SECRECY IN CONSEQUENTIALISM: A DEFENCE OF ESOTERIC MORALITY Katarzyna de Lazari-Radek and Peter Singer Abstract Sidgwick’s defence of esoteric morality has been heavily criticized, for example in Bernard Williams’s condemnation of it as ‘Govern- ment House utilitarianism.’ It is also at odds with the idea of morality defended by Kant, Rawls, Bernard Gert, Brad Hooker, and T.M. Scanlon. Yet it does seem to be an implication of consequentialism that it is sometimes right to do in secret what it would not be right to do openly, or to advocate publicly. We defend Sidgwick on this issue, and show that accepting the possibility of esoteric morality makes it possible to explain why we should accept consequentialism, even while we may feel disapproval towards some of its implications. 1. Introduction In The Methods of Ethics, in the course of discussing ‘whether exceptions should be permitted from ordinary rules on Utilitarian principles’ Sidgwick famously divided society into ‘enlightened utilitarians’ who may be able to live by ‘refined and complicated’ rules that admit exceptions, and the rest of the community to whom such sophisticated rules ‘would be dangerous.’ Therefore, he concluded: . . . on Utilitarian principles, it may be right to do and privately recommend, under certain circumstances, what it would not be right to advocate openly; it may be right to teach openly to one set of persons what it would be wrong to teach to others; it may be conceivably right to do, if it can be done with comparative secrecy, what it would be wrong to do in the face of the world; and even, if perfect secrecy can be reasonably expected, what it would be wrong to recommend by private advice and example.’ [ME 489] 1 1 References in the text are all to Henry Sidgwick, The Methods of Ethics, 7th edition, (London: Macmillan, 1907). © 2010 Blackwell Publishing Ltd Ratio (new series) XXIII 1 March 2010 0034–0006