author
Henry Sidgwick
1838–1900
A leading Victorian moral philosopher, he gave utilitarian ethics its clearest and most demanding form in The Methods of Ethics. He also taught at Cambridge and took an active interest in education and psychical research.
1 Audiobook
The Methods of Ethics
by Henry Sidgwick
About the author
Born in Skipton, Yorkshire, in 1838, Henry Sidgwick became one of the most important English philosophers of the nineteenth century. He studied and later taught at Trinity College, Cambridge, and is best remembered for The Methods of Ethics (1874), a book that shaped later debates about utilitarianism, moral reasoning, and the conflict between self-interest and duty.
Sidgwick wrote with unusual patience and clarity, testing moral ideas instead of simply preaching them. Alongside his philosophical work, he was involved in university reform and the movement for higher education for women at Cambridge. He was also connected with the early Society for Psychical Research, showing how wide his intellectual interests were.
He died in Cambridge in 1900, but his work has remained central to the study of ethics, political thought, and Victorian intellectual life. Readers often return to him for the seriousness of his questions as much as for his answers.