GUIDE TO THE PHILOSOPHY 1938 - 1947.pdf - Rare Books at ...

OBJECTIVE UTILITARIANISM 321
concluded; be in the last resort intuitive. I shall return
to the significance of this point later. 1 In addition, how-
ever, to the general intuitions of value which are entailed
in any assessment of the worth of consequences, the more
clearsighted of utilitarian writers have recognized that a
number of other intuitions are involved in ethical judgments.
Sidgwick's treatment of the subject affords a good
example of such recognition.
Sidgwick (1838-1900)
is a utilitarian in the sense that
he believes that the ethical value of an action is established
by reference to its ability to promote agreeable and
satisfied states of consciousness. He is also a hedonist in
the sense that he believes happiness to be the only
thing which is ultimately valuable, although he thinks
that it is our duty to promote everybody's happiness
equally, and not to give a preference to our own. In spite,
however, of his general utilitarian standpoint, he maintains
that our ethical judgments always involve some intuitions,
and he is anxious to show what these are. In the course
of his treatment he makes a number of valuable observa-
tions on the morality of the ordinary man. This, he holds,
is in the main intuitional. It is intuitional in the sense
that certain intrinsic characteristics of actions are regarded
by the commonsensc man as establishing the tightness or
wrongness of those actions. Cruelty, in fact, in the view
of common sense, is wrong, because it is cruelty; lying
because it is lying. (This does not, of course, alter the fact
that the ordinary man will often condone lying or cruelty
in particular cases, and justify himself by an appeal to
the consequences, which are then made the subject of
another intuition. Thus lying, he holds, is permissible to
save a life, cruelty- although he would not call it cruelty
to discipline a character. The intuitions here entailed
are that lives are worth while and ought to continue, and
that strong characters are valuable and ought to be
formed.)
LM
1 See Chapter XII, pp. 419-496.