Ethics Beyond The Limits: New Essays On Bernard Williams’ Ethics And The Limits Of Philosophy [1st Edition] 1138481645, 9781138481640, 1351060104, 9781351060103, 1351060090, 9781351060097, 1351060112, 9781351060110, 1351060082, 9781351060080

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Ethics Beyond the Limits

Bernard Williams’ Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy is widely regarded as one of the most important works of moral philosophy in the last 50 years. Williams’s powerful sceptical critique of the “morality system” sent shockwaves through philosophy, the implications of which are still being ­reckoned with 30 years later. In this outstanding collection of new essays, fourteen internationally recognised philosophers examine the enduring contribution that Williams’s book continues to make to ethics. After a detailed topical summary of Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy by Adrian Moore, the full scope of the work is assessed, including the role of Aristotle and Hume in Williams’ thought and his arguments concerning the history of philosophy; the nature of virtue, the good life, practical reason and deliberation; and the themes of duty, blame and inauthenticity. Ethics Beyond the Limits is required reading for students and researchers in ethics, metaethics and moral psychology, and highly recommended for anyone studying the work of Bernard Williams. Sophie Grace Chappell is a Professor of Philosophy at the Open University, UK. Marcel van Ackeren is Henkel Fellow and Associate Fellow of Oxford’s Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics. He is also Associate Investigator at the Centre for Integrative Biological Signalling Studies, University of Freiburg (CIBSS).

Ethics Beyond the Limits New Essays on Bernard Williams’ Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy

Edited by Sophie Grace Chappell and Marcel van Ackeren

First published 2019 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2019 selection and editorial matter, Sophie Grace Chappell and Marcel van Ackeren; individual chapters, the contributors The right of Sophie Grace Chappell and Marcel van Ackeren to be identified as the authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloguing-in-Publication Data Names: Chappell, Sophie Grace, 1964– editor. Title: Ethics beyond the limits: new essays on Bernard Williams’ Ethics and the limits of philosophy / edited by Sophie Grace Chappell and Marcel Van Ackeren. Description: 1 [edition]. | New York: Routledge, 2018. | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2018037250 | ISBN 9781138481640 (hardback: alk. paper) | ISBN 9781351060110 (e-book) Subjects: LCSH: Williams, Bernard, 1929–2003. Ethics and the limits of philosophy. | Ethics. Classification: LCC BJ1012.W523 E84 2018 | DDC 170.92—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018037250 ISBN: 978-1-138-48164-0 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-351-06011-0 (ebk) Typeset in Sabon by codeMantra

