Henry Sidgwick 1838 – 1900

Henry Sidgwick was a 19th-century English philosopher and one of the most rigorous and systematic moral philosophers of the Victorian era. His 1874 work The Methods of Ethics is widely regarded as the most carefully argued statement of utilitarian ethics ever produced, comparing utilitarianism with rational egoism and intuitional moral common sense and concluding with what he called the dualism of practical reason. He held the chair of moral philosophy at Cambridge University and was a founder of Newnham College, one of the first women's colleges at Cambridge. He was also a co-founder of the Society for Psychical Research, dedicated to investigating reports of paranormal phenomena. His careful analysis of utilitarian ethics has shaped 20th and 21st-century moral philosophy through the work of Derek Parfit and others.

Henry Sidgwick was born in 1838 in Skipton, Yorkshire, into a clerical family with strong Cambridge connections. He went up to Trinity College, Cambridge in 1855, took firsts in classics and mathematics, and was elected a fellow of Trinity in 1859. In 1869 he resigned his fellowship in conscience over the requirement of subscription to the Thirty-Nine Articles, and was promptly reappointed under reformed terms; in 1883 he was elected Knightbridge Professor of Moral Philosophy.

His major works are The Methods of Ethics (1874), The Principles of Political Economy (1883), and The Elements of Politics (1891), together with posthumously published lectures on Kant, the history of ethics, and the philosophy of T. H. Green. With his wife Eleanor he was a founder of Newnham College, the second Cambridge college for women, and he was the first president of the Society for Psychical Research.

Sidgwick's careful synthesis of intuitionism and utilitarianism, and his honest acknowledgment of an unresolved 'dualism of practical reason' between rational egoism and impartial benevolence, made The Methods of Ethics one of the most influential works of modern moral philosophy. He shaped the thought of G. E. Moore, Bertrand Russell, Derek Parfit, and Peter Singer. He died in Cambridge in 1900.