《功利主义》摘录2 源流

　　Ancient precursors 古代先驱 The core precept of utilitarianism is that we should make the world the best place we can. That means that, as far as it is within our power, we should bring about a world in which every individual has the highest possible level of well-being. Although this may seem like mere common sense, it is often in opposition to traditional moralities. Most communities prescribe rules to be followed irrespective of whether the outcome will make the world better or worse. It is much easier to follow rules than to try to assess, each time one acts, which of the available options will have the best consequences. 功利主义的核心理念是，我们应该尽力让这个世界成为最好的世界。也就是说，要是能力允许，我们就应该让世上所有人的福祉都达到上限。尽管这看起来是常理，但它往往与传统美德相悖。大多数社群设立规范时并不顾虑会让世界变得更好还是更糟。而人每次行动时，比起考虑哪种做法结果最好，遵守规则总是要容易得多。 Nevertheless, the key utilitarian insight is so simple and attractive that it is not surprising that thinkers in different times and places have come to it independently. 不过，功利主义的要旨是如此简单和诱人，所以被不同时代地区的思想家独立觉察到也不足为奇。 Mozi, a Chinese philosopher who lived from 490 to 403 bc, in an era known as the Warring States Period, appears to be the earliest person recorded as advocating something like utilitarianism. The dominant ethic of the time was Confucianism, which sees ethics as focused on one’s role and relationships, and one’s duties are dependent on traditional customs. Against this view, Mozi uses a mode of argument familiar to philosophers today: he tells a story that serves as a counter-example. Mozi imagines a tribe in which the custom is to kill and eat first-born sons; his point is that customs are not self-justifying. We need a standard by which to assess them, and Mozi proposes that the standard should be: does the custom lead to more benefit than harm? Moreover, in evaluating harm, he says, we should not focus only on harm to those with whom we are in a special relationship. Our concern for others, he urges, should be universal. Mozi was a practical person. Not content with condemning the aggressive warfare that prevailed in his time, he sought to deter military aggression by devising better defensive strategies and improving the fortifications of cities so that they could resist sieges. 中国哲学家墨子（Mozi，公元前490-403年）生活在一个被称作战国的时代，他可能是有记载的最早提倡类似功利主义思想的人。当时中国主流的道德思想来自孔子的学说，认为道德就是扮演好自身的角色，处理好人际关系，一个人应当做什么取决于传统习俗是什么样的。墨子使用类似现代哲学家论证的方式反驳这样的观念：他提出了一个反例，设想有这样一个部落，其习俗是杀死并吃掉长子。他认为这样的习俗就不是天然合理的。我们需要以一个标准来评价习俗，墨子提出，这个标准应该是：该习俗的利是否大于害？他还补充道，在估量害处时，我们不能只顾及那些和我们关系特殊的人。他呼吁道：我们对他人的关心应该是一视同仁的。墨子属于实干派， 他不但谴责当时盛行的侵略战争，更投身优化各城市的防御策略、改进城防建筑，抵抗攻城。 Mozi lived at about the same time as the Indian thinker Gautama, better known as the Buddha. Buddhist thinking has utilitarian tendencies, for it teaches its followers to reduce suffering—their own and that of others—by cultivating compassion for all sentient beings. A century later, in Greece, Epicurus anticipated the later utilitarians by proposing that pleasure and pain are the proper standard of what is good and bad. 印度思想家乔达摩和墨子大致生活在一个时代，其更广为人知的名字是佛陀。佛教思想亦具有功利主义倾向，它教导它的信徒化解自己和他人的苦难，培养对有情众生的慈悲之心。一个世纪以后的希腊，伊壁鸠鲁启发了后世的功利主义者们，他提出，是享受还是遭罪是区分好坏的恰当标准。 The early utilitarians 早期功利主义者 In Europe, the idea that we should take the general good as the criterion for right action became popular in the 18th century. One of the first to suggest this was Richard Cumberland, Bishop of Peterborough (1631–1718), whose major work De legibus naturae (On natural laws) opposed the egoism of Thomas Hobbes and proposed that no action can be morally good ‘which does not in its own nature contribute somewhat to the happiness of men’. Lord Shaftesbury (Anthony Ashley Cooper, the third Earl of Shaftesbury, 1671–1713), whose Characteristics of Men, Manners, Opinions, Times was very widely read in the years after its publication in 1711, held that the highest form of goodness is ‘to study universal good, and to promote the interest of the whole world, as far as lies within our power’. The phrase ‘the greatest happiness of the greatest number’ first occurs in Francis Hutcheson’s An Inquiry into the Original of our Ideas of Beauty and Virtue, published in 1726. In the middle of the 18th century similar wording was used by Claude Adrian Helvetius, a Swiss-French Enlightenment philosopher, and by Cesare Beccaria, an Italian jurist. Jeremy Bentham (1748–1832) read Beccaria and used ‘the greatest happiness of the greatest number’ as a catchphrase summing up utilitarianism. Bentham says that he was also influenced by the chance reading of a pamphlet by the Unitarian clergyman Joseph Priestley (1733–1804), and by the Scottish philosopher David Hume (1711–76). On reading Hume’s demonstration, in his Treatise of Human Nature, that whether we regard something as a virtue is determined by its utility, Bentham ‘felt as if scales had fallen from my eyes’. 在欧洲，视共同的善（general good）为正确行动的依据这一观念于18世纪开始流行。最早提出这点的是彼得伯勒的主教理查德·坎伯兰（Richard Cumberland，1631-1718年），他的主要著作《论自然法》（De legibus naturae）反对托马斯·霍布斯（Thomas Hobbes）的利己主义，并提出，没有哪种“其本身对人的幸福毫无贡献“的行为会是道德的。沙夫茨伯里伯爵三世安东尼·阿什利·库珀（1671-1713年）的著作《人、风俗、舆论和时代之特征》于1711年出版后的数年被广泛阅读，书中认为最大的美德是“ 研究普适的善（universal good），尽我们所能提高整个世界的利益“。“最多数个体的最大快乐”的说法首次出现在弗朗西斯·哈钦森的《探究原始的美和美德观念》中，该书出版于1726年。十八世纪中叶，瑞士裔法国启蒙运动哲学家爱尔维修（Claude Adrian Helvetius），还有意大利法学家凯撒·贝卡利亚（Cesare Beccaria）也使用了相似用语。杰里米·边沁（Jeremy Bentham，1748-1832）在读过贝卡利亚后用“最多数个体的最大快乐”来概括功利原则。边沁说他还受到了以下二位的影响：一是一位论（Unitarian）牧师约瑟夫·普利斯特里（Joseph Priestley，1733-1804），边沁曾偶然看了他的宣传册，二是苏格兰哲学家大卫·休谟。在读了休谟在《人性论》中所证明的，无论我们捍卫哪种美德，都是为了它能带来的效益后，边沁感到“仿佛天平在我眼前倾塌”。 Despite Bentham’s central role in the development of utilitarianism, the work that first made the utilitarian view widely known was William Paley’s Moral and Political Philosophy, published in 1785. Paley, a clergyman, argued that God wants us to promote the happiness of all, and we ought to obey God’s will. Among secular utilitarian writings, William Godwin’s Enquiry Concerning Political Justice, published in 1793, was also, for many years, better known than Bentham’s work. 尽管边沁在功利主义的发展中起着核心作用，但使功利主义得以广为人知的是威廉·巴莱出版于1785年的《道德政治哲学》，巴莱是一名牧师，他辩称上帝希望我们提升总体的幸福，而我们应该遵循上帝的意思。在世俗的功利主义著作中，威廉·戈德温出版于1793年的《政治正义论》在很多年里都比边沁的著作要知名。 The founder: Bentham 奠基人：边沁 Bentham, the founding father of utilitarianism as a systematic ethical theory and as the basis for reforming society, was a child prodigy (see Figure 1). His father sent him, at the age of 12, to study law at Oxford, but instead of practising law, he returned to London to write about ways of reforming the law. He described himself as a hermit, but he had friends with whom he discussed his ideas, including the Earl of Shelburne, a liberal political figure who briefly became Prime Minister, and James Mill, the father of John Stuart Mill. He also made an extensive trip through Europe to Russia, to visit his brother who was then working as an administrator for Prince Potemkin. 功利主义作为系统的伦理学理论和改良社会的根据，其始于边沁，他是一个神童。他的父亲在他十二岁时送他去牛津大学学习法律，但他没有从事法律工作，反而回到伦敦撰写如何改良法律。他自称隐士，但和他讨论观点的朋友有谢尔博恩伯爵，一位曾短暂担任首相的自由派政治人物，还有詹姆斯·密尔，约翰·斯图亚特·密尔的父亲。他还横跨欧洲前往俄罗斯，去拜访当时在波将金公爵处担任行政职务的弟弟。 1. Jeremy Bentham, the founder of modern utilitarianism. 杰里米·边沁 现代功利主义的奠基人

