Henry Sidgwick- Eye of the Universe
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HENRY SIDGWICK: EYE OF THE UNIVERSE
Henry Sidgwick is one of the great intellectual figures of nineteenth-century
Britain. He was first and foremost a great moral philosopher, whose master-
work, The Methods of Ethics, is still widely studied today. But he was many
other things besides, writing on religion, economics, politics, education, and
literature. He was deeply involved in the founding of the first college for
women at the University of Cambridge, and he was a leading figure in para-
psychology. He was also much concerned with the sexual politics of his close
friend John Addington Symonds, a pioneer of gay studies. Through his fa-
mous student G. E. Moore, a direct line can be traced from Sidgwick and his
circle to the Bloomsbury group.
Bart Schultz has written a magisterial overview of this great Victorian sage –
the first comprehensive study, offering provocative new critical perspectives
on the life and the work. Sidgwick’s ethical work is situated in the context
of his theological and political commitments and is revealed as a necessarily
guarded statement of his deepest philosophical convictions and doubts. All
other areas of his writings are covered and presented in the context of the late
Victorian culture of imperialism.
This biography, or “Goethean reconstruction,” will be eagerly sought out
by readers interested in philosophy, Victorian studies, political theory, the
history of ideas, educational theory, the history of psychology, and gender and
gay studies.
Bart Schultz is Fellow and Lecturer in the Division of the Humanities and
Special Programs Coordinator in the Graham School of General Studies
at the University of Chicago.
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Henry Sidgwick:
Eye of the Universe
An Intellectual Biography
Bart Schultz
University of Chicago
iii
Cambridge, New York, Melbourne, Madrid, Cape Town, Singapore, São Paulo
Cambridge University Press
The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge , UK
Published in the United States of America by Cambridge University Press, New York
www.cambridge.org
Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9780521829670
© Bart Schultz 2004
This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provision of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place
without the written permission of Cambridge University Press.
First published in print format 2004
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eBook (EBL)
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Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of s for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this publication, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.
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“We learn only from people we love.”
– Goethe
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Remember me when I am gone away,
Gone far away into the silent land;
When you can no more hold me by the hand,
Nor I half turn to go yet turning stay.
Remember me when no more day by day
You tell me of our future that you planned:
Only remember me; you understand
It will be late to counsel then or pray.
Yet if you should forget me for a while
And afterwards remember, do not grieve:
For if the darkness and corruption leave
A vestige of the thoughts that once I had,
Better by far you should forget and smile
Than that you should remember and be sad.
“Remember,” by Christina Rossetti,
described by Henry Sidgwick as
“perhaps the most perfect thing
that any living poet has written”
I ask for life – for life Divine
Where man’s true self may move
In one harmonious cord to twine
The threads of Knowledge and of Love
Henry Sidgwick, circa
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Contents
Acknowledgments
page ix
List of Abbreviations
xix
Overture
First Words
Unity
Consensus versus Chaos
Spirits
Friends versus Friends
Colors
Last Words?
Notes
Index
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Acknowledgments
Henry Sidgwick: Eye of the Universe reflects a very long, very strange trip.
It is quite possible that my thinking about Henry Sidgwick (and John
Addington Symonds) began longer ago than I can actually recall, at some
point in the s when I was reading various works in which their names
figured – works that, befitting the times, had to do with religion, ethics,
art, psychology, and cosmic consciousness. My sixties vision of a new age
resonated happily, at least on some counts, with the visions of a new age that
animated the late Victorians – visions that rebelled against the limitations
of a perversely hypocritical commonsense morality. What curious forces
led to my intense, continuing engagement with these figures and themes
into and beyond can only make for much speculation. At any rate,
circa , I would not have been at all likely to prophesy that this scholarly
tome was the form that my artwork would take.
I console myself with the thought that I have at least had a most un-
orthodox academic career and wound up marrying an art historian and
adopting a beautiful little girl. It is to Marty and Madeleine that I owe
everything that is good, in this book and in such life as has existed outside
of it, and it is to them that I dedicate it.
My parents, Reynolds and Marian Schultz, now deceased, and my three
sisters, their husbands and children, were and are a source of loving sup-
port, whatever qualms they might have about my stubborn waywardness,
on display in the material that follows.
And who could forget dear Churchill, the world’s largest miniature
Schnauzer?
I would like to express my gratitude to the many friends who con-
tributed to this project. Their support – and, of course, criticism – has
been vital and generous. First thanks must again go to Marty, her critical
reading having been so crucial to my efforts. Next thanks must go to Jerry
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Acknowledgments
Schneewind, the rightly acknowledged dean of Sidgwick studies, who has
been a model and a marvel, showing just how open-minded a senior scholar
can be, even while being absolutely unstinting in his (much-needed) crit-
ical input. Mark Singer, another friend from the Sidgwick Society, has
also, for all our differences, provided much welcome help and stimulus,
as has Russell Hardin, to whom I owe far more than I can convey. In
more recent days, my long-distance collegial friendship and collabora-
tion with Roger Crisp has been a source of great pleasure and intellectual
value; my work with him on “Sidgwick ” ( Utilitas , November
) did much to inspire me to complete Henry Sidgwick: Eye of the
Universe. Closer to home, I have benefited from Charles Larmore’s eru-
dite company, our exchanges invariably proving most thought-provoking.
