Sidgwick's Development Of Classical Utilitarianism

The thesis tries to find out Sidgwick's contribution to classical utilitarianism which is established by Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill. The discussion is about the utilitarian principle, proof of utilitarianism and ethics view. From these aspects, we could get the clue of the development which is made by Sidgwick in utilitarian tradition. As the most famous utilitarian in 19th century, Sidgwick was at a special positon. He comprehensive summarized classical utilitarianism, the problem in his thoughts caused the debate in modern ethicists. Sidgwick proposed a new ethic view that the core ethical words were good and ought to. After comparing these two words in their meaning and usage, he connected ought with methods of ethics. Then he generalized the former ethics into three methods including egoism, intuitionism and utilitarianism. Besides he discussed the value of happiness and thought that utilitarianism was universalistic hedonism which is different from egoistic hedonism. The greatest happiness in classic utilitarianism was expressed as the remaining of happiness minus pain, which is involved all the existence in the earth even the animals.Sidgwick used new method to certificate classical utilitarianism, he pointed out the problem in Bentham and Mill's certification and principle and try to solve them. In his attemption, intuition should be the basis of utilitarian principle, getting intuitive principle into normative ethics. It not only leads intuitionism meta-ethics, but also reveales inner problem of utilitarianism. After all, Sidgwick left the dualism of practical reason for us. He failed to put utilitarianism and egoism together, although he succeeded in unifying intuitionism and utilitarianism. The dualism of practical reason is an internal problem of utilitarianism, reflecting the hard situation of contemporary moral philosophy. Contemporary ethicists focus in this question——If there is a link between moral and reasonable.Researching Sidgwick's development of classical utilitarianism, we could get more background of dualism of practical reason. It seems could help us find a new way to think this problem. As it is the masterpiece of Sidgwick, Methods of Ethics has received more attention from a lot of contemporary ethicists. Comparing their criticism to Sidgwick, we could get more idea about Sidgwick's influence.