　　From 1776, when Bentham first used the ‘greatest happiness of the greatest number’ formulation of the principle of utilitarianism, he dedicated himself to promoting that objective. (The formulation was, as Bentham later realized, unfortunate because it misleads people into thinking that for utilitarians, something that makes 51 per cent of the population slightly happier would be right, even if it makes 49 per cent utterly miserable.) There is a story that Bentham thought of the name ‘utilitarian’ in a dream in which he imagined himself ‘a founder of a sect; of course a personage of great sanctity and importance. It was called the sect of the utilitarians.’ 从1776年，边沁首次用“最多数个体的最大快乐”来阐述功利原则时起，他便致力于促进这一目标的达成。（边沁后来意识到，这种说法不幸使人们误以为，对于功利主义者而言，能让51%的人稍稍快乐的事，哪怕令49%的人极度痛苦也是正确的。）关于边沁是如何想出“功利主义”这个名字的有个故事，那源于他梦见自己“是个神圣且重要的人物，创建了一个教派，那个教派就叫功利主义者教派。” In 1780 Bentham completed his Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation, the work in which he most explicitly sets out the theory of utilitarianism. It was not published for another nine years because the book to which it was supposed to be an introduction remained incomplete. That is characteristic of Bentham’s writings: sixteen of his books were published during his lifetime, a substantial output for any serious thinker, but one that is dwarfed by the 72,500 manuscript sheets—about 36 million words—that Bentham left unpublished when he died. By 2016, 33 of an expected 80 volumes of the Collected Works of Jeremy Bentham had been published. (Transcribe Bentham, an online initiative, makes it possible for anyone able to decipher difficult handwriting to read these manuscripts and, by transcribing them, bring their publication closer.) 1780年边沁完成了他的《道德和立法原理导论》，就是在此作中他明确阐述了功利主义理论。这本书又过了九年才出版，因为作为一部导论来说此书始终不够完善。这就是边沁著作的特点：他一生中发表了16部著作，这对任何严肃的思想家来说都算得上相当高产，但与边沁死前未出版的大约3600万字的72500张手稿相比，仍然相形见绌。截止到2016年，预计出版80卷的《边沁文集》已经出版了33卷。（有一个名叫“边沁录入”（Transcribe Bentham）的在线计划，所有人都可以经由辨认潦草的笔迹来阅读和键入手稿中的文字，以此加速它们的出版。） Bentham gained international fame for his proposals for the reform of legal systems and of prisons. One of his best-known practical proposals was the ‘Panopticon’, a design for a prison or factory that would enable prisoners or workers to be observed at any time, without them knowing exactly when they were under observation. Today the Panopticon has a negative connotation because of its systematic denial of privacy, but Bentham saw one of its advantages as enabling the person in charge to ensure that warders or supervisors did not mistreat those under their control. 边沁国际性的声誉来自于他对法律制度和监狱改革的建议。他最著名的实施性建议就是“敞视建筑”，这项设计适用于监狱和工厂，它使犯人或者工人能够随时被观察，但他们不知道被观察的确切时间。如今敞视建筑具有一种负面内涵，因为它蕴含了对隐私的否定，但边沁认为它的优势之一是使得监狱能够确保看守或管理人员不虐待犯人。 In the last two decades of his life Bentham put much of his energy into writing an ideal code of law, which he then tried to have implemented. His writings on the codification of law were translated into French and Spanish, and his code was close to being adopted by a liberal Portuguese government when counter-revolutionary forces took over and doomed any chance of reform. Bentham also corresponded with the presidents of the United States, Argentina, and Colombia, all in the hope of seeing his work put into effect, but to no avail. 在边沁生命的最后二十年，他将主要精力用于撰写一部理想的法典，并力图将它付诸实践。他关于法律编纂的著作被翻译成法文和西班牙文，他制定的法律差点被开明的葡萄牙政府所采用，彼时反革命武装推翻政府，阻断了所有改革的机会。边沁还和美国、阿根廷和哥伦比亚总统通信，满心期待他的心血能够付诸实践，但都落空了。 It is less well known that for much of his life, from the 1770s to the 1820s, Bentham wrote essays and short treatises in defence of sexual freedom. At a time when much lauded thinkers like Dr Samuel Johnson said that ‘severe laws, steadily enforced’ should be used to prevent the ‘evils’ of ‘irregular intercourse’, Bentham pointed out that the pleasures of sex are unusual in that they can be enjoyed equally by the rich and poor, and urged that to allow these pleasures to be maximized, restraints imposed by ‘blind prejudice’ should be removed. Differences in sexual tastes should not be punished unless they could be shown to cause harm, and such demonstrations were lacking. In various writings Bentham systematically set out and refuted every conventional argument for making homosexual acts a crime. He did not seek to publish any of this work, but instead looked forward to a time, after his death, when publication would become possible. He might have been surprised how long it took—a century and a half—for Western ideas about sex to catch up with his thinking. 