Four Lectures on Henry Sidgwick

tual rightness, and not merely prima facie rightness—1st principles must yield a correct judgment, all things considered; and so (vii) must serve for rational agents as an actual guide to practice, and so enable us to act ratio- nally—hence first principles cannot be vague, imprecise, and ambiguous; and finally (viii) a first principle must be one that suitably corrects our prereflective judgments.

Sidgwick’s account of justice (Bk. III, Ch. 5) is designed to show that none of the principles of justice found in common sense meet these criteria and hence are subordinate principles. It is particularly the last three conditions, (d)–(f ), that he argues throughout Bk. III, Ch. 5, on Justice, although the first three are there also. We turn to Sidgwick’s account of justice in the next lecture.

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Sidgwick on Justice and on the Classical Principle of Utility

§1. Sidgwick’s Account of Justice

(1) You should read Sidgwick’s account of justice in Book III, Chapter 5, as part of his long and careful account of the intuitive principles found in common sense, and refined by various writers in the effort to formulate them as bona fide and rational first principles. He believes that his survey of these principles shows that in every case, these principles prove to be vague and imprecise once we try to apply them in practice; and that they are subject to various exceptions and qualifications that are arbitrary in the sense that the principles themselves do not include any explanation of the rational basis of these exceptions and qualifications. Therefore, Sidgwick concludes, these principles cannot be bona fide rational and objective first principles. There must be some other and higher controlling principle or principles that accounts for these qualifications and provisos. And he hints throughout (and often more than hints) that this higher principle must be the principle of utility. All this, of course, on the assumption that there is always a right or true answer, and that we can know it and agree upon it (if we follow reason).

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(2)Sidgwick discusses the notion of justice on three occasions: the fullest is that in Methods, Ch. 5 of Book III; the next is the brief summary of Ch. 5 that Sidgwick gives in his “Review of Common Sense,” Ch. 11 of Book III, at 349–352; and finally there is the assessment in Ch. 3 of Bk. IV, at 440–448.

Sidgwick explains the different aims of these discussions as follows. In Ch. 5 of Book III the aim is “to ascertain impartially what the deliverances of Common Sense actually are” (ME, p. 343); while the aim in the “Review” of Ch. 11 is “to ask how far these enunciations [i.e. the deliverances of common sense] can be claimed to be classed as Intuitive Truths” (ME, p. 343). In Ch. 3 of Book III the aim is to show that in coping with the difficulties and ambiguities, etc., that arise in practice in defining and specifying its notions of justice, common sense is, as it were, unconsciously utilitarian, since the principle of utility is naturally invoked, even if only implicitly. (One of Sidgwick’s definitions of common sense of mankind is this: what is “expressed generally by the body of persons on whose moral judgments [one] is prepared to rely”; ME, p. 343). So while these various accounts of justice are somewhat repetitive, their stated aim is different; and in fact Sidgwick’s observations are not the same and they supplement each other to some extent.

(3)A rough outline of Ch. 5 is as follows:

(a)In §1 (ME, pp. 264–268) Sidgwick holds that while justice is connected in our minds with laws (cf. administration of justice), it cannot be identified with what is legal, since laws may be unjust. Again, while justice includes and implies the absence of arbitrary inequalities in framing and administering laws, it is not merely this either.

(b)In §2 (pp. 268–271) Sidgwick discusses what he calls “conservative justice,” that is: the fulfillment of (1) contracts and definite understandings, and (2) expectations that arise naturally out of the established practices and institutions of society. However, the duty of fulfilling the latter is not clearly defined; nor is it clear how much weight these expectations should have.

(c)In §3 (pp. 271–274): The social order itself may be held to be unjust as judged by the standard of ideal justice. But there are different conceptions of this standard.

(d)In (§4) (pp. 274–278): One view is that freedom is the absolute end; but the attempt to elaborate an ideal notion on this basis runs into insuperable difficulties.

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Figure 8. Schema of Sidgwick’s account of justice, Methods, Bk. III, Ch. 5

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(e) In §5 (pp. 278–283): Nor does the realization of freedom answer to our common conception of ideal justice, which is rather that desert should be requited.

(f ) In §6 (pp. 283–290): But the application of this principle likewise is very perplexing for it admits of different interpretations of desert: for example, desert may be estimated by conscientious effort, or by worth of what is done (of services); moreover, the principle of fitness is a complicating factor.

(g) §7 (pp. 290–294): Similarly, there are difficulties with ill desert in defining criminal justice. Sidgwick ends with a summary of his conclusions (pp. 293–294).

§2. Statement of the Classical Principle of Utility

Intuitively, the idea is to maximize the net balance of pleasure over pain.

(1) The principle applies quite generally to all subjects: in situations and practices, individual actions and traits of character, etc., and in all circumstances, both ideal and non-ideal. Thus: in any given situation, that institution or action, etc., is right, or that which ought to be done, if among all the feasible alternatives realizable in the circumstances, it is the one that maximizes:

∑ ai ui = a1 u1 + a2 u2 + .. . + an un (a linear sum of the ui’s)

where the ai’s are real numbers (the weights of the ui’s) and the ui’s are real numbers that represent the utility (the net balance of pleasure over pain) for each individual I, these numbers taking into account all the consequences of the institution or action in question on every one of the individuals affected whatever their position in space or time, and so, e.g., however far into the future.

(2)To fix ideas assume that the individuals in question belong to the same society and leave aside all other individuals; however, include all persons for m generations into the future, when by hypothesis, the world comes to an end. The idea is the maximize utility over this stretch of time, leaving out the past, since bygones are bygones and not affected by human action.

(3)In the classical doctrine the weights ai all = 1, for as J. S. Mill says this is implied by the notion of measuring pleasures and pains as objective

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