Henry Sidgwick

Sidgwick's Dualism Defended Against Parfit

by Gianfranco Pellegrino

Draft only. Comments welcome.

Kant's Solution to the Sidgwick Problem

by Courtney Fugate

This is the peer-reviewed version of an article forthcoming in the European Journal of Philosophy.

In this paper I examine Kant’s discussion of freedom in the Metaphysics of Morals, while devoting special attention to... more In this paper I examine Kant’s discussion of freedom in the Metaphysics of Morals, while devoting special attention to the question as to whether indeed, as many commentators have claimed, it contains a solution to an objection raised by Carl Leonhard Reinhold in the collected edition of his Letters on the Kantian Philosophy and again by Henry Sidgwick in a famous paper published in 1888. In the first section, I provide a concise formulation of what I believe to be the core of Reinhold’s and Sidgwick’s objection under the title “Objection R/S” and then describe the general structure of the predominant strategy by which commentators have tried to avoid it through recourse to a famous passage in the Metaphysics of Morals. In the second, I recount just enough of the history behind this passage to provide a proper context for its interpretation and, in particular, to show its historical link to Objection R/S. In the remaining sections, I argue that the passage pointed to by commentators does not and indeed cannot contain any solution along the lines so far suggested. By way of conclusion, I consider whether the results I have reached cohere with other passages from Kant’s works and briefly suggest but leave undeveloped an alternative strategy for meeting Objection R/S.

"Sidgwick and Kant: on the so-called 'discrepancies' between Utilitarian and Kantian Ethics"

by Mariko Nakano-Okuno

in Henry Sidgwick: Happiness and Religion, edited by Placido Bucolo, Roger Crisp, and Bart Schultz, and published by University of Catania Press, 2007.