鲜为人知的是，边沁一生中的大部分时间，从18世纪七十年代到19世纪二十年代，一直在撰文捍卫性自由，这和那一时期众多声名显赫的思想家们态度相左，比如塞缪尔·约翰逊博士就声称要通过“不苟实施严刑峻法”来阻止“不正当性交”的“罪恶”。边沁指出，性行为的快感是特殊的，因为无论贫富都能够平等地体验它。他敦促道，为了让这样的快乐最大化，应该移除因“盲目的偏见”施加的约束。不一样的性偏好除非被证明会造成伤害，否则不应受到惩治，而这样的证明是缺乏的。边沁在各种文章里系统地列举和反驳了认为同性恋是犯罪的常见理由。他并没有试图发表这些文字，而是期望它们在他死后能够获得出版。他大概没想到西方的性观念在一个半世纪后才跟上他的思想。 When only 21, Bentham wrote a will leaving his body to dissection. The growth of medical science meant that there was a constant shortage of bodies that could be used for research, but at that time dissection was illegal except when carried out on the bodies of executed criminals. Later Bentham decided that his body should, after dissection, be turned into an ‘auto-icon’ so he left instructions for preserving and exhibiting it. You may still visit Bentham at University College London. His skeleton, dressed in his own clothes, is on public display in a wooden cabinet with a glass front, surmounted by a likeness of his head in wax, because the preservation of the head was unsuccessful. Bentham’s will suggested that the case holding his body might be brought out when friends or supporters meet ‘for the purpose of commemorating the founder of the greatest happiness system of morals and legislation’. In accordance with this suggestion, the authors of this book had the pleasure of Bentham’s company at a dinner celebrating the 200th anniversary of the birth of John Stuart Mill. 边沁在年仅21岁时就立下遗嘱，将他的尸体用于解剖研究。医学的快速发展导致当时科研用的尸体一直短缺，但当时解剖是非法的，除非使用的是被处决人犯的尸体。后来边沁决定，他的尸体在解剖完以后应该被制成一具“金身”1，于是他又指示将之保存下来用于展示。所以现在你仍可以在伦敦大学里遇到边沁。他的标本穿着他本人的衣服，在一个装着玻璃门的木柜中公开展示，因为对头部的处理不慎，所以头部是用蜡像代替的。边沁在遗愿中建议，在他的朋友或支持者们聚会时，可以将保存着他遗体的箱子搬出来，“以纪念道德和立法的幸福最大化体系的创始人”。根据这一建议，本书的两位作者荣幸地在边沁的陪伴下参加了纪念约翰·斯图亚特·密尔诞辰200周年的晚宴。 注1：原文auto-icon，意思大概是“无意识的造像“。 The advocate: John Stuart Mill 拥护者：约翰·斯图亚特·密尔 When James Mill (1773–1836), a Scot who had come to London hoping to make his career as a journalist, met Bentham, Mill’s eldest son, John Stuart Mill (1806–73), was 2 years old. James Mill became Bentham’s friend, disciple, and an effective popularizer of his ideas, while his precocious child was soon seen as Bentham’s intellectual heir. The young Mill never went to school, instead being intensively tutored by his father at home. Like Bentham, he learned a remarkable amount at a very early age, for he tells us in his Autobiography that he could read ancient Greek at 3, and Latin at 8. By 15, he had read most of the classics in their original language, knew French, read widely in history, and mastered a considerable body of thought in mathematics, logic, the sciences, and economics. Only then was he introduced to Bentham’s work. On reading Bentham he became, as he later wrote, ‘a different being. The feeling rushed upon me, that all previous moralists were superseded, and that here indeed was the commencement of a new era in thought.’ 詹姆斯·密尔（James Mill，1773-1836）是苏格兰人，他前往伦敦，想要在那谋一份新闻工作，于是结识了边沁。密尔的长子，约翰·斯图亚特·密尔（John Stuart Mill，1806–73）当时两岁。詹姆斯·密尔成为了边沁的朋友、追随者和思想的有力推广者，他那早慧的儿子很快被人视为第二个边沁。小密尔从未上过学，而是在家中接受父亲全方位的指导。和边沁一样，他在很小的时候就学习了大量知识，在自传中他告诉我们，他在3岁时就能阅读古希腊文，在8岁时就能阅读拉丁文。到15岁时，他已经读过大多数经典著作的原文，他懂法语，通晓历史，掌握了大量数学、逻辑、科学和经济学的思想，直到那时他才接触到边沁的著作。他后来写道，读了边沁使他“脱胎换骨。有种感觉从我身上涌过：这一划时代的新思想取代了以往所有的道德家。” During Mill’s childhood, his father earned only a very modest income from writing reviews and articles, while devoting much of his time to working on the first history of British rule in India. The publication of that work in 1817, to wide acclaim, transformed the family’s fortunes. Though James Mill was critical of much that the British had done in India, he was offered a position with the East India Company, the effective ruler of British India. In 1823 he was able to arrange for his son, then aged 17, to be employed by the company as well. Fortunately for posterity, the work was not so demanding as to impede the younger Mill’s learning and writing. 