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- SIDGWICK’S THREE PRINCIPLES
UTILITARIANISMThe ethical theory of utilitarianism, or Universalistic Hedonism, must be carefully distinguished from Egoistic Hedonism. One involves the greatest good for the greatest amount of people, happiness for everyone, while the other involves the greatest good, happiness, for oneself. That is why the primary focus of egoistic hedonism is individual balance of pleasure and pain. The focus of universalistic hedonism, however, is focused on that balance for society as a whole. Common sense demands a proof of the first capital principle of this method more clearly than in the case of Egoism and Intuitionism. Such a proof is exhibited in the essence of the Utilitarian Principle as a clear and certain moral intuition. However, it is also important to examine its relation to other received maxims. That is, it is key to understand what creates societal pleasure in order to maximize that for the greatest number of people. Sidgwick traces a complex coincidence between utilitarianism and common sense, but it is not necessary to show that this coincidence is perfect and exact. Dispositions may often be admired when the special acts that have resulted from them are in felicific. The maxims of many virtues are found to contain an explicit or implicit reference to duty conceived as already determinant. Both types of hedonism can take into account duty, pleasure, pain, etc., but do so at different levels. The way in which those values are measured varies in each philosophy. The rules that prescribe the distribution of kindness in accordance with normal promptings of family affections, friendship, gratitude, and pity have a firm utilitarian basis. Utilitarianism is naturally referred to as an explanation of the difficulties that arise in attempting to define these rules. A similar result is reached by an examination into the common notion of justice. Purity has been thought an exception, but through careful examination or common opinions as to the regulation of sexual relations, a peculiarly complex correspondence between moral sentiments and social utilities is exhibited. The hypothesis that the moral sense is “unconsciously Utilitarian” also accounts for the actual differences in different codes of duty and estimates of virtue. It is not maintained that perception of rightness has always been consciously derived from perception of utility. All values are defined in society, making it difficult to escape those definitions in acting in society. Sidgwick begins his method of utilitarianism by questioning whether a utilitarian should accept the morality of common sense provisionally as a body of utilitarian doctrine. His answer is no, because even accepting the theory that the moral sense is derived from sympathy causes us to discern several causes that must have operated to produce a divergence between common sense and a perfectly utilitarian code of morality. At the same time, it seems idle to try to construct such a code in any other way than by taking positive morality as our basis. If general happiness is the ultimate end, it is not reasonable to adopt “social health” or “efficiency” as the practically ultimate criterion of morality. The decision about what criterion will be used, therefore, is of the utmost importance in determining how to measure the pleasure of a society. He continues by saying that it is the utilitarians’ duty to rectify the morality of common sense and the method of pure empirical hedonism. This seems to be the only one that he can present for use in the reasoning that finally determines the nature and extent of this rectification. The Utilitarians’ innovations may be either negative and destructive or positive and supplementary. There are certain important general reasons against an innovation of a former kind, which may easily outweigh the special arguments in its favor. Generally, a utilitarian in recommending a deviation from an established rule of conduct desires his innovation to be generally imitated. In some cases, he may neither expect nor desire such imitation, but these cases are rare and difficult to determine. SIDGWICK’S THREE PRINCIPLESIt is well known that Henry Sidwick’s version of utilitarianism is based on the three self-evident principles and the hedonistic theory of the ultimate good. The first principle is the principle of justice. This constrains the judgment of ‘right’ or ‘ought’ as follows: “whatever action any of us judges to be right for himself, he implicitly judges to be right for all similar persons in similar circumstances” (Sidgwick 1907, 379). This means that when a person is making a decision, he/she is thinking about how this decision would affect other people if they were in similar situations. One takes action based not only if they think it is right at the time, but if it would be the right action for anyone to take at any time in the same situation. The second principle is the principle of prudence. This is related to the notion of the good on the whole of a single individual, and is stated as follows: “Hereafter as such is to be regarded neither less nor more than Now”; “the mere difference of priority and posteriority in time is not a reasonable ground for having more regard to the consciousness of one moment than to that of another” (381). This means that timing does not change the importance of situations. One can never justify their actions by saying that it was no big deal, or that the situation was of little importance. The third principle is the principle of rational benevolence. This is about the universal good. It says that “the good of any one individual is of no more importance, from the view of the Universe, than the good of any other;” so that “as a rational being I am bound to aim at good generally—so far as it is attainable by my efforts, ---not merely a particular part of it” (382). This means that each person is of equal importance, and people should always help one person in the same way that they would help another. This also gives people equal value regardless of their identity, class, age, sex, race, or position given by society. None of these distinctions matter in determining a person’s worth in the decision-making calculus of Sidgwick. Sidgwick states that these three principles are all non-tautological. This means that they are not provable on logical grounds alone and have some substantive content. They are best examined by the way they would play out in actions. 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