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Henry Sidgwick Quotes

Henry Sidgwick was an English utilitarian philosopher and economist; he held the Knightbridge Professor of Moral Philosophy from the year 1883 until his death. 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.

He also founded Newnham College in 1875, a women-only constituent college of the University of Cambridge. It was the second Cambridge college to admit women after Girton College. The co-founder of the college was Millicent Garrett Fawcett.

He joined the Cambridge Apostles intellectual secret society in 1856.



✵ 31. May 1838 – 28. August 1900
Henry Sidgwick photo

Works

The Methods of Ethics
The Methods of Ethics
Henry Sidgwick
Henry Sidgwick: 5   quotes 0   likes

Famous Henry Sidgwick Quotes

“I may begin by laying down as a principle that ‘all pain of human or rational beings is to be avoided’; and then afterwards may be led to enunciate the wider rule that ‘all pain is to be avoided’; it being made evident to me that the difference of rationality between two species of sentient beings is no ground for establishing a fundamental ethical distinction between their respective pains.”

Henry Sidgwick

"The Establishment of Ethical First Principles" (1879), in Essays on Ethics and Method (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2000), p. 30 https://books.google.it/books?id=Ci9x5WY3NesC&pg=PA30

“The good of any one individual is of no more importance, from the point of view (if I may so say) of the Universe, than the good of any other; unless, that is, there are special grounds for believing that more good is likely to be realized in the one case than in the other.”

Henry Sidgwick book The Methods of Ethics

The Methods of Ethics (1884), p. 381

“Now, I agree with Mill in holding that the scientific study of the structures and functions of the different governments that have actually existed in human societies cannot well be pursued in complete separation from the scientific study of other important elements of the societies in question : whether the aim of the student is to ascertain the causes of the differences in such governments or to examine their effects. But I do not think that there is any fundamental difference, in this respect, between the study of political relations and the study of economic relations, or, again, of religion, of art, of science and philosophy, as factors of social life. In each of these eases the student concentrates his attention on one element of human history which can only be partially separated from other components of the whole complex fact of social development. Experience seems to show that this kind of concentration, and consequent partial separation of historical and sociological study into special branches, is unavoidable in the division of intellectual labour which the growth of our knowledge renders necessary in a continually increasing degree.”

Henry Sidgwick

Elements of Politics (3rd ed., 1908), Ch. 1: Scope and Method of Politics

“Each person is morally obliged to regard the good of anyone else as much as his own good, except when he judges it to be less, when impartially viewed, or less certainly knowable or attainable by him.”

Henry Sidgwick book The Methods of Ethics

Source: The Methods of Ethics (1874), Book 3, chapter 13, section 3 (7th ed., 1907)

“A universal refusal to propagate the human species would be the greatest of conceivable crimes from a Utilitarian point of view.”

Henry Sidgwick book The Methods of Ethics

Source: The Methods of Ethics (1874), Book 4, chapter 5, section 3 (7th ed., 1907)

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