Bernard Williams

1929-2003 · British · Ethics, Philosophy of Action, Political Philosophy, History of Philosophy

There is no reason to expect that ethical life can be adequately represented by any system.

By the 1970s, analytical moral philosophy had settled into a confident contest between utilitarianism and Kantian deontology, and Bernard Williams spent his career dismantling both. Urbane, ironic, devastating in argument, he was widely regarded as the most important moral philosopher of his generation — fundamentally pessimistic about theoretical projects dominating the field.

Topics Bernard Williams addresses

• the integrity objection
• Jim and the Indians
• George the chemist
• the morality system
• morality, the peculiar institution
• thick concepts
• thin concepts
• internal vs external reasons
• the subjective motivational set
• sound deliberative route
• moral luck
• constitutive and circumstantial luck
• the Gauguin case
• one thought too many
• agent-relative reasons
• the categorical and the blame system
• reflection can destroy knowledge
• the radical contingency of the ethical
• confidence rather than knowledge
• the absolute conception of reality
• truth and truthfulness
• accuracy and sincerity
• vindicatory genealogy
• the State of Nature genealogy

Converse with Bernard Williams on Symposium. Every reply is grounded in Bernard Williams's own writing and cites the page it came from. The corpus is public-domain text.