Section 6
Universalizability and Benevolence
Next, let us turn our attention to the Principle of Rational Benevolence. While the Principle of Prudence is related to one's good on the whole, Rational Benevolence is related to the good of all individuals (taken together). Its point is that a person's good should be treated equally with another person's good, if their amount is the same. That this Principle is independent of Prudence is clear, since the equality of weight through time in one individual's good does not say anything about weights of diffent individuals when we have to consider their good taken together. Sidgwick says as follows:
And here again, just as in the former case, by considering the relation of the integrant parts to the whole and to each other, I obtain the self-evident principle that the good of any one individual is of no more importance, from the point of view (if I may say so) of the Universe, than the good of any other; unless, that is, there are special grounds for believing that more good is likely to be realised in the one case than in the other. (Sidgwick 1907, 382)
It is clear that Sidgwick is appealing to the notion of a Mathematical or Qunatitative Whole, this time that of the universal good (on the whole). It should be clear by now that his Principle of Benevolence is also independent from that of Justice or the strong universalizability, and further, is non-tautologous. For, the universalizability has nothing to do with a quantitative measure, and it is logically quite possible that someone's good is weighted twice as much as another's good; notice that if you take the Egoistic method in Sidgwick's sense, you are giving a dominant weight to your own good. But Sidgwick is saying that rationality demands, if we take the point of view of the Universe, to give equal weight to everyone's good; and thus the Principle is non-tautologous. This conditional character of the Principle of Benevolence is amply made clear by Okuno (1998b, 7.1.3, 7.3), and because of this conditional character, this Principle is consistent with that of Prudence (thus my comment on these principles in Uchii 1988, 220 is wrong).
Although Sidgwick's distinction between a Logical Whole and a Quantitative Whole appeared somehow abruptly and its significance was not so clear initially, it thus turned out that its importance is great for ethics. I must confess that although I knew Sidgwick these twenty years, I have been trying to interpret him mainly in terms of Hare's universalizability. J. B. Schneewind likewise asserts that all the inferences required by the three principles are generalizing inferences, the reason thereby prohibiting us to take arbitrary differences into consideration (1977, 300-302). Another interpretation in terms of application of fairness appears in Shionoya (1984, 156-7; he confounds a Quantitative Whole with a Logical Whole). However, all such attempts miss the real significance of Sidgwick's distinction between Logical and Quantitative Whole. I realized this only last year, as a byproduct of my study of the philosophy of space and time and reading some of Harsanyi's papers on social-welfare function (Harsanyi 1976, 1977, 1982). Space-time philosophy suggested the conventionality of simultaneity and the geometrical structure; given a space-time manifold, it is still a long way to determine its metric structure and we need to introduce many assumptions such as the unit of length, the method of measurements, the definition of simulaneity, etc. Similar things may well happen in ethics; e.g., given one's goods at particular moments, we still need a principle to form one's good on the whole; and likewise, given the good of each individual, we still need a principle to form the good of all individuals taken together. Harsanyi has shown, more technically, how to do this, although there still remain difficult problems in order to reach the usual maximization principle of the sum of individual utilities. Sidgwick was addressing himself to this sort of problem.
In order to illustrate further the importance of Sidgwick's distinction, I will criticize in the next section Hare's 'derivation' of utilitarianism, in the light of Sidgwick's insights.
Henry Sidgwick around 1876
[Photo from Arthur and Eleanor Sidgwick,
Henry Sidgwick: A Memoir, Macmillan, 1906;
reprint, Thoemmes Press, 1996]
To 5. Universalizability and the Concept of Good
To 7. Hare's Implicit Use of Evaluative Principles
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July 20, 1998. Last modified April 17, 2006. (c) Soshichi Uchii
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