Practical ethics

by Henry Sidgwick

This is a pre-1923 historical reproduction that was curated for quality. Quality assurance was conducted on each of these books in an attempt to remove books with imperfections introduced by the digitization process. Though we have made best efforts - the books may have occasional errors that do not impede the reading experience. We believe this work is culturally important and have elected to bring the book back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide. This text refers to the Bibliobazaar edition.

Genres: Philosophy

270 pages, Paperback

First published June 1, 1977

About the author

Henry Sidgwick (1838-1900) was an English utilitarian philosopher and economist. He was the Knightbridge Professor of Moral Philosophy at the University of Cambridge from 1883 until his death, and is best known in philosophy for his utilitarian treatise The Methods of Ethics. He was one of the founders and first president of the Society for Psychical Research and a member of the Metaphysical Society and promoted the higher education of women. His work in economics has also had a lasting influence.

Reviews

[Nathan]

Sidgwick provides a really strong complement to his work Methods of Ethics with this collection. It feels like a breath of hope in the intellectual failure of the philosopher. Two essays in the book are actually about the failure inherent in the study of ethics.

There’s also two essay on religion and veracity. To anyone aware of Sidgwick’s long history -of religious doubts and his own history of refusing adherence to religious dogma which resulted in the lost of his livelihood- these essays will seems very personal like the two first speech on ethical societies.

Nonetheless the book gives a good insight into an applied view of the utilitarianism of Sidgwick. It touches topics that Sidgwick has tackled his whole life. These essays shine in the collection.

Much can be said about this collection, yet it is to often put aside when it was clearly important to the author and so deeply connected with his own personal life. This is not the mythical tale of Methods of Ethics, but it the closing chapter in the intellectual life of this ethicist.

“Thus, even a man who said, “Evil, be thou my good”, and acted accordingly, might have only an obscured consciousness of the awful irrationality of his action -obscured by a fallacious imagination that his only chance of being in any admirable, at the point of which he has now reached in his downward course, must lie in candid and consistent wickedness”