Peter Singer on "neglected topics and/or contributions" in Normative Ethics

I've been reading around in the latest in the fascinating 5 Questions series, this one on Normative Ethics.  Here is Peter Singer (Princeton/Melbourne) on "neglected topics and/or contributions":

As for neglected contributions, while the work of R.M. Hare is not entirely neglected, it is not now paid the attention it deserves.  Compare the attention Rawls has received over the last 30 years – and yet Hare is, to my mind, a more rigorous philosopher.  Mind you, I wouldn’t want to see as much written about Hare as has been written about Rawls during those decades.  That’s excessive by any standards.  So much discussion of any one philosopher becomes boring. 

Going back further, I regret the fact that Mill’s Utilitarianism is much more widely read than Sidgwick’s The Methods of Ethics, despite the fact that Utilitarianism is a hastily-written work, full of doubtful arguments.  The Methods of Ethics, which Sidgwick painstakingly revised 7 times over a thirty year period, is simply the best book on ethics ever written.  It’s difficult to think of any major issues in normative ethics that are not already touched upon there, and often it is hard to improve on what Sidgwick says.  If students find it too long to read, then they should at least be referred to the last two chapters of Book III, all of Book IV, and the Concluding Chapter.  But more people read Mill, no doubt in large part because Mill was the more concise and elegant writer.

I wonder what philosophers think about Professor Singer's answer?

Comments

[Tom Hurka]

Singer's clearly right about the comparative merits of Sidgwick and Mill, and surely not even people at Harvard will deny that too much has been written about Rawls. As for Hare, Singer's right that he's been unjustly neglected, but I actually think there's a bit of a revival going on, including among younger philosophers. These things go in cycles -- maybe even one day the Rawls industry will die down?

[Mark Murphy]

On the second part of Singer's answer I am very close to full agreement. The Methods of Ethics may be the best book of moral philosophy ever written. It is a model of philosophical method, whatever its ultimate argumentative failures.

A quick remark about using this book in undergraduate teaching. It has a reputation for being boring, a reputation likely increased by Anscombe's unjust remarks about Sidgwick in "Modern Moral Philosophy." But I have twice used this book in a text seminar at Georgetown, in which majors read one book over a full semester. The majors at Georgetown were quite captivated by it, and found the ending extremely unsettling.

[Kathryn Norlock]

Singer is, as ever, both absorbing and a wee bit irksome; since he mentions "students" in the same paragraph as the quality of being "much more widely read," I wonder if he's actually lamenting Mill being more widely *taught* in introductory and undergraduate courses? Among ethical theorists in the profession, I would venture to say that we don't generally think Utilitarianism is better than Sidgwick's Methods, but there's a great deal to be said for using a more flawed and more accessible text to introduce students to philosophical inquiry.

[Matt]

It's perhaps worth noting that Rawls himself was a big fan of Sidgwick and lectured and taught on him, even writing the (brief) introduction to the Hackett volume of _Methods of Ethics_. It's certainly a better book philosophically than Mill's _Utilitarianism_ is, though I'm less sure that it's better used in introductory classes on ethics. As for Hare, I'm less enthusiastic about him than Singer, in part because he seems to me too closely tied to the positions of Oxford of his time. I suppose it's normal for someone to think his teacher deserves more credit, though.

[Paul]

I am not sure how to assess the claim "more people read Mill" than Sidgwick. It might mean that Mill is more often read in intro courses. But this alone is not problematic. Sidgwick would be completely inaccessible to intro students. Does it mean that Mill's (supposed) inconsistencies are often cited as straw men, used uncharitably by philosophers to dismiss the whole of utilitarianism? This is true, and is certainly a problem. But, among people who take utilitarianism seriously, it seems to me that there is a fair amount of agreement that Sidgwick's rendering of utilitarianism is the most thorough and consistent. (Maybe I am wrong about this, but I had that impression for some reason). And when Rawls attacks utilitarianism, he takes Sidgwick as the tradition's most serious and capable advocate. Of course, maybe lingering in the background of Singer's comment is the idea that there is not enough serious discussion of utilitarianism.

[Stewart]

In a recent upper level Metaethics course taught at my university, the Rawls/Hare ratio was about 9 to 1 (class days spent on each philosopher).

No original Sidgwick was read, only Moorean commentary.

I would have liked to see more from contemporaries like Connie Rosati, David Copp, and David Brink, myself. But the quarter system leaves no time for breadth. I miss the slow semesters of my undergraduate days, with reading week to catch up....

