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?
