Sidgwick on Virtue

Abstract

Sidgwick’s arguments for hedonism imply that virtue is not a good. Those arguments seemed to many wholly unpersuasive. The paper analyzes them, focusing also (especially in the final Appendix) on many changes Sidgwick made on chapter XIV of Book III through the various editions of the Methods. From an analysis of the first sections of this chapter, it emerges that Sidgwick employed two different argumentative schemes, one against the view that virtue is the sole good and the other against the much more diffused claim that virtue is one of the goods. These arguments can be fully understood in the context of Sidgwick’s general claim that only “desiderable conscious life” is good. Sidgwick’s general point is that virtue, insofar as it is valuable as an end, is so because of the feelings or consciousness associated with it.