密尔童年期间，他的父亲仅靠文章和评论赚取微薄的薪资，把主要的时间都花在了写作第一卷英治印度史上，1817年这部著作出版，受到了广泛赞誉，也改变了他们一家的命运。尽管詹姆斯·密尔对英国在印度的所作所为主要持批评态度，他还是获得了东印度公司——英属印度的实际掌控者——的一项职务。到了1823年，他得以安排当时17岁的儿子也进入这家公司。对后人来说幸运的是，小密尔的公务还没繁忙到阻碍他的学习和写作。 When Mill was 24, he met Harriet Taylor, who was to have a profound influence on his thinking. She was two years younger, but whereas he was single, she was married with children. They became close, so close that some of Mill’s friends warned him that he was risking a scandal. He ignored their warnings. Twenty years later, in 1851, two years after the death of Harriet’s husband, they married (see Figure 2). Harriet died in 1858, and Mill felt the loss deeply. The following year he published his most celebrated work, On Liberty, and dedicated it to her, writing that, along with everything that he had written for many years, ‘it belongs as much to her as to me’. 密尔24岁时遇到了哈蕾特·泰勒（Harriet Taylor），后者对他的思想产生了深远的影响。 她比他小两岁，他单身，而她已婚并育有孩子。他俩交游密切，以至于密尔的一些朋友警告他要当心丑闻。他无视了他们的警告。二十年后，也就是1851年，距哈蕾特的丈夫去世已有两年，他们结婚了。哈蕾特在1858年辞世，密尔深感失落。次年他发表了后来最负盛名的著作《论自由》，并将它献给哈蕾特，此书连同他多年来所写的一切，“既属于我，也属于她。” 2. John Stuart Mill and Helen Taylor, Harriet’s daughter 约翰·斯图亚特·密尔和哈蕾特的女儿海伦·泰勒

　　Mill established his reputation as a philosopher with his System of Logic, published in 1843, which he followed up five years later with his Principles of Political Economy. The works that best represent his contributions to utilitarian thinking, however, came later: On Liberty, in 1859, Utilitarianism, first published in 1861 as a series of three articles in Fraser’s Magazine, and The Subjection of Women, which appeared in 1869. 密尔的哲学家声誉来自于他出版于1843年的《逻辑体系》，五年后，他的《政治经济学原理》出版。然而，最能代表他对功利主义思想贡献的，是之后于1859年出版的《论自由》，以及1861年的《功利主义》（最初作为三篇连载的文章刊登于《弗雷泽杂志》），还有1869年发表的《女性的屈从地位》。 There is a debate about whether Mill was consistently utilitarian in all his writings. Some passages of On Liberty appear to express a commitment to individual liberty that goes beyond the good consequences that Mill believes liberty brings. Yet Mill’s own statement on this issue could not be clearer: ‘I forego any advantage which could be derived to my argument from the idea of abstract right, as a thing independent of utility. I regard utility as the ultimate appeal on all ethical questions.’ He adds that this must be ‘utility in the largest sense, grounded on the permanent interests of man as a progressive being’. When, two years later, in Utilitarianism, he states the principle he is setting out to defend, he does so in the straightforward language of classical, or hedonistic, utilitarianism: ‘actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness, wrong as they tend to produce the reverse of happiness. By happiness is intended pleasure, and the absence of pain; by unhappiness, pain, and the privation of pleasure.’ Nevertheless, even in this work, Mill’s eagerness to reconcile utilitarianism with the opinions of his contemporaries raises questions about his fidelity to hedonistic utilitarianism. Perhaps the best-known example, to be discussed in more detail in Chapter 3, is his attempt to show that utilitarianism is not ‘a doctrine worthy only of swine’, but can justify preferring the ‘higher’ pleasures of philosophy above the ‘lower’ pleasures available to pigs. 密尔是否在他的所有著作中一贯地坚持功利主义是有争议的。《论自由》的某些段落似乎表现出，就算自由在密尔看来并不会带来良好后果，个人自由也应当被保证。对此密尔本人说得再明白不过了：“我不会利用抽象权利的概念来为论证服务，因为它和功利无关，功利才是我眼中所有道德问题的根本诉求。”他补充说，他说的是“基于人类发展永久利益的、最广泛意义上的功利”。两年后，他在《功利主义》中以鲜明的古典功利主义或享乐功利主义论调提出他所捍卫的原则：“行为的正确和错误程度，分别与它们增加快乐和不快的倾向成正比。快乐就是享受或者消除难受，不快就是难受或者缺乏享受。”不过，他话虽如此，由于急于调和功利主义和同时代人的观点，此书是否真的忠于享乐主义式的功利主义是可疑的。最著名的例子就是他企图说明功利主义不是“一种只对猪有价值的主义”，反倒能解释人倾向于哲学带来的“高级”享受胜过做猪的“低级”享受。对此第三章还会细致讨论。 