I’m sorry to hear that you’ve been feeling this way, Linch. I’ve also been facing some of the difficulties that you describe. I’ll try to do the best I can but would welcome the input of people who are more knowledgeable than me!
In the professional work of the English Utilitarians, what stands out to me is perseverance. When Bentham’s Panopticon project (which was meant to be an improvement on the often cruel treatment of prisoners) failed to get off the ground, he moved on to other things such as education reform (advocating for an end to corporal punishment, for example). Similarly, when the ‘Philosophical Radicals’ (a loosely knit group of parliamentarians and writers associated with utilitarianism) split in the early 1840s, Mill took the opportunity to do some “deep work” and publish A System of Logic, which had been on the back burner for over a decade.
Friendship and companionship were also important. Mill, over the same period, deepened his companionship and collaboration with Harriet Taylor, which was to be a source of great happiness to him for the rest of his life. After her death in Avignon, he would spend six months a year working close to the cemetery where she was buried. Meanwhile, Henry Sidgwick’s efforts to improve the higher education of women — which he sometimes felt did not progress rapidly enough — were supported by his wife Eleanor, and whenever he had a crisis he would always seek the company of his friends in the Cambridge Apostles (a discussion group in which he felt he could freely express his views), particularly John Addington Symonds. Symonds happened to be gay, and so Sidgwick (who often advised Symonds about what to publish) regularly had to confront dilemmas about how quickly the established moral order should challenged. (His personal experiences here may have influenced his noticeably cautious approach to the utilitarian reform of public morality in The Methods of Ethics.) Again, friendship and open discussion were indispensable to him here.
I’d be interested to learn more about the Benthamite Edwin Chadwick’s life after he was forced to retire from the Civil Service after his stint as Commissioner of the General Board of Health (following the passage of the Public Health Act of 1848, inspired by his report on sanitation). He seems to have attracted a great deal of backlash from various interest groups. One thing he did do was correspond with Florence Nightingale, who wanted to resurrect his efforts, so he did not entirely give up (despite the direct effect of the 1848 Public Health Act, partly due to lax enforcement, being modest at best).
I’m sorry to hear that you’ve been feeling this way, Linch. I’ve also been facing some of the difficulties that you describe. I’ll try to do the best I can but would welcome the input of people who are more knowledgeable than me!
In the professional work of the English Utilitarians, what stands out to me is perseverance. When Bentham’s Panopticon project (which was meant to be an improvement on the often cruel treatment of prisoners) failed to get off the ground, he moved on to other things such as education reform (advocating for an end to corporal punishment, for example). Similarly, when the ‘Philosophical Radicals’ (a loosely knit group of parliamentarians and writers associated with utilitarianism) split in the early 1840s, Mill took the opportunity to do some “deep work” and publish A System of Logic, which had been on the back burner for over a decade.
Friendship and companionship were also important. Mill, over the same period, deepened his companionship and collaboration with Harriet Taylor, which was to be a source of great happiness to him for the rest of his life. After her death in Avignon, he would spend six months a year working close to the cemetery where she was buried. Meanwhile, Henry Sidgwick’s efforts to improve the higher education of women — which he sometimes felt did not progress rapidly enough — were supported by his wife Eleanor, and whenever he had a crisis he would always seek the company of his friends in the Cambridge Apostles (a discussion group in which he felt he could freely express his views), particularly John Addington Symonds. Symonds happened to be gay, and so Sidgwick (who often advised Symonds about what to publish) regularly had to confront dilemmas about how quickly the established moral order should challenged. (His personal experiences here may have influenced his noticeably cautious approach to the utilitarian reform of public morality in The Methods of Ethics.) Again, friendship and open discussion were indispensable to him here.
I’d be interested to learn more about the Benthamite Edwin Chadwick’s life after he was forced to retire from the Civil Service after his stint as Commissioner of the General Board of Health (following the passage of the Public Health Act of 1848, inspired by his report on sanitation). He seems to have attracted a great deal of backlash from various interest groups. One thing he did do was correspond with Florence Nightingale, who wanted to resurrect his efforts, so he did not entirely give up (despite the direct effect of the 1848 Public Health Act, partly due to lax enforcement, being modest at best).