Abstract
Henry Sidgwick, the husband of educator Eleanor Mildred Sidgwick, has gone down in history as the most philosophically sophisticated of the classical utilitarians and a profound influence on Edgeworth’s hedonometry and Pigou’s welfare economics. But his legacy in both philosophy and economics is more complex, reflecting his deep agnosticism about religion, the foundations of ethics, and the future of economics. Sidgwick held that without a theistic postulate, practical reason was left in a stand-off between self-interest (egoism) and universal (utilitarian) beneficence, a ‘dualism of the practical reason’, but he nonetheless also held that the progress of civilization might lead not only to greater federalism and cosmopolitanism but also to a form of ethical socialism that could rely on the increasing beneficence of humanity.
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References
Works by Henry Sidgwick
Schultz, B., J.M. Wilkins, B. Robinson and A. Dakyns (1999). The Complete Works and Select Correspondence of Henry Sidgwick. Charlottesville, VA: InteLex Past Masters.
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Sidgwick, H. (1904). Miscellaneous Essays and Addresses. London: Macmillan.
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Schultz, B. (2017). Henry Sidgwick (1838–1900). In: Cord, R. (eds) The Palgrave Companion to Cambridge Economics. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-41233-1_15
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