Roger Crisp presents a comprehensive study of Henry Sidgwick's The Methods of Ethics, a landmark work first published in 1874. Crisp argues that Sidgwick is largely right about central issues in moral philosophy: the metaphysics and epistemology of ethics, consequentialism, hedonism about well-being, and the weight to be given to self-interest.

Roger Crisp is Professor of Moral Philosophy at the University of Oxford and Uehiro Fellow and Tutor in Philosophy at St Anne's College, Oxford. He is the author of Mill on Utilitarianism and Reasons and the Good, editor of The Oxford Handbook of the History of Ethics, and has translated Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics for Cambridge University Press.

• Acknowledgements


• Note on References


• List of Key Passages


• Preface


• Summary by Chapter


• 1: The Nature of Ethics


• 2: Free Will


• 3: Hedonism and the Ultimate Good


• 4: Intuitionism


• 5: Virtue


• 6: The Virtues


• 7: Egoism, Utilitarianism, and the Dualism of Practical Reason


• Bibliography


• Index