[Jan Narveson]

Sidgwick's Methods of Ethics is indeed a great book. Mill's Utilitarianism is read more often because it's a lot more readable, a lot shorter, and he got there first. But as to the Sidgwick's being the greatest ethical treatise in the English language, I wouldn't accept that. Hume's Enquiry, for example, deserves mention, and while it usually isn't thought of that way, the ethical parts of Hobbes's Leviathan is a truly great piece of work. (Most people simply can't disentangle it from its political part, which I regard as a very, very influential disaster. Modern followups to Hobbes's groundbreaking work especially include David Gauthier's Morals by Agreement, which should count as a modern great, among others.)
That Rawls is vastly overrated and overdiscussed I agree. The truth is that there is lots of intersting work being done by a lot of writers, and hero worship is rather out of place.
I am very well acquainted with Hare's work, which is interesting but terribly (indeed fatally) flawed, in ways that Hare was simply incapable of seeing.

[James Dreier]

I agree almost entirely with Tom.

Still, Singer may well be right about the proportionality. I wonder if that has to do with the respective personalities of Rawls and Hare. Rawls was a vastly more likable and sympathetic person to be around. Maybe memories of Rawls and Hare influence the attention paid to them; if so, then again Tom is probably right that a generation of philosophers who knew neither man may be more apt to apportion attention by philosophical merit of the arguments.

[Mark van Roojen]

I agree with Tom Hurka about the Hare revival and that it is deserved. The Language of Morals is one of the great books of metaethics. It is a sustained attempt to develop a position by working out details and he offers arguments where others often neglect to.

Just about all of his work was very very good, but it probably hurt his influence a bit that his earliest book or two were arguably his best and most distinctive. About the revival, Michael Smith took Hare very seriously back when I was in grad school, and I think that many of us have taught Hare regularly ever since, perhaps partly as a result of Michael's tutelage.

[Gilbert Harman]

I am inclined to think Smith's Theory of Moral Sentiments is the best book in ethics ever written in English.

[Paul Kelleher]

Without venturing an interesting assessment of Singer’s views here, I will note one (to my mind) interesting twist. As many know, Rawls remarks in a footnote (TJ, rev. ed., p.63) that his conception of fair equality of opportunity follows a suggestion by Sidgwick (ME, p. 285n).

While it was good to learn of the existence of this historical antecedent to Rawls’s now quite controversial principle of FEO (the lexicality of which he himself later came to doubt), the most interesting discovery in going to _The Methods of Ethics_ on Rawls’s recommendation was found in the footnote that immediately precedes this one. It reads (in part):

“Justice, it has been thought, prescribes simply that each should have an equal share of happiness, as far as happiness depends on the action of others. But there seems to be much difficulty in working this out: for...equal happiness is not to be attained by equal distribution of objects of desire. For some require more and some less to be equally happy. Hence, it seems, we must take differences of needs into consideration. But if merely mental needs are included (as seems reasonable) we should have to give less to cheerful, contented, self-sacrificing people than to those who are naturally moody and exigeant, as the former can be made happy with less. And this is too paradoxical to recommend itself to Common Sense.”

Who knew?: Dworkin and Sidgwick sittin’ in a tree...

[Eric Rovie]

Is Sidgwick's Methods of Ethics still in print? The only version that I can find on a quick search is a reprint from Kessinger. My copy is a really old one (1907?) and I'd like to have a backup in case the old one finally turns to dust.

I agree, however, that Sidgwick is under-appreciated. Rawls appreciated him: he devotes four lectures to him in the recently published Lectures on Political Philosophy. Mill also gets four lectures, but Mill gets an appendix, so I guess Mill wins that battle.

[Mark Murphy]

Hackett carries the 1907 (7th edition) in paperback for $17; it includes Rawls's foreword.

[dale jamieson]

i want to register a contrary opinion: i think mill is often underrated (many of the comments on this thread are evidence). indeed, i sometimes wonder whether philosophers tend to (nonconsciously?) underrate people who write well (i.e., 'if he writes that well how deep can he be?' cf 'if she's that good a teacher her research must not be very good'). mill may be less rigorous than sidgwick (but on even that point there is more to say), but he is much more creative and exciting. reading mill you can see why utilitarianism matters, both philosophically and historically. reading sidgwick you can see how to be a utilitarian and pass in polite company. attempted humor aside, of course sidgwick was a great philosopher, but so was mill, and mill's virtues are pretty hard to find in sidgwick.

as for hare, i agree he is unjustly neglected. i taught parts of 'freedom and reason' in a seminar last year and was surprised how taken with his work some of the graduate students were (evidence for tom's claim).

[Michael McIntyre]

Not only is Sidgwick's Methods of Ethics still in print, but there are three copies on the shelves of the Seminary Co-op Bookstore in Hyde Park right now. No wonder Leiter is moving to the U of C.

(Unsolicited plug: If you'd like to support this bookstore, consider ordering books from them via semcoop.booksense.com.)

[Brendan]

I took a second year moral philosophy course as an undergraduate, and half the course was dedicated to the Method of Ethics.
The carefullness and frequency of argument, to my mind, made it an excellent text. (However, it was taught by a Sidgwick expert!)

