Henry Sidgwick (31 May 1838 – 28 August 1900) was an English utilitarian philosopher and economist, best known within philosophy for his treatise The Methods of Ethics (1874), and on The Vault as a co-founder and the first president of the Society for Psychical Research.[1]
Academic career
Sidgwick was educated at Rugby School before entering Trinity College, Cambridge, where he was elected a fellow in 1859. He became Knightbridge Professor of Moral Philosophy at Cambridge in 1883, a position he held until his death.[2] Alongside Millicent Garrett Fawcett, he co-founded Newnham College, Cambridge in 1875 — the university's second college to admit women — and his wife, Eleanor Mildred Balfour, whom he married in 1876, later served as its principal.[3]
Psychical research
Sidgwick had a lifelong interest in claims of psychic phenomena, joining Cambridge's Ghost Society — founded in 1851 by his cousin and later brother-in-law, E. W. Benson, future Archbishop of Canterbury — before continuing years of informal investigation with a circle of associates that became known as the "Sidgwick Group," which included Frederic Myers, Edmund Gurney, future prime minister Arthur Balfour, and physicist Lord Rayleigh, several of them fellow Trinity men.[4] The group sat with many of the leading mediums of the day through the 1870s with largely discouraging results — Sidgwick himself described the experience as "dreary and disappointing" — though it was through this work that he met and later married Eleanor Balfour.[3] His involvement was driven substantially by a search for empirical evidence bearing on the survival of consciousness after death, a question he connected to his broader philosophical concerns about whether moral behaviour could be shown to be rewarded beyond a person's lifetime.[4]
Renewed momentum came from physicist Sir William Barrett's successful telepathy experiments, which helped bring scientists and Spiritualists together to found a dedicated organisation.[3] When the Society for Psychical Research was formally constituted in February 1882, Sidgwick — despite initial hesitation — was invited to become its first president; both Myers and Gurney made their own involvement conditional on his acceptance, given his reputation for exacting, sceptical fair-mindedness.[3] He served as the Society's first president from 1882 to 1884, and again from 1888 to 1892.[2] Sidgwick became convinced that telepathy had some genuine basis, but remained cautious about treating mediumistic phenomena as proof of survival after death.[4]
Death and legacy
Sidgwick died on 28 August 1900. He is remembered in philosophy chiefly for his contributions to utilitarian ethics, and in psychical research as the figure whose reputation for rigour and restraint gave the newly formed Society for Psychical Research much of its early scientific credibility.[1]
See also
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 "Our History."Society for Psychical Research.
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 "Society for Psychical Research."Grokipedia.
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 3.3 "Sidgwick, Henry."Occult World.
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 "Henry Sidgwick."Psi Encyclopedia (Society for Psychical Research).