Contents

Notes on contributors Introduction

vii 1

S o p h i e G r ac e C h a p p e l l a n d M a rc e l va n Ac k e r e n

1 Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy

9

A .W. M o o r e

2 Lonely in Littlemore: confidence in Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy

27

S i m o n B l ac k b u r n

3 Hume’s optimism and Williams’s pessimism: from “Science of Man” to genealogical critique

37

Pau l Ru ss e l l

4 Williams (on) doing history of philosophy: a case study on Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy

53

M a rc e l va n Ac k e r e n

5 The good life and the unity of the virtues: some reflections upon Williams on Aristotle

72

A .W. P r i c e

6 Humanism and cruelty in Williams

84

Lor enzo Gr eco

7 Duty, beauty, and booty: an essay in ethical reappropriation S o p h i e G r ac e C h a p p e l l

104

vi Contents 8 Gauguin’s lucky escape: moral luck and the morality system

129

G erald L ang

9 The irrelativism of distance

148

G eraldine N g

10 Epoch relativism and our moral hopelessness

168

R egina R ini

11 The inevitability of inauthenticity: Bernard Williams and practical alienation

188

N icholas S myth

12 How should one live? Williams on practical deliberation and reasons for acting

209

Roger T eichmann

13 Practical deliberation and the first person

222

David C ockburn

14 Moral authority and the limits of philosophy

238

C atherine W ilson

Index

251

Notes on contributors

Marcel van Ackeren is a Henkel Fellow and an Associate Fellow at ­Oxford’s Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics. He is also Associate Investigator at the Centre for Integrative Biological Signalling Studies, University of Freiburg (CIBSS). His work concerns current ethics, its history and the relation between both. He edited Blackwell’s Companion on Marcus Aurelius (2013) and Philosophy and the Historical Perspective (Proceedings of the BA, OUP 2018), and he co-edited The Limits of Moral Obligation (Routledge 2016, 2018). He is currently writing a book on moral demandingness. Simon Blackburn  is a Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, Research Professor at UNC Chapel Hill and Professor at the New College of the Humanities. His many book publications include Reason and Prediction (CUP 1973), Essays in Quasi-Realism (OUP 1993), The Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy (OUP 1994, 2015) and Ruling Passion (OUP 1998, 2011). Sophie Grace Chappell  is a Professor of Philosophy at the Open University, England, and a Visiting Fellow in the Department of Philosophy, St Andrews, Scotland. Her books include Ethics and Experience (Acumen 2011), Knowing What to Do (OUP 2014) and Intuition, Theory, and Anti-Theory in Ethics (OUP 2015). David Cockburn  is an Emeritus Professor of Philosophy at University of Wales, Trinity Saint David. His publications include Other Human ­Beings (Macmillan 1990), Other Times: Philosophical Perspectives on Past, Present and Future (Cambridge University Press 1997), An Introduction to the Philosophy of Mind (Palgrave 2001) and a range of papers on themes in philosophy of mind, ethics, Wittgenstein, philosophy of religion and philosophy of time. Lorenzo Greco is a Tutor in Philosophy and an Associate Member of the Faculty of Philosophy of the University of Oxford. His areas of interest include ethics, moral psychology, political philosophy and the philosophy of Hume. He is the author of L’io morale: David Hume e l’etica contemporanea (Liguori). His work has appeared in journals such as

viii  Notes on contributors Journal of the History of Philosophy, British Journal for the History of Philosophy, Utilitas and in various collections. Gerald Lang  is an Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Leeds, where he has been based since 2005. He has very broad interests in moral and political philosophy, and co-edited Luck, Value and Commitment: Themes from the Ethics of Bernard Williams (OUP 2012) and How We Fight: Ethics in War (OUP 2014). He is currently completing a monograph on luck in moral and political philosophy. A.W. Moore is a Professor of Philosophy at the University of Oxford. His ­research focuses on Kant, Wittgenstein, Metaphysics, and the Philosophy of Mathematics, Language and Religion. He is one of Bernard ­Williams’ literary executors and has edited Williams’ posthumous collection ­Philosophy as a Humanistic Discipline (PUP 2006). His own books include The Infinite (Routledge 1990, 2001, 2019), Points of View (OUP 1997), Noble in Reason, Infinite in Faculty: Themes and Variations in Kant’s Moral and Religious Philosophy (Routledge 2003) and The Evolution of Modern Metaphysics: Making Sense of Things (CUP 2012). He is co-editor, with Lucy O’Brien, of MIND. Geraldine Ng gained her PhD in philosophy in 2017 at the University of Reading. The title of her thesis was ‘Bernard Williams and the Materials of Internalism’. Before that she took her MA in philosophy at Birkbeck, University of London. And way before that she took her RIBA at the Architectural Association, London. Geraldine is the founding Director of Philosophy Lab, www.philosophylab.co, an educational non-profit. A.W. Price is an Emeritus Professor of Philosophy at Birkbeck ­College, University of London. His research relates to Greek ethics and moral ­psychology, and contemporary ethics. He is the author of Love and Friendship in Plato and Aristotle (OUP 1989), Mental Conflict ­(Routledge 1995), Contextuality in Practical Reason (OUP 2008) and Virtue and Reason in Plato and Aristotle (OUP 2011). Regina Rini holds the Canada Research Chair in Philosophy of Moral and Social Cognition at York University in Toronto. She works on moral agency, moral disagreement, the psychology of moral judgement, partisanship in political epistemology and the moral status of artificial intelligence. She is the author of many journal articles in these fields and is currently writing a book on the ethics of microaggression. Paul Russell has been a Professor of Philosophy at the University of British Columbia since 1987. In January 2018, he was appointed as a Professor in the Department of Philosophy at Lund University, where he serves as Director of the Lund|Gothenburg Responsibility Project (LGRP). His most recent book is The Limits of Free Will: Selected Essays (Oxford University Press 2017).

Notes on contributors  ix Nicholas Smyth is a Lecturer at Fordham University in New York. He is the co-author of the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy article on Bernard Williams and has published widely in moral philosophy. Roger Teichmann is a leading authority on Elizabeth Anscombe and has written numerous articles and books, including The Philosophy of Elizabeth Anscombe (OUP 2008), Nature, Reason and the Good Life (OUP 2011) and Wittgenstein on Thought and Will (Routledge 2015). He teaches philosophy at St Hilda’s College, Oxford. Catherine Wilson is a Visiting Presidential Professor of Philosophy at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. She is the ­author of  Moral Animals: Ideals and Constraints in Moral Theory (Oxford 2003) and most recently Metaethics from a First Person Standpoint (Open Book 2016).

