Henry Sidgwick's Practical Ethics

Sissela Bok

Utilitas, 2000, vol. 12, issue 3, 361-378

Abstract: How practical can ethics be? To what extent is it possible to put ethics ‘to the use of life’, in the words of Samuel Johnson? In Practical Ethics, Henry Sidgwick offers the distillation of a lifetime of reflection on how to relate moral theory and practice. This book provides both a model and a cautionary example. Its lucid, urbane, and broad-gauged approach to practical moral issues is exemplary; but its very lucidity also exposes the moral risks in Sidgwick's attempt to isolate deliberation about these issues from fundamental moral premises, including the interlocking intuitionist, utilitarian, and paternalist premises buttressing his conclusions about legitimate practices of violence and deceit.

Date: 2000
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/ ... type/journal_article link to article abstract page (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cup:utilit:v:12:y:2000:i:03:p:361-378_00

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Utilitas from Cambridge University Press Cambridge University Press, UPH, Shaftesbury Road, Cambridge CB2 8BS UK.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Kirk Stebbing ().