The impetus that utilitarianism provided for reforms that we now take for granted is nowhere clearer than in Mill’s work for the equality of women. Mill, like Bentham, was often critical of institutions based on ‘established custom and the general feelings’ and that, as he points out in the opening chapter of The Subjection of Women, is the only basis for keeping women in a subordinate position. On this issue Harriet Taylor had a major influence on Mill’s thinking. She was, by his own account, the primary author of an essay entitled ‘The Enfranchisement of Women’ published initially over Mill’s name in the Westminster Review in 1850 and later over their joint names. Although she died fifteen years before The Subjection of Women was published, Mill credited her, as well as her daughter Helen Taylor, with many of the ideas expressed in that work. 许多我们视为理所当然的现状源于由功利主义推动的改革，最明显的就是密尔为男女平等付出的工作。密尔和边沁一样经常批判那些建立在"既定习俗和普遍看法"上的制度，他在《女性的屈从地位》的开篇指出，这是奠定女性从属地位的唯一基础。这个问题上哈蕾特·泰勒对密尔的想法产生过重要影响。据他自己说，她是1850年发表于《威斯敏斯特评论》的名为《女性选举权》的文章的主要作者，当时署的是密尔的名字，后又以二人名字发表。尽管她在《女性的屈从地位》出版的十五年前就已去世了，可密尔将此书的许多观点归功于她和她的女儿海伦·泰勒。 When Mill wrote The Subjection of Women, women could not vote and a married woman was unable to own property or money separately from her husband—indeed, she was, in English law, not a separate legal entity. Mill argues forcefully that this subordinate status is not only wrong in itself, but ‘one of the chief hindrances to human improvement’. It ought, Mill wrote, ‘to be replaced by a principle of perfect equality, admitting no power or privilege on the one side, nor disability on the other’. 在密尔写作《女性的屈从地位》时，女人不能投票，已婚女性无法拥有财产或单独拥有金钱，事实上，根据英国法律，已婚女性不是独立的法人。密尔有力地指出，这种从属地位不仅本身是错误的，而且是“人类进步的主要障碍之一”。密尔写道：“它应当被完全平等的原则所取代，既不认定一方享有权力或特权，也不认定另一方没有资格。” During his short tenure as a member of parliament Mill sought to advance equality for women, along with a variety of other reforms. He moved an amendment to the Reform Act of 1867 to extend the suffrage to women, but it was heavily defeated and it took another sixty years for women to achieve the equal voting rights that his amendment would have brought. His efforts to change the law to allow married women to retain their own property were also unsuccessful, although in that area the law was changed only two years after Mill lost his seat in parliament. 密尔短暂担任过议会议员，在此期间他积极谋求促进男女平等，以及其它各类改革。他对1867年的《改革法案》提出一项将选举权延伸至女性的修正案，但遭到了严重的挫败，直到60年后，女性才获得了他在修正案中提议的平等选举权。他对修改法律允许已婚妇女保留自己的财产的努力也没有成功，不过这项法律在密尔失去议会席位两年后就被修改了。 The academic philosopher: Henry Sidgwick 学院派哲学家：西季威克 Henry Sidgwick (1838–1900; see Figure 3) entered Trinity College, Cambridge, as a student in 1855 and remained there till the end of his life. In 1874 he published his first and most important book, The Methods of Ethics. The depth of Sidgwick’s knowledge of the history of his subject is shown by his Outlines of the History of Ethics for English Readers, published in 1886, but his interests were not limited to ethics. He also published The Principles of Political Economy (1883), The Scope and Method of Economic Science (1885), and The Elements of Politics (1891). 亨利·西季威克（Henry Sidgwick，1838–1900；见图3）于1855年作为学生进入剑桥三一学院，在那里一直待到生命结束。1874年，他出版了第一本也是最重要的一本书：《伦理学方法》。1886年出版的《写给英国读者的伦理学史纲》则展现了他对自身专业深厚的历史知识。他的兴趣不仅限于伦理学，他还出版过《政治经济学原理》（1883），《经济科学的用途和方法》（1885）和《政治纲要》（1891）。 3. Henry Sidgwick, author of ‘the best book ever written on ethics’. 亨利·西季威克，“史上最好的伦理学著作”作者