Introduction Sophie Grace Chappell and Marcel van Ackeren

The original publication of Bernard Williams’ Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy (ELP) in 1985 was a major philosophical event, as was immediately recognised by other leading philosophers including Thomas Nagel, John McDowell, Philippa Foot and Simon Blackburn. Here was a book on moral philosophy that was not only a game-changing contribution to the subject but also a sustained critique of the whole way the subject was (and is) done. Here was a book about the common aspiration of moral philosophy to be an impersonal subject, the whole approach and style of which could not have been more characteristic of the individual man who wrote it—and who took it, by the way, that having a clear view of one’s own style in philosophy is not merely a matter of knowing how one wants to say things but also essential to determining what one actually ends up saying. Bernard Williams is widely, and we would say correctly, taken to be one of the most important ethical philosophers writing in English in the second half of the 20th century. Nothing he wrote before ELP offers the same unifying organisation to the wide-ranging constellation of previously ­disparate-seeming views about various aspects of moral philosophy that Williams had been developing for the previous quarter of a century. ­Nothing he wrote in the remaining 18 years of his career after ELP gives such a sustained treatment to that same broad range of issues about how to do ethical philosophy today. (Shame and Necessity is specifically about the relation between our ethics and classical Greek ethics, and Truth and Truthfulness is, as its name suggests, about the place of the concept of truth in our ethical and philosophical thinking.) In this sense, it is right to say that, for most of Williams’ central preoccupations in ethical philosophy, ELP is his definitive statement. A major book deserves a major response, and on or about the thirtieth anniversary of ELP’s publication, that is what nearly all of the contributors to the present volume, along with a number of other philosophers, were engaged in providing. We held a conference in Williams’ own philosophical home town, Oxford, in the Faculty of Philosophy’s splendid new centre in the Radcliffe Humanities Quarter, to celebrate “Thirty years of Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy”. Papers were presented on the relationship

2  Sophie Grace Chappell and Marcel van Ackeren of Williams’ ethical thought to the history of philosophy from Plato to David Hume and Adam Smith; on the political aspects and implications of ­Williams’ ethics; on the meaning and significance of ELP’s central claims about authenticity, the first-personal, “confidence”, thick concepts, relativism, and responsibility; and on the future prospects for basing ethical philosophy in the way that Williams himself thought it ought to be based— upon experience. This collection of new essays is almost entirely based upon talks that were given at this conference. We believe it represents the cream of recent scholarly philosophical thinking about, and beyond, the themes of ELP, and includes a number of important new moves in the numerous debates that Williams himself started in ELP. We therefore believe that it will be a key resource for anyone who wants to understand or contribute to those debates in the future. The collection opens with a Summary of ELP written by Adrian Moore, Bernard Williams’ principal philosophical executor, and one of his most distinguished philosophical successors and critics. The first of the papers in the volume is Simon Blackburn’s “Lonely in Littlemore: confidence in Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy”. In this, Blackburn argues that Bernard Williams, first as a moral sceptic and secondly as someone who thought that our ethical “confidence” was under threat, could have profited more from close attention to the Scottish sentimentalist tradition as exemplified by Hume and Smith. On the first of these topics, Blackburn argues that bringing in the Scottish tradition to a consideration of the issues about moral scepticism that preoccupied Williams not only injects a welcome psychological realism. It also opens a way to dispelling at least some of the scepticism that pervades ELP. It may be true that ethics has no chance of being everything it wants to be, if its aims are confined to discerning a single human teleology (as in the classical tradition), discerning a single administrative cost-benefit structure (as in utilitarianism), or discerning the deliberations of a disembodied community of purely rational agents (as in Kant), and still less if one of its aims is to provide an argument proving to each person that they have overwhelming reason to behave well. But if ethics is comfortable with a historical and socially set budget of desires and aversions, transformed in naturally intelligible ways into generators of ­emotions such as resentment, indignation, anger, shame or guilt, and by other naturally intelligible transformations into the creation of institutions of justice, property and government, and by yet others translated into judgements and verdicts, then perhaps—says Blackburn—there is nothing wrong with it, and the lurking bogies of fiction, error or illusion can be exorcised. It is true that the sentimentalist tradition promises nothing in the way of a moral theory as Williams defines it: an account that ‘either implies a general test for the correctness of basic ethical beliefs and principles, or else implies that there cannot be such a test’ (ELP, p. 72). But then, ethics has no need of a theory, conceived in

