Abstract

Sidgwick gives an analysis of “good for me” and argues that only pleasure is good. In the first part of this chapter, I set out Sidgwick’s analysis: to say that x is good for me is to say that I ought to desire x when considering myself alone. In the second part, I consider objections. In the third part, I consider his arguments for pleasure as the only ultimate good, highlighting objections by Moore and Broad. In the fourth part, I argue that while Sidgwick does not rely on an account of well-being in the sense current now, he does have this concept. In the last part, I consider how, given his account of pleasure, he can reply to Broad’s objection that the order in which pleasures come, and not just the total amount of pleasure, matters. I concentrate on Sidgwick, because he says by far the most about well-being, but I place him in the sequence of philosophers that runs through Moore, Prichard, Ross, Carritt, Broad, and Ewing. ¹