Etyka i granice filozofii

Wprowadzenie

Published in 1985, the book is Williams’s most comprehensive statement in ethics. He takes up Socrates’ question “How should one live?” and argues that neither Kantian nor utilitarian theory can answer it from an Archimedean point outside ethical life. What he calls “the morality system” – a special form of ethics centred on obligation, blame and the voluntary – distorts that life. Thick ethical concepts such as courage, cruelty or treachery, which combine description and evaluation, can yield knowledge within a way of life, yet reflection can destroy such knowledge. Williams discusses relativism, proposes a “relativism of distance” and remains sceptical that philosophy can provide ethics with foundations.

Powiązania

Nawiązuje do

• Etyka nikomachejskaok. 340 p.n.e. · Arystoteles

Krytykuje

• Uzasadnienie metafizyki moralności1785 · Immanuel Kant

Więcej dzieł: Bernard Williams

• 1973Utylitaryzm: za i przeciw
• 1976Moral Luck (Szczęście moralne)