Introduction  3 this sense as either a positive or a negative solution to a general decision procedure, any more than, say, aesthetics does. Sentimental approaches likewise pull one strongly towards this same negative view of theory; so Williams should see them as allies. On the issue of confidence: the natural place to look for this, Blackburn suggests, is to the comfort offered by the economical, natural and vindicatory genealogies that can be offered to explain and justify many of our social practices. If initially you are inclined to think of property as theft, or of promises as hot air, the Humean genealogy of each stands in your way. It boosts our confidence that we don’t just happen to do those things, but that they are adaptive and that we would be poorer without them. Williams’ silence about the justificatory power of such genealogies, comments Blackburn, contrasts strongly with his attachment to Nietzschean genealogies that purport to do the reverse, showing that institutions or practices of which we might be proud have their feet in some rather nasty clay: slave moralities, ressentiment and the like. But Williams also talks admiringly of the Neurath’s boat image and its application to moral epistemology, and there is nothing in that image to support the idea that genealogy is in general one-sidedly destructive, or sceptical. We can often enough be proud, not embarrassed by the journey we seem to have taken: we have avoided a lot of the things that need to be avoided, even if others linger on, and yet others may one day await us. Some of the Humean themes of Blackburn’s contribution are reflected also in Paul Russell’s essay “Hume’s optimism and Williams’ pessimism”. Russell starts out from commentary on an exchange between Paul Sagar and Lorenzo Greco about how to understand Williams’ relation to David Hume. His conclusion is that there is a sense in which the Hume-Williams relationship mirrors the relationship between the early and later Williams. It is not a case of a thinker kicking away the ladder that he has climbed up on and dispensing with his earlier philosophical commitments. It is, rather, a case of coming to recognise the limitations and inadequacies of the earlier view and pressing on to confront its more disturbing and radical implications. To this extent, we may say that Williams unmasks the façade of optimism that the Humean outlook retains. However, there is reason to suppose that Hume was not entirely unaware of these more disturbing implications and that he would not have denied them if pressed. What ­Williams once called Hume’s “terminal optimism”, though real, is in many respects superficial. If Russell is right, then the distance between Hume and Williams is not as great as Williams took it to be. Marcel van Ackeren’s essay, “Williams (on) doing history of ­philosophy”, starts from the point that ELP combines historical and systematic perspectives; but rather than explicitly arguing for a relation of historical and systematic perspectives in a general way, we find Williams applying his view about the relation. Van Ackeren’s first aim is to elucidate those chapters of ELP that combine the historical and systematic perspectives by making clear exactly what view about the relation is applied here and how that view shapes

4  Sophie Grace Chappell and Marcel van Ackeren the argumentation. He labels that view the alienation effect or the contrast effect and argues that it differs from the later genealogical approach of Truth and Truthfulness. According to this view, the contribution of the historical perspective does not lie in finding answers to our set of current questions; it is rather to challenge the questions and standards of our current debate. Secondly, van Ackeren addresses the possible objection that exegesis of a text that is over 30 years old is itself only of historical interest. He argues that ELP presents a plausible challenge both to the mainstream analytical approach but also to the antiquarian approach. Van Ackeren’s third aim is to articulate a pragmatic position that partly builds on Williams’ position in ELP and that is inspired by his ­anti-essentialism. Van Ackeren concludes that all of the views that he contrasts have their merits, and they can be complementary rather than in conflict. Anthony Price’s paper, “The good life and the unity of the virtues: some reflections upon Williams on Aristotle”, explores and contrasts Williams’ views and Aristotle’s views, and Williams’ views of Aristotle’s views, on a number of issues about the nature and the unity of the virtues and the conception of human flourishing that underlies them. Price argues that, in two ways, Williams could have found Aristotle congenial. First, Aristotle supposes that most men have some natural inclination to act virtuously, which could ground internal reasons for ethical action. Secondly, he does not assume that human values are readily compatible, as emerges in his uncertainty about the relation of theoretical contemplation to the practical demands of life. However, there is a real disagreement between Aristotle and Williams about the unity of the virtues: can an act be really courageous if it is also wrong, and can an agent be really brave if he is unjust? Here, Price finds more plausibility in Aristotle’s views that Williams was able to grant. If Price’s paper has a single conclusion, it is this: Williams is always illuminating about the issues of Aristotelian ethics, but not always right. At least, when he is wrong he is wrong about things that matter. Reread in a time of specialisation, he reclaims Plato and Aristotle for nothing less than philosophy. Lorenzo Greco’s contribution, “Humanism and cruelty in Williams”, begins from the point in Williams’ thought at which ethics and politics meet: he inquires further into the interplay between reflection and concern for the fate of human beings by focusing specifically on that meeting point. On the basis of passages mainly from ELP but also from Williams’ political essays and from Truth and Truthfulness, he addresses the question of an ethical justification of politics in relation to Williams’ version of political realism. He examines the role that truth and relativism play in it, and considers what Williams says about the self-evidence of human rights. Central to his perspective, and likewise, he argues, to Williams’, is the human capacity to suffer and make others suffer: seeing things from this vantage point helps to make sense of Williams’ views about the powers and limits of philosophical reflection, and thus makes it clearer why Williams believes that philosophy should be seen as a humanistic discipline.

