Abstract

My aim in Sidgwickian Ethics is to interpret and evaluate the central argument of The Methods of Ethics, in a way that brings out the important conceptual and historical connections between Sidgwick’s views and contemporary moral philosophy. Sidgwick defines a “method of ethics” as “any rational procedure by which we determine what individual human beings ‘ought’ – or what it is ‘right’ for them – to do, or to seek to realise by voluntary action” (ME 1). He finds just three such methods “impl..