Very importantly, both John Skorupski and Tom Hurka have been ex-
ceedingly generous with their time and input, providing me with a wealth
of detailed critical commentary that is reflected in the following pages
time and again. Finally, exchanges with Rob Shaver, Brad Hooker, David
Weinstein, Sissela Bok, and Stephen Darwall, during the assemblage of
“Sidgwick ,” also proved most fruitful. In fact, the journals Ethics and Utilitas ought to be included in this list, given how much they have meant
to my work. Cambridge University Press and my editor, Terence Moore,
belong here as well. The Press also supplied me with an excellent and
congenial copy editor, Russell Hahn, whose efforts are reflected on nearly
every page.
Some old teachers – some of whom are, alas, now gone – will always have
my enduring gratitude; the late Alan Donagan, the late David Greenstone,
Shirley Castelnuovo, John Murphy, Jon Elster, Stephen Toulmin, and
Brian Barry stand out in my memory. I owe them much, even if my in-
terests and thinking have always remained rather apart. The late William
Frankena, although never one of my formal teachers, went out of his way
to help me, and my correspondence with him was a great source of inspi-
ration. The late John Rawls was similarly generous, as was the late Edward
Said.
Of course, alongside these names, I must mention my students in the
College at the University of Chicago, from whom it has been my pleasure
to learn for the past fifteen years. Insofar as I have been able to “remain a
boy” – that is, like Sidgwick’s friend John Grote, excited but undecided
about all the great questions, including the question of whether there
are any great questions – it is thanks to them. I am also truly grateful
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Acknowledgments
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to the talented scholar-administators who make Chicago such an excit-
ing community, including Dan Garber, Geof Stone, John Boyer, Richard
Saller, Bernie Silberman, Bill Brown, Janel Mueller, Joel Snyder, Dan
Shannon, and Jeff Rosen.
I am also aware of very real debts to Barbara Donagan, David Brink,
John Deigh, Donald Davidson, Dale Miller, Ian Jarvie, Peter Nicholson,
Alan Gauld, Chris Stray, Robert Todd, David Tracy, Stuart Michaels,
Martha Nussbaum, Phyllis Grosskurth, George Chauncey, David Phillips,
Georgios Varouxakis, Dick Arneson, Monique Canto-Sperber, Louis
Crompton, John Gibbins, Bill Lubenow, Chris Parsons, Richard Stern,
Julian Baggini, Jennifer Welchman, Alan Ryan, Onora O’Neil, Richard
Flathman, Wendy Donner, Maria Morales, Ray Monk, Stefan Collini,
Ross Harrison, Evelyn Perry, Dave Coxall, Charlene Haddock Seigfried,
John Pemble, Noam Chomsky, and Isabelle Richet.
Two further scholarly projects have turned out to be quite useful for my
work on this book. Assembling The Complete Works and Select Scholarly
Correspondence of Henry Sidgwick (Charlottesville, VA: InteLex Corpora-
tion, ; nd ed. ), the first such collection of Sidgwick’s works, for
the InteLex Corporation’s Past Masters series of electronic databases was a
time-consuming but valuable undertaking. My thanks to Mark Rooks and
Brad Lamb, who invited me to take on the project and who also devoted a
great deal of time to it. It is courtesy of them that so much Sidgwickian text
has been transferred to this electronic format and made readily available
for scholarly work.
Work on the InteLex project brought me into collaboration with the his-
torian Jean Wilkins, who not only did a fine job of transcribing Sidgwick’s
journal, but was also instrumental in tracking dow
n various obscure works
in the Cambridge libraries and thus helped with the overall assembly of
the database as well. And it was at an early stage of that project that I also
recruited the aid of the historian Janet Oppenheim, who supplied valuable
advice and material relating to Sidgwick’s parapsychological research. Her
premature death, from cancer, was a terrible loss to the scholarly commu-
nity. A friend of Janet Oppenheim’s from the British Society for Psychical
Research, Eleanor O’Keeffe, was also extremely helpful, doing everything
that she could to ensure that we had a complete record of Sidgwick’s
publications for the Society.
With the second edition of the Complete Works, I was brought into
collaboration with Andrew Dakyns and Belinda Robinson. Andrew, the
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Acknowledgments
descendant of Sidgwick’s dear friend Henry Graham Dakyns, turned out
to be as enjoyable and erudite a companion as his ancestor was reputed to
have been, and my work with him and Belinda – first on the Sidgwick–
Dakyns correspondence included in the database, and then on the volume
Strange Audacious Life: The Construction of John Addington Symonds – has
been a delight. I was also led in this connection to make contact with
Herbert Schueller and Bob Peters, the heroic editors of the pathbreaking,
three-volume Letters of John Addington Symonds (Detroit: Wayne State
University Press, –), a complementary copy of which Bob gener-
ously sent to me.
Andrew, Belinda, and I first got together at a conference, John
Addington Symonds: The Public and Private Faces of Victorian Culture,
sponsored by the Department of the History of Art and the Depart-
ment of Historical Studies and held at Bristol University in the spring
of . My visit to Bristol was enchanting, thanks especially to John
Pemble and Annie Burnside, the latter being the warden of Clifton Hill
House, Symonds’s old home, in which the conference was held, and where
I also had the pleasure of meeting Vikky and Chris Furse, the latter one
of Symonds’s descendants. The conference papers were revised and pub-
lished as John Addington Symonds: Culture and the Demon Desire, ed. John