Introduction  5 Sophie Grace Chappell’s paper “Beauty, duty, and booty” is a reflection on some basic ethical themes in the spirit of a famous remark of Bernard Williams’ (ELP, p. 117), that Theory typically uses the assumption that we probably have too many ethical ideas, some of which may well turn out to be mere prejudices. Our major problem now is actually that we have not too many but too few, and we need to cherish as many as we can. Her project is to re-appropriate the ethical idea of beauty as a reason for ­action. She claims that our moral, and so our ethical, concepts, and the moral and ethical normativity that goes with them, are deeply aesthetically coloured. The beautiful does indeed have a central place within our thinking about ­normativity because it has a central place within our thinking about moral normativity. And the central place it has is this (or this is one of them): very often, it is a good (though not necessarily an idiomatic) answer to the question “Why should I do x?” to reply “Because x is the beautiful thing to do”. In “Gauguin’s lucky escape”, Gerald Lang takes a fresh look at Williams’ argument in ‘Moral Luck’, to assess its defensibility, and then investigates how Williams’ treatment of moral luck shapes and informs the wider assault on the ‘morality system’ which reaches its fullest expression in ELP. Lang thinks we can learn something about both of Williams’ projects—his defence of moral luck and his attack on the morality system—by seeing how each of these projects contributes to the other. Geraldine Ng’s essay, “The irrelativism of distance”, considers the relativist argument that Williams advances, what he calls ‘the relativism of distance’. Many commentators dismiss this thesis and urge that it should be abandoned. Ng believes that, from the point of view of the rest of Williams’ philosophy, it is not optional but vital. On the common interpretation as a metaethical relativist thesis, his argument is indeed unconvincing. But, Ng argues, the relativism of distance also sustains what she calls an uncommon interpretation. She goes on to propose a ­moral-psychological thesis, based on the uncommon interpretation, which constitutes a partial defence. What she calls the irrelativism of distance is a thesis concerning a person’s moral-psychological standing to judge some distant other social world S. Jim Jarmusch’s character in the film Ghost Dog, portrayed as a modern-day samurai, serves to give us a grip on the idea that the appraiser’s moral-psychological connection to some distant other social world S decides the appropriateness or inappropriateness of moral appraisal over distance. This rejoinder may appear to miss the point. Williams’ view is characterised as non-objectivist, whereas the irrelativist view, as a thesis about our moral psychology, is neutral with respect to the objectivity of moral judgements. But Ng argues that the irrelativism of distance is both faithful to Williams’ thinking and defensible on its own terms.

6  Sophie Grace Chappell and Marcel van Ackeren Regina Rini too is concerned with relativism and the relativism of distance in her essay “Epoch relativism and our moral hopelessness”. She begins from the familiar fact that when we look back upon people in past societies, such as slaveholders and colonialists, we judge their actions to have been morally atrocious. Yet (she points out), we should give some thought to how the future will judge us. Her thesis is that future people are likely to regard our behaviour as no better than that of the past. If these future people are to be believed, then we are morally hopeless; we have little chance of working out the moral truth for ourselves. She argues that we ought to resist this conclusion, and that our best means for doing so is to reject moral objectivity and accept instead a form of time-linked moral relativism. Nicholas Smyth, in “The inevitability of inauthenticity”, asks whether it is possible for human beings to tell truthful stories about their own values and to remain confident in those values. To put Smyth’s question another way—a way that brings out its affinities with Rini’s concerns: might we discover a method of honestly and critically reflecting on our own values which does not threaten to undermine them entirely? In ELP, among other places, Bernard Williams argued that moral theories threaten to produce a kind of inauthenticity in us, a sort of double-mindedness that erodes our confidence in our values. But Smyth argues that Williams’ critique faces a devastating rejoinder. The objection is grounded in the fact that the sort of inauthenticity he describes is not just a feature of agents who internalise moral theories. Rather, it is, by Williams’ own lights, an inescapable part of the human condition. A close examination of Williams’ most constructive project in moral philosophy—contained in his final work, Truth and Truthfulness—confirms this line of critique since it reveals that he himself was not able to avoid the production of inauthenticity while attempting to vindicate our commitment to truthfulness. Roger Teichmann’s essay is entitled “How should one live? Williams on practical deliberation and reasons for acting”. Teichmann sees significant problems with Williams’ conception of practical reason, both as regards his claim that practical deliberation is radically first-personal (on this see also David Cockurn’s contribution), and as regards his claim that all practical reasons are internal reasons. In the first three sections of this paper, Teichmann examines these problems in detail, turning in the fourth section to the question whether and how they affect the claims of ELP, and in particular the claims made in Chapter 3 in criticism of philosophical attempts to locate the foundations of ethics in notions of human well-being. Williams’ argument here involves two strands, one to do with non-ethical dispositions being in competition with ethical ones and the other to do with the plurality of possible kinds of ethical life that might be determined by an account of human nature. Neither point presents a real difficulty for an Aristotelian, and the source (or a source) of Williams’ belief that there are difficulties here is, Teichmann suggests, his excessively ‘first-personal’

