« Une triste fin pour un si grand travail » ? La révision de l’utilitarisme par Henry Sidgwick

Abstract

This paper focuses on the singularity of Henry Sidgwick utilitarian ethics when checked against Bentham’s views. It sheds new light on Sidgwick’s dissatisfactions towards Bentham’s thought, considering them as one of his motives to revise the utilitarian doctrine in The Methods of Ethics. Such a perspective permits to explain the discrepancies between Sidgwick’s and Bentham’s thoughts. The paper then discusses the salient points of Sidgwick’s revised utilitarianism: its intuitionist basis, his rejection of psychological hedonism and his intergenerational conception of the utility principle, making incidentally some connections with the welfare economics of Alfred Marshall and Arthur C. Pigou.

Keywords

• Sidgwick (Henry)
• Bentham (Jeremy)
• Marshall (Alfred)
• Pigou (Arthur C.)
• utilitarianism
• ethics