　　While writing these other works, Sidgwick continued, for the remainder of his life, to revise The Methods. Five editions appeared during his lifetime, and he was working on a sixth at the time of his death. (The now-standard seventh edition corrected a few clerical errors in the sixth.) Sidgwick’s aim was to present and compare the different ‘methods’ of reasoning that we use when we decide what we ought to do. His book discusses three of these methods: egoism, the view that we ought to aim at our own good; intuitionism, which prescribes following certain rules no matter what their consequences; and utilitarianism. 西季威克在写作这些其它作品的同时，终其一生都在修订《方法》。此书在他的一生中共出了五个修订版，在他去世的时候，他仍在修订第六版（现在通行的第七版修正了第六版的一些文字错误）。西季威克想描述和比较当我们决定应当怎么做时我们思考的方式。他在书中讨论了三种方式：利己主义，这种观点认为我们应该以自身利益为目的；直觉主义，规定要遵守特定准则，无论它们会导致什么后果；功利主义。 Sidgwick describes himself as greatly influenced on the one hand by Immanuel Kant’s idea of duty and a need for what he called ‘one fundamental intuition’ that can serve as the basis of ethics; and on the other by John Stuart Mill’s utilitarianism. In contrast to Mill’s Utilitarianism, which was written in haste and has been accused of committing various blatant fallacies, The Methods is notable for the care with which it discusses a wide range of issues. Among these are objectivity in ethics, the failure of common-sense morality, the possibility of discerning self-evident moral truths, the nature of ultimate good, our obligations to the poor, and whether utilitarians should seek the highest average level of happiness or the greatest total quantity of it. The fact that Mill’s work remains more widely read today is attributable at least in part to the fact that The Methods is 500 pages long, and Sidgwick’s prose is less fluent than Mill’s. 西季威克表示，一方面，康德那里的义务观念，以及用来作为伦理学基础的、他所谓的“一项基本直觉”对他产生了重大影响，另一方面，他也受到密尔功利主义的影响。密尔的《功利主义》是仓促写成的，被指责犯下了各种明显的谬误，与之形成对比的是，《方法》一书以严谨地讨论各式问题著称。其中包括：伦理学的客观性、日常道德的弊病、能否觉察不证自明的道德真理、终极之善的本质、我们对穷人的责任，以及功利主义者应该追求平均幸福的最大化还是幸福总量的最大化。密尔的书在当下读者更广泛，这点至少应部分归咎于《方法》一书厚达500页，以及西季威克那比密尔艰涩的文笔。 John Rawls described The Methods of Ethics as ‘the first truly academic work in moral philosophy which undertakes to provide a systematic comparative study of moral conceptions’. This method of comparative study, which has now become standard in philosophical writings, may be Sidgwick’s most important contribution to the subject, although his specific views on particular issues remain remarkably relevant to contemporary ethical discussions. J. J. C. Smart, a prominent 20th-century utilitarian, said simply that The Methods is ‘the best book ever written on ethics’. Derek Parfit agreed with that judgement, acknowledging that some books, like Plato’s Republic and Aristotle’s Ethics, are greater achievements, but noting that because Sidgwick could build on the work of his predecessors, The Methods‘contains the largest number of true and important claims’. 约翰·罗尔斯称《伦理学方法》一书是“道德哲学首部真正意义上的学术著作，对道德概念进行了系统的比较研究” 。这种比较研究的方式现在已成了哲学写作的标准，这大概是西季威克对这门学科最大的贡献，而他在某些特定问题上的个人见解对当代伦理讨论有重大意义。20世纪杰出的功利主义者J. J. C. 斯玛特直言《方法》是“世上最好的伦理学著作”。德拉克·帕菲特同意这一评价，他承认有些书，诸如柏拉图的《理想国》和亚里士多德的《尼可马可伦理学》成就更高，可鉴于西季威克得以在前人的基础上继续前进，《方法》一书“包含了最多正确且重要的论断”。 In 1869 Sidgwick resigned his Trinity College fellowship on the grounds that he could not subscribe to the Thirty-Nine Articles of the Anglican Church. He was made a lecturer, a position that did not require that he attest to his religious faith, and so was able to continue his academic career. His act of honesty gave impetus to the movement against religious tests for university posts, and parliament abolished them two years later. Sidgwick was then able to resume his fellowship. In 1883 he was appointed Knightsbridge Professor of Moral Philosophy, the most prestigious position a moral philosopher can hold at Cambridge University. 1869年，西奇威克辞去了三一学院院士职位，理由是他无法接受英国国教会的《三十九条信纲》。他做了一名讲师，这个职位不需要宣誓自己的宗教信仰，因此他得以继续他的学术生涯。他的坦诚举措推动了反对为大学职位设置宗教检验的运动，两年后宗教检验被议会彻底废除。西季威克那时再次担任院士。1883年，他被任命为道德哲学的骑士桥教授，这是身为一名道德哲学家在剑桥大学所能担任的最崇高的职位。 Although Sidgwick was far from an orthodox religious believer, he had a strong interest in the possibility of survival after death, not least because reward and punishment in an afterlife could have overcome, for practical purposes, the contradiction between egoism and utilitarianism. Sidgwick was involved in establishing the Society for Psychical Research, founded in 1882 and still in existence, and became its first president. The society sought to test the veracity of those who claim to be able to communicate with the dead. Sidgwick kept an open mind, but was never satisfied that any of these claims were genuine. 