失去信仰:西奇威克、有神论与经济学分析中功利主义伦理学的挣扎

“Losing My Religion”: Sidgwick, Theism, and the Struggle for Utilitarian Ethics in Economic Analysis

History of Political Economy · 2008
被引 9
人大 A-ABS 2

中文导读

探讨西奇威克失去宗教信仰如何影响其功利主义伦理学,进而塑造剑桥福利经济学传统,尤其通过庇古的福利分析体现。

Abstract

Henry Sidgwick's loss of religious faith is central to understanding the origins of the Cambridge school of welfare economics. The most prominent “public” manifestation of this loss and its impact on Sidgwick's thought was his Methods of Ethics, which was at once the capstone work of classical utilitarianism, cementing Sidgwick's place as one of the great philosophers of ethics during the Victorian period, and the source of his deep-seated need for the very religion to which he himself could no longer subscribe. Sidgwick's studies in political economy carried this ethical perspective into the economic realm, though the major impact came via his influence on A. C. Pigou, whose welfare analysis was very much a restatement of the Sidgwickian view, but undertaken with Marshallian analytical underpinnings. This article discusses Sidgwick's crisis of faith and his subsequent attempt to devise an ethical basis for social life that was divorced from religious concerns yet consistent with his own more general theistic stance. It also shows how the results of this search affected Sidgwick's work in economics and, ultimately, the Cambridge welfare tradition.

西奇威克宗教怀疑功利主义伦理学剑桥福利经济学