Sidgwick, Mythmaker, and the Rawlsian legacy...

Over at the swell new Early Modern philosophy oriented blog, The Mod Squad, Colin Heydt, calls attention to this sentence: “For the century and a half that intervenes between Hobbes and Bentham the development of English ethics proceeds without receiving any material influence from foreign sources.”--Sidgwick, Outlines of the History of Ethics.

Despite Heydt's judgment ("I think this is largely true"), we're in the realm of myth-making (just a few pages later he admits that Helvetius, Comte, Kant and Hegel have all influenced 19th century English ethics via different routes), or what I call philosophic prophecy. I am no Sidgwick expert, but presumably Rousseau's influence on English ethical thought (plainly visible in Adam Smith and Wollstonecraft) has to be belittled because of its revolutionary potential, as must the very visible impact of German Romanticism on 19th century English thought be effaced entirely. (These gaps are striking because "political utilitarianism" is not ignored in the book.) According to Sidgwick, Spinoza's influence is limited entirely to metaphysics, which is easy to claim if Mandeville is barely discussed.

Below I am primarily interested in remarking on the unexpected and interesting twist Sidgwick's thought takes in Rawls.

But, first, a remark about genre: Sidgwick is echoing Hume's very similar English-only rhetoric ("some late philosophers in England [“Mr. Locke, my Lord Shaftesbury, Dr. Mandeville, Mr. Hutcheson, Dr. Butler, etc.”] , who have begun to put the science of man on a new footing") at the start of the Treatise. But Sidgwick is also correcting Hume by reinstatating Hobbes back to his rightful position as the fountain of "modern ethics." (In Hume's "Abstract," Hume drops the English-focus and shift to the more proper European context, “The philosophical spirit, which has been so much improved all over Europe within these last fourscore years,” but Hobbes never gets favorable mention.) Amusingly enough Sidgwick treats Hume as very much a follower of Hobbes (especially in his treatment of justice--something I wish I had realized before) as well as a sentimentalist that (together with Adam Smith's works) is proto-utilitarian.

This very last point leads to a second remark. Sidgwick's myth-making had a lasting influence because it encouraged the idea that there was a tradition of British Moralism (part of which Shelby-Bigge codified in an influential reader). For example, in Theory of Justice, John Rawls explicitly draws on Sidgwick's account in Outlines to put together a cohesive "utilitarian tradition" that runs from Shaftesbury to Edgeworth. For Rawls the utilitarian tradition pointedly includes Hume's Treatise and Smith's The Theory of Moral Sentiments.

Now the point here is not to contest Rawls' evaluation of Hume and Smith (I leave that to another time). Rather, by accepting Sidgwick's characterization of this national tradition, Rawls could re-interpret utilitarianism as an evolving and living school (all the way to Robbins). [Recall also this.] Now for all his criticism, Rawls is clearly a great admirer of the tradition and he respects their interest in social reform. There is something important in accepting the existence of a long-lasting philosophic tradition in which participants can take for granted shared presumptions as well count on the expectation that future members of the school will articulate new refinements. (This is something overlooked by historians that focus on narrow historical context.) But by accepting Sidgwick's narrative of a unified tradition, Rawls is also in a position to develop the foundations of an alternative school that can take focused aim at a now unified target (utilitarianism) and attempt to displace it--probably not what Sidgwick intended when he boldly drew national lines around the writings of past philosophers.