Introduction  7 conception of practical reason, a conception already dealt with in the earlier parts of this paper, and which can be detected also in an interview he gave for The Guardian in 2002 in which he declared that ‘if there’s one theme in all my work it’s about authenticity and self-expression…’ The terms ‘authenticity’ and ‘self-expression’ need explanation, and there are two directions in which an explanation might point that are equally problematic for Williams. By one explanation, authenticity and self-expression are a part of human flourishing, and hence available to an Aristotelian account of the good life, while by the other, they are as much features of the life of a Goebbels as of the life of a Beethoven. In the end, Teichmann thinks we must reject the picture that Williams offers and what lies behind that picture, namely the subordination of practical reason to subjective desire. David Cockburn’s paper, “Practical deliberation and the first person”, explores some very similar themes to Teichman’s. He begins from Bernard Williams’ suggestion that general confusions about the nature of practical thinking lie behind images of the necessarily ‘impersonal’ character of morality. Williams deploys the idea that reasoning about what to do is marked off from reasoning about what is the case through its essentially ­‘first-personal’ character; this idea is presented as opposed, both to the ‘impartialist’/‘universalising’ emphasis of Kantian ethics, and to the consequentialist suggestion that the question ‘What should I do?’ is subservient to the question ‘How should the world be?’ Williams argues that thought, not simply about what I should do, but about what another should do, is essentially first-personal in that its perspective is that of “What I would do if I were you”. But (Cockburn argues) there are serious difficulties, deriving from instability in the contrast between the self and her circumstances, in any attempt along these lines to give substantial philosophical content to any general claim of the form: ‘Practical thought is radically first-personal’. Those difficulties aside, this way of construing the idea of practical thought as essentially ‘first personal’ may turn out to be in direct conflict with ideas sometimes articulated in the suggestion that it is essentially ‘personal’: the former sitting better with a universalising picture in which, in making a judgement for myself, I am making a judgement for anyone in such a situation. As in other areas of philosophy, the strand of Cartesianism that involves giving priority to the first person case introduces significant distortion. It is important to recognise that thought about what another should do is a form of practical deliberation that needs understanding in its own terms: that it should not be represented as simply a reflection of the supposedly ‘purer’ case of first-person deliberation. But emphasis on the supposedly ­‘first-personal’ character of practical deliberation can lead to distortion in the latter case too. Cockburn’s contention is that we would do better to say that reflection on what I should do is, in many cases, essentially ­‘impersonal’: not in the Kantian sense that it is thought about what ­anyone ought to do, but, rather, in the sense that it is not thought about what

8  Sophie Grace Chappell and Marcel van Ackeren anyone ought to do. Neither the thinker nor his characteristics need enter into either his reasoning or his conclusion—any more than they characteristically do in thought about what is the case. Finally, Catherine Wilson, in her essay “Moral authority and the limits of philosophy”, aims to defend Williams’s metaethical scepticism and his criticisms of what is sometimes called ‘moral aggression.’ At the same time, she points to a tension in Williams’ overall position and offers a sharpening up of his defence of the idea that it is possible to be ‘outside’ modern moral theory without being outside morality. Kantian and consequentialist formulas of obligation, she argues, are not authoritative, but there was genuine epistemic progress in the evolution of modern moral theory. We as editors are grateful to Acumen Publishing for permission to ­reuse Adrian Moore’s Summary of ELP, first published in 2006; to the Oxford Philosophy Faculty for the free use of their splendid buildings for the ­original “30 Years Of Ethics And The Limits Of Philosophy” ­conference, in July 2015; to the Open University, St Hugh’s College, Oxford, the Mind Association, the Aristotelian Society, and Taylor & Francis Publishing, for financial and practical support for that conference; to Roger Crisp, Miranda Fricker, Edward Harcourt, Simon Kirchin, Nakul Krishna, ­M ichael ­Lacewing, Adrian Moore, Regina Rini, John Skorupski, Candace Vogler, R. Jay Wallace and Eric Wiland, all of whom also gave papers or responses at the conference; to everyone else who attended that conference; and of course to our twelve splendid contributors. Sophie Grace Chappell, The Open University, UK Marcel van Ackeren, Universität zu Köln, Germany May 2018

