Derek Parfit saw Bernard Williams as his most important antagonist. Parfit was obsessed with Williams’ “Internal & External Reasons” paper for several decades.
My post introduces some of Bernard Williams’ views on metaphilosophy, metaethics and reasons.
What are we doing when we do moral philosophy? How should this self-understanding inform our practice of philosophy, and what we might hope to gain from it?
According to Williams:
Moral philosophy is about making sense of the situation in which we find ourselves, and deciding what to do about it.
Williams wants to push back against a “scientistic” trend in moral philosophy, and against philosophers who exhibit “a Platonic contempt for the the human and the contingent in the face of the universal”. Such philosophers believe that:
if there were an absolute conception of the world, a representation of it which was maximally independent of perspective, that would be better than more perspectival or locally conditioned representations of the world.
And, relatedly:
that offering an absolute conception is the real thing, what really matters in the direction of intellectual authority
Williams thinks there’s another way. It may not give us everything we want, but perhaps it’s all we can have.
My main hesitation on this would be that I never really figured out how the difference between plausible meta-ethical theories was decision relevant.(I’m not sure if that counts as not liking it though—still interesting!)
Title:
Bernard Williams: Ethics and the limits of impartiality
Author:
peterhartree
URL:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/G6EWTrArPDf74sr3S/bernard-williams-ethics-and-the-limits-of-impartiality
Why it’s good:
Derek Parfit saw Bernard Williams as his most important antagonist. Parfit was obsessed with Williams’ “Internal & External Reasons” paper for several decades.
My post introduces some of Bernard Williams’ views on metaphilosophy, metaethics and reasons.
According to Williams:
Williams wants to push back against a “scientistic” trend in moral philosophy, and against philosophers who exhibit “a Platonic contempt for the the human and the contingent in the face of the universal”. Such philosophers believe that:
And, relatedly:
Williams thinks there’s another way. It may not give us everything we want, but perhaps it’s all we can have.
If the post leaves you wanting more, I got into related themes on Twitter last night, in conversation with The Ghost of Jeremy Bentham after some earlier exegetical mischief. Scroll down and click “Show replies”.
P.S. If you don’t like the Bernard Williams stuff, I’d love to hear your quick thoughts on why.
He is a divisive figure, especially in Oxford philosophy circles. But Parfit was correct to take him seriously.
His book “Ethics & The Limits of Philosophy” is often recommended as the place to start.
My main hesitation on this would be that I never really figured out how the difference between plausible meta-ethical theories was decision relevant.(I’m not sure if that counts as not liking it though—still interesting!)