An Agnostic Moralist

Henry Sidgwick’s dualism of practical reason is a problem confronting the ethical enterprise. It’s the tension between one’s own happiness and the happiness of others; or between rational self-love and rational benevolence. Sidgwick thought each impulse was equally legitimate, yet on occasion they encounter an intractable tension. The full rationality of morality requires the resolution of this dualism, but Sidgwick didn’t see such a rapprochement as forthcoming. The only potential solution he could see is a theistic one, according to which a providential God ensures their harmony, but Sidgwick himself refused to follow this path. Nevertheless, his writings include the seeds for such a moral argument, predicated on the full rationality of morality.