1 Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy A.W. Moore

Introduction Bernard Williams (1929–2003) was one of the greatest 20th-century British philosophers, renowned especially for his work in moral philosophy. When Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy was published, in 1985, he had already written numerous highly influential articles in the area. He had also written a beautifully concise and widely read introduction to the subject entitled ­Morality: An Introduction to Ethics (Williams 1973a), and had contributed the second half of a joint publication with J.J.C. Smart entitled Utilitarianism: For and Against (Smart and Williams 1973): Williams’ contribution, “A Critique of Utilitarianism,” provided the case against. A number of significant articles followed. So did Shame and Necessity (Williams 1993), in which he pursued a recurrent interest in ancient Greek ethical thought, and Truth and Truthfulness: An Essay in Genealogy (Williams 2002), in which he provided a Nietzschean account of the virtues of accuracy and sincerity. An earlier publication, Descartes: The Project of Pure Enquiry (Williams 1978), although not itself a work of moral philosophy, had provided some of the basic tools that Williams subsequently used to contrast ethical thinking with thinking in other areas. But it is Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy, by fairly common consent his greatest work, that serves as the locus classicus for his ideas in moral philosophy. Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy may fairly be described as a work in “analytical” philosophy. Not that Williams himself is much concerned about that. He is more concerned, as he indicates in the Preface, about whether his book has the virtue most prized by analytical philosophy: clarity. It has a kind of clarity. But it does not have the kind of clarity that makes for easy reading. Williams never belabors the obvious, and he rarely makes explicit what he takes to be implicit in something he has already said. His writing is therefore extremely dense. It leaves an enormous amount of work for the reader. Its clarity lies in its content: it is the clarity of understanding by which the reader’s work is eventually rewarded. Williams is in my view a superb stylist. But the principal joys of reading him are not the joys, great as they are, of savoring his many witticisms and elegant turns of phrase. They are the joys of honest endeavor: of struggling to come to terms with writing that is rigorous, imaginative, brilliant, deep, and above all thoroughly humane.

10  A.W. Moore When Williams first began to write in moral philosophy, in the early 1960s, the subject had for some time been embroiled in abstract ­second-order debates about moral language, for instance about whether an act of moral condemnation, such as telling someone, “It was reprehensible of you to do that,” involved making any genuine assertion. Williams was keen to reestablish contact with the real concerns that animate our ordinary ethical experience. Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy is, in many respects, the culmination of a wonderfully successful crusade to do just that. It shows admirably how much moral philosophy can achieve. There is therefore a profound irony in the fact that one of the main themes of the book, advertised in the second half of its title, is how little moral philosophy can achieve. In particular, moral philosophy cannot deliver the very thing that might have been expected of it, a theory to guide ethical reasoning. What it can do is to assist the self-understanding of those whose ethical reasoning already has guidance from elsewhere. That is, it can help to provide a critique of lived ethical experience. And that, as alluded to in the first half of the book’s title, is precisely what Williams wants it to do in these pages. In a fascinating postscript to the book, he writes that the hopes expressed in the book “can be compressed into a belief in three things: in truth, in truthfulness, and in the meaning of an individual life” (page 198). He goes on to explain what he means by this. He hopes, first, that the kind of ­self-understanding that he seeks to promote may be thoroughly informed by the truth, particularly by the truth about our social and historical bearings; second, that our ethical experience may stand up to such s­ elf-understanding, even where such self-understanding indicates that it is not what it seems; and third, that if our ethical experience does stand up to such self-understanding, this will leave individuals free to make sense in and of their own lives. In spite of Williams’ skepticism about the power of philosophy, his own book is a contribution to the realization of all three hopes.

Chapter 1: Socrates’ question Williams begins with a question which, because it is posed by Socrates in Plato’s Republic (Plato 1961: 352d), he refers to as Socrates’ question. As Socrates says, the question is not a trivial one. It is nothing less than the question of how one should live. From the very outset, Williams makes clear how little we should expect from philosophy in respect of this question: we certainly should not expect an answer to it. But philosophy may help us to understand the question. A large part of Chapter 1 is accordingly concerned with examining Socrates’ question and in particular with determining how much it presupposes. It presupposes little enough, in Williams’ view, to be the best starting point for moral philosophy. But it is not, Williams insists, presuppositionless. One thing that it presupposes is, of course, that issues about how to live can be properly addressed at this high level of generality—if not that there is such a thing as “the right life … for human beings as such” (page 20).

Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy  11 One thing that Socrates’ question does not presuppose, however, is what Williams calls “morality,” a particular style of ethical thought to which he returns in the final chapter and which he sees as a pervasive and pernicious feature of the modern world. Whereas “ethics” is just moral philosophy by another name, and is therefore concerned with all manner of approaches to Socrates’ question, “morality”—in the helpful contrast that Williams uses these two terms to draw—is one particular approach to Socrates’ question that uses certain very distinctive conceptual tools.1 Two of the most basic of these tools are the idea of a purely voluntary act and the idea of a moral obligation. Morality interprets Socrates’ question as a question about which purely voluntary acts there is some moral obligation to perform, and which there is some moral obligation to refrain from performing, and it treats a moral obligation as an inescapable demand that eclipses any other consideration. Williams challenges both ideas. He thinks that the idea of a “purely” voluntary act, together with all the other ideas in morality’s conceptual toolkit that relate to it—responsibility, guilt, blame, and the like—is “an illusion” (page 196). And he resents the importunacy and arrogance that he finds in the idea of a moral obligation. There are, Williams urges, all sorts of considerations that can be brought to bear on Socrates’ question other than those of obligation. They include ethical considerations of other kinds, such as considerations of general welfare and of virtue. And they include non-ethical considerations, such as aesthetic considerations and indeed considerations of self-interest. Nor should we think that either ethical considerations or non-ethical considerations can all ultimately be reduced to one basic type. A dominant theme of this chapter is that any realistic answer to Socrates’ question must reflect the multi-textured complexity of life itself.