尽管西季威克远非什么正统的宗教信徒，却对死后的生命有着强烈的兴趣，尤其是因为死后的奖惩可以在实践中解决利己主义和功利主义之间的矛盾。西季威克参与创建了灵魂研究学会(Society for Psychical Research)，并担任首任会长，该学会成立于1882年，至今仍在。协会试图测试那些声称能与死者交流的人所言是否属实。西季威克对测试结果保持开放的态度，但始终没有一例宣称能令他感到信服。 Sidgwick paved the way for the eventual admission of women to Cambridge by organizing the first ‘Lectures for Ladies’ and renting a house in which the ladies attending the lectures could live. This led to the founding of Newnham Hall as a hall of residence for women. It also brought about Sidgwick’s marriage, at the age of 38, to Eleanor Balfour, who came to live in Newnham Hall in order to study mathematics, at which she excelled. She later published three papers on electricity, co-authored with Lord Rayleigh, who received the Nobel Prize for Physics. Eleanor’s brother, Arthur Balfour, had been one of Sidgwick’s students; he later became leader of the Conservative Party and Prime Minister. Eleanor shared Sidgwick’s interest in investigations into psychic phenomena, and they worked together to advance the cause of women’s education, with Eleanor becoming Principal of Newnham College (as Newnham Hall had become) in 1892. The marriage appears to have been primarily, and perhaps exclusively, a meeting of minds. It produced no children, and there is some evidence to suggest that Sidgwick’s romantic feelings were directed towards men. 西季威克筹办了首届“女子讲座”，还租了一栋房子供来听讲座的女子居住，这为剑桥大学最终接纳女性学生铺平了道路，为女生提供住处的纽汉姆厅由此设立。这也令西季威克喜结良缘，38岁的埃莉诺·贝尔福为了学习她所擅长的数学搬进了纽汉姆厅。她后来发表了三篇电学论文，合著者是诺贝尔物理学奖获得者瑞利勋爵(Lord Rayleigh)。埃莉诺的哥哥亚瑟·贝尔福曾是西季威克的学生；他后来成为保守党领袖和英国首相。埃莉诺和西季威克一样，对探索超自然现象很感兴趣。1892年，埃莉诺成为纽纳姆学院(前身就是纽汉姆厅)的校长，两人共同推动了女性教育事业的发展。他们的婚姻也许可以主要、甚至完全地看作是思想的结合。他们没有孩子，有一些迹象表明，西格威克的浪漫情怀是针对男性的。 The 19th century saw utilitarianism develop from Bentham’s dogmatic advocacy to Sidgwick’s measured and sophisticated philosophy. Over that period, it lost some of its early reforming zeal, but retained significant influence in politics and economics while becoming firmly established as a rational, if still controversial, approach to ethics. 19世纪见证了功利主义从边沁主张的教条发展为了西季威克严谨细致的哲学。在这段时间里，它失去了一些早期的改革热情，但在政治和经济领域保留了重要的影响力，同时其作为一种理性的（尽管仍有争议）伦理学进路的地位得以巩固。 Sidgwick’s Trinity College student G. E. Moore (1873–1958) accepted his teacher’s view that the right action is that which brings about the best consequences, but denied that only pleasure or happiness are intrinsically good, adding friendship and the appreciation of beauty as independent values. This form of utilitarianism was known then as ‘ideal utilitarianism’—today it would be called simply a form of consequentialism. Moore is best known, however, not for his contribution to utilitarianism but rather for the way in which his Principia ethica redirected moral philosophy towards a group of new problems that are now regarded as part of ‘meta-ethics’, a separate branch of the field concerned with the definition of moral terms such as ‘good’. For much of the 20th century, the areas of moral philosophy thought to be breaking new ground were in meta-ethics rather than normative issues such as the choice between utilitarianism and its rivals. Philosophers returned to a strong focus on normative and applied ethics only in the 1970s. 西季威克在三一学院的学生G. E. 摩尔（G. E. Moore，1873–1958）接受了老师的观点，认为能带来最佳后果的行为就是正确的，但否认只有享受或快乐是根本的善，友谊和审美也具有独自的价值。这种形式的功利主义当时被称作“理想功利主义”，现在它仅会被视为一种后果主义。然而，摩尔最出名的并不是他对功利主义的贡献，而是他的《伦理学原理》将道德哲学导向了一组新问题，这些新问题现在被视为“元伦理学”的一部分，“元伦理学”是伦理学领域的一个独立分支，关心的是像“善”这样的道德术语的定义。在20世纪的大部分时间里，被认为取得了道德哲学领域新进展的是元伦理学，而不是规范性问题，例如在功利主义及其竞争对手之间进行选择。直到20世纪70年代，哲学家才重新将精力集中在规范伦理学和应用伦理学上。