Henry Sidgwick and Beyond
This chapter examines Henry Sidgwick's utilitarianism. It first considers Sidgwick's agnosticism before discussing his views on subjects ranging from hedonism and colonialism to poverty, common-sense morality, and politics and political economy. It then looks at some of Sidgwick's writings, such as The Development of European Polity, The Elements of Politics, Lectures on the Philosophy of Kant, and The Methods of Ethics. It also explores the current reconstructions and appropriations of many of Sidgwick's positions in the works of philosophers like Roger Crisp, Rob Shaver, Peter Singer, Derek Parft, and Katarzyna de Lazari-Radek, and argues that they have contributed to a true renaissance of hedonistic and rational intuition-based utilitarianism (or at least rationalistic consequentialism) that few saw coming even in the late twentieth century.