Chapter 2: The Archimedean point I have talked, as Williams himself does, about “ethical” considerations and “non-ethical” considerations. Williams deliberately holds back from providing an explicit definition of this contrast, which he takes to be both intuitive and vague. What matters, for current purposes, is that ethical considerations—which pertain to our living in society with other people, and which include, for instance, considerations of justice and of mutual respect—sometimes conflict with considerations of shallow self-interest. 2 This means that if they (ethical considerations) are indeed to be brought to bear on Socrates’ question, then there is an issue about how they are to be justified. And it is this issue that structures the next five chapters of the book. Before we address it, however, we must be clear about what we expect of any justification. In particular, Williams says, we must be clear about: • • •

what the justification is to be given against; whom it is to be given to; where it is to be given from.

12  A.W. Moore Here, Williams is reacting, with characteristic measure, to a kind of alarmism that he finds in much moral philosophy. This alarmism is born of two things. The first of these is the conviction that if someone is completely amoral, that is to say if someone is completely unmoved by ethical considerations, 3 then it ought to be possible to remedy this by giving the person a suitably compelling argument, an argument which it is moral philosophy’s very business to supply. The second thing generating the alarmism is despair at the prospect of moral philosophy’s supplying anything of the sort. Williams shares the despair, but not the conviction. In other words, he agrees that there is no hope of moral philosophy’s supplying any such argument, but he does not agree that it is moral philosophy’s business to do so. This is yet another example of his skepticism about the kind of force that philosophy can exert. To share the conviction (to think that it is moral philosophy’s business to supply such an argument) would be, in effect, to think that there ought to be a justification of ethical considerations that can be given: against amoralism; to the amoralist; from some kind of Archimedean point, that is to say from a set of assumptions that the amoralist can himself be expected to share. Williams’ hopes are more modest—or if not more modest, then certainly different. He is willing to look for a justification of ethical considerations that can be given against amoralism; but not to the amoralist; and therefore not necessarily from an Archimedean point. The justification that he seeks is one that can be given to those for whom ethical considerations already have some force. In other words, the point is not to persuade anyone of anything, but to promote self-understanding, the kind of self-understanding that Williams takes to be the real business of moral philosophy. Not “necessarily” from an Archimedean point, I said. If the justification is not expected to serve as an instrument of conversion, then of course there is not the same rationale for trying to proceed from assumptions that the amoralist will share. Even so, there is some rationale. For the weaker the assumptions on which the justification rests, the deeper the self-understanding it can promote. Very well; but how weak can these assumptions be? Is proceeding from an Archimedean point possible? Williams does not answer this question in Chapter 2. What he does, at the very end of the chapter, is to indicate where the Archimedean point would have to lie if there were such a thing: “in the idea of rational action” (page 28). The next two chapters explore the two best known attempts, and indeed the two best attempts, to proceed from there: that of Aristotle, whose conception of rational action is relatively rich and determinate; and that of Kant, whose conception of rational action is as thin and as abstract as possible. If neither of those succeeds, then the project of justifying ethical considerations from an Archimedean point, or, as Williams also puts it, “from the ground up” (pages 28 and 202), must be abandoned.

Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy  13

Chapter 3: Foundations: well-being I said in the previous section that ethical considerations sometimes conflict with considerations of shallow self-interest. For Aristotle, “shallow” is the operative word. To act in accord with ethical considerations is, on Aristotle’s view, to do what is really, or most fundamentally, in one’s self-interest. There are various reasons why someone might think that ethical considerations and considerations of self-interest ultimately coincide, any one of which they could invoke to show that it was rational to act in accord with the former; in other words, any one of which they could invoke in a justification of ethical considerations from an Archimedean point of the kind described at the end of the previous section. For instance, they might claim that divine retribution awaits those who do not act in accord with ethical considerations. For Aristotle, however, the connection with rationality goes deeper than that. He thinks that acting in accord with ethical considerations, or acting virtuously as he would say, is itself intrinsically rational, in that it gives maximally coherent shape to everything that one is disposed to want or feel or do, and that it is in one’s self-interest because what human well-being most fundamentally consists in is the life of rationality that quintessentially distinguishes humans from other animals. (There is a sense, then, in which Aristotle holds that acting virtuously is both rational because it is in one’s self-interest and in one’s self-interest because it is rational.) Since Aristotle sees the primary justificatory task of ethics in just the same way as Williams does—to preach, as it were, to the converted—he has nothing to say to those for whom