[Anthony Skelton]

I agree with Singer about Sidgwick and Hare. In a way, both Sidgwick and Hare have the same problem: they lack disciples willing to take up and defend their views. There are no Harians, philosophers willing to defend universal prescriptivism , and though some good things have been written about Sidgwick, there are no (or not many) Sidgwickians. Indeed, the authors of the two big books on Sidgwick, Schneewind and Schultz, are not defenders of Sidgwick’s views.

[Simon Keller]

On Singer on Rawls: I object not so much to the size of the discussion of Rawls as to its nature. Too often, Rawls is treated as kind of oracle - as someone who built up a grand system which lies behind all of his views, and yields a "Rawlsian" answer to virtually any question in political philosophy you can name. I didn't know him personally, but based on his writing it seems obvious to me that he didn't think of his work that way. There are too many obvious inconsistencies, changes of mind, and acknowledgements of deep problems that he can't work out how to solve.

To give just one example, a number of self-ascribed Rawlsians consider it a crass misunderstanding of Rawls to object that his "resourcism" implies that those who intuitively are entitled to extra resources - those who need them to overcome physical handicaps for which they can't themselves be held accountable, for example - will just get the same as the rest of us. But if you go back and read Rawls, he has a couple of footnotes in which he acknowledges that this is a very worrying objection, that his view as it stands can't deal with it, and that if no one can think of good response then he'll have to abandon the view altogether.

Anyway, I think the literature on Rawls would be improved if more people just treated him as an excellent philosopher who had interesting insights about all sorts of things. I don't think that we are at our best, or that he is at his, when we try to interpret him as a system-builder like Mill, Sidgwick or Kant.

[Dale Dorsey]

I also agree that Mill is not given his due here. I love Sidgwick, but whenever I want to be truly inspired by the resources of a utilitarian view, I consult Mill. There have been a wide variety of attempts to engage and interpret Mill's work in recent years, much of it top notch. (For one fabulous example, see the recent SEP article by David Brink on Mill's Moral and Political Philosophy.) In the face of this literature, I think we are no longer justified in tossing Mill to the side when it comes to philosophical acumen.

[Tom Carson]

I agree with Singer that +The Methods of Ethics+ is the best book on ethics ever written. I don't teach it to my undergraduates, but would be tempted to use it in some of my upper division classes if someone came out with a good abridged version that included a student-friendly commentary/summary. I wish that someone would do this!

I also agree with Singer's very high estimation of Hare who deserves to be much more widely read and discussed. Hare-type consistency arguments have wide application in applied ethics and it is disappointing that he doesn't get more attention from people who work in that field. For a good example of how Hare can be used in applied ethics see Harry Gensler's "A Kantian Argument Against Abortion" Philosphical Studies 1986.

[Eric Schliesser]

George Stigler, the (Nobel) economist-historian, often pointed out in his works on the history of economics that Mill's problem is that he almost never tells you when he is being original. This explains why he is often underrated. It is true that Mill can appear very sloppy, but nearly always he cleans up his views later in a work.
Thank you, Gil Harman, for plugging Adam Smith's Theory of Moral Sentiments! It is still (despite the best efforts of Arthur Prior, Darwall, Nussbaum, Larmore, Fleischacker, etc) an unappreciated and unread book in contemporary philosophy; I suspect a very big reason for this is that Rawls misreads Smith as proto-Utilitarian and reads Roderick Firth's ideas into Smith's Impartial Spectator.

[loren]

I agree on Hare (ought to get much more attention) and with Dale on Mill's virtues. Personally I find a sense of heroism in Mill's ambitions when I read On Liberty and Utilitarianism. That's part of what attracts me to Rawls as well. In Mill and Rawls I find two passionate thinkers labouring mightily to reconcile deep commitments in a principled way (liberty and utility, freedom and fairness). Maybe that sort of heroism is ultimately doomed to philosophical frustration. I don't know. But if my experience isn't unique then it might go some way to explaining why Mill and Rawls get people going in a way that Sidgwick and Hare do not: the latter reward careful reading and reflection, but they don't inspire in the same way as the former. Or maybe that's just me.

[Jeff Heikkinen]

I'm no Mill scholar, but I think I'm persuaded by Daniel Jacobson's arguments that /Utilitarianism/ is not the official statement of Mill's own view that it is often taken to be, but a summary, never intended as a philosophically serious work, of a compromise position that various utilitarians of his time could agree on. Both its strengths - its engaging writing and seductive illusion of clarity, its ability to at least make the broad strokes of the view clear, its easily digestible size - and its glaring weaknesses - terminal unclarity at crucial points, dubious consistency with Mill's other works, superficial or questionable responses to objections - become much more understandable when viewed in this light. I'm no historian and in no way prepared to rigorously argue the point, but it would sure explain a lot, wouldn't it?