Bart Schultz

Derek Parfit’s long-awaited work On What Matters is a very ambitious, very strange production seeking to defend both a nonreductive and nonnaturalistic but nonmetaphysical and nonontological form of cognitive intuitionism or rationalism and an ethical theory (the Triple Theory) reflecting the convergence of Kantian universalizability, Scanlonian contractualism, and rule utilitarianism. Critics have already countered that Parfit’s metaethics is unbelievable and his convergence thesis unconvincing, but On What Matters is a truly Sidgwickian work, the implications of which largely remain to be worked out. Parfit does not go far enough in spelling out exactly what matters and why, what normative reasons we actually have, and where we should go from here, if we take him seriously

The classical utilitarian legacy of Jeremy Bentham, J. S. Mill, James Mill, and Henry Sidgwick has often been charged with both theoretical and practical complicity in the growth of British imperialism and the emerging racialist discourse of the nineteenth century. But there has been little scholarly work devoted to bringing together the conflicting interpretive perspectives on this legacy and its complex evolution with respect to orientalism and imperialism. This volume, with contributions by leading scholars in the field, represents the first attempt to survey the full range of current scholarly controversy on how the classical utilitarians conceived of 'race' and the part it played in their ethical and political programs, particularly with respect to such issues as slavery and the governance of India. The book both advances our understanding of the history of utilitarianism and imperialism and promotes the scholarly debate, clarifying the major points at issue between those sympathetic to the utilitarian legacy and those critical of it.

The dominant moral philosophy of nineteenth-century Britain was utilitarianism, beginning with Bentham and ending with Sidgwick. Though once overshadowed by his immediate predecessors in that tradition, Sidgwick is now regarded as a figure of great importance in the history of moral philosophy. Indeed his masterpiece, The Methods of Ethics, has been described by John Rawls as the 'most philosophically profound' of the classical utilitarian works. In this volume a distinguished group of philosophers reassesses the full range of Sidgwick's work, not simply his ethical theory, but also his contributions as a historian of philosophy, a political theorist, and a reformer.

Henry Sidgwick shared many of the feminist concerns of John Stuart Mill and was an active reformer in the cause of higher education for women, but his feminism has never received the attention it deserves and he has in recent times been criticized for promulgating a masculinist epistemology. This essay is a prolegomenon to a comprehensive account of Sidgwick's feminism, briefly setting out various elements of his views on epistemology, equality, gender, and sexuality in order to provide some initial sense of how he carried on and developed the Millian project.

Although no one can deny the profound importance of John Rawls's work in political philosophy, which covered both an original theory of justice and extensive work and teaching on the history of moral and political philosophy, we are now at the point where his contributions more clearly suggest certain historical limitations. Such topics as gender justice, racial justice, and environmental justice figured in Rawls's work only belatedly and in less than satisfactory ways. Surely the wide influence of the Rawlsian revolution should suggest that the erasures and blindspots in his historical reconstructions ought to be acknowledged and addressed, rather than avoided out of some misguided conception of charity in interpretation. Key Words: exemplars • feminism • gender • Justice As Fairness • Kantianism • critical race theory • social contract • Straussianism • utilitarianism.

This essay is in effect something of a self-review of my book Henry Sidgwick: Eye of the Universe and of the volume, co-edited with Georgios Varouxakis, Utilitarianism and Empire . My chief concern here is to go beyond those earlier works in underscoring the arbitrariness of the dominant contextualist and reconstructive historical accounts of J. S. Mill and Henry Sidgwick on the subjects of race and racism. The forms of racism are many, and simple historical accuracy suggests that both Mill and Sidgwick could be described as ‘racist’ on some plausible understandings of that term