ABSTRACT
Unlike John Stuart Mill or Jeremy Bentham, Henry Sidgwick’s is hardly a household name in intellectual circles beyond the world of professional philosophy. His standing amongst many contemporary moral philosophers as possibly the greatest nineteenthcentury writer on ethics would come as a shock to such householders, as would C.D. Broad’s estimate of his book The Methods of Ethics as ‘one of the English philosophical classics’ and ‘on the whole the best treatise on moral theory that has ever been written’ ([5.15], 143). This high reputation could indeed be disputed, but it is not at all idiosyncratic. It is a reputation that has grown since his own time, and is probably at its peak today, but Sidgwick’s intellectual power impressed many of his contemporaries, and immediate successors, as well. ‘Pure, white light’ was one description offered of his intellectual presence ([5.13], 181), and the adjective ‘pure’ tells as much about the moral intensity with which he applied his mind to the problems that exercised him as the word ‘light’ testifies to the clarifying power of his intelligence.
