The Happiness Philosophers

The last 20 years have seen the rise of positive psychology and virtue ethics as well as the development of a scholarly industry around happiness, for instance in the work of Richard Layard. This philosophical biography vividly describes the lives and works of the great utilitarians whose maxim was the greatest happiness of the greatest number. The author brings to life the personalities of these pioneers, most of whom were passionate social reformers as well as philosophers: William Godwin, Mary Wollstonecraft, Jeremy Bentham, John Stuart Mill and Harriet Taylor, then finally - and perhaps more surprisingly - Henry Sidgwick. The author explains that 'the great classical utilitarians were fascinating people, brilliant and complex, and as intrinsically interesting as great artists. Inspired, weird, provocative and controversial, they were neither as complacent nor as naive as their followers – or their critics.' In addition, they were all concerned with philosophy as the art of living as well as penetrating exploration into the central issues of life. One can read about Bentham's articulation of the many simple pleasures of life, and about the extraordinary education and capacity of John Stuart Mill, who began studying Greek at the age of three and by the age of nine was reading in the original Virgil, Cicero, Euclid, Newton, Sophocles and Euripides. At 13 he was reading Plato's dialogues, again in the original, along with several Latin books of logic. He writes how his mental culture was fundamentally shaped by the approach of Socrates in terms of probing, precision and analysis. Later in the chapter, one also comes to appreciate the enormous contribution of Harriet Taylor, Mill's wife.

Schultz is also the author of a biography of Henry Sidgwick, and this provides the longest chapter, perhaps the one of most interest to readers here. Sidgwick made his reputation with his Methods of Ethics and held the Knightsbridge chair of philosophy at Cambridge, subsequently occupied by CD Broad. He was one of the earliest figures to resign his college fellowship because he could not subscribe to the 39 Articles of the Anglican Church, and his whole approach is one of radical doubt, also applied to his pioneering work in psychical research. He was the founding president of the SPR and was married to the formidable Eleanor Balfour, sister of Prime Minister Arthur Balfour and the first Mistress of Newnham College. The author devotes considerable space to Sidgwick's involvement in psychical research, describing his relationships with other pioneers such as Myers, who was also a fellow of Trinity College. Although others were convinced by the same lines of evidence, Sidgwick was ultimately unpersuaded by the evidence for personal survival, which led him to scepticism about the foundations of ethics and caused him great despair. While not agreeing with this conclusion myself, I can certainly respect the extraordinary intellectual integrity displayed by Sidgwick and his openness to unpopular avenues of research mostly ignored by his successors. This book deserves to be widely read by the intellectual successors of these 19th-century pioneers.