such figures as Sir John Seeley and Charles Henry Pearson.

55 Sidgwick's journal for 14 May 1888, reproduced in Complete Works, ed. Schultz.

56 Quoted in Karl, F. R., George Eliot, Voice of a Century, New York, 1995, p. 428 Google Scholar.

57 See my ‘Truth and Its Consequences: Symonds and Sidgwick’, Henry, John Addington Symonds: Culture and the Demon Desire, ed. Pemble, J., London, 2000 Google Scholar.

58 Dowling, , Hellenism, pp. xiv fGoogle Scholar.

59 Dowling, , Hellenism, p. xv Google Scholar.

60 See Smith-Rosenberg's, C. classic, Disorderly Conduct: Visions of Gender in Victorian America, New York, 1985 Google Scholar. I am also much indebted to Hidden From History: Reclaiming the Gay & Lesbian Past, ed. Dubennan, M., Vicinus, M., and Chauncey, G., New York, 1989 Google Scholar, on gay/straight binarism and twentieth century homophobia.

61 The Bloomsberries never fully understood these connections; their general attitude is captured by Holryod's, Michael Lytton Strachey: The New Biography, New York, 1994 Google Scholar.

62 One told in my forthcoming works, such as Strange Audacious Life: John Addington Symonds and His Friends, with Dakyns, A. and Robinson, B., Chicago, 2001 Google Scholar.

63 My warmest thanks to all of the contributors-especially John Skorupski-for their help, but a very special thanks to Roger Crisp, who made SIDGWICK 2000 possible.