Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy

Introduction

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.

Connections

Builds on

• Nicomachean Ethicsc. 340 BCE · Aristotle

Criticizes

• Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals1785 · Immanuel Kant

More works by Bernard Williams

• 1973Utilitarianism: For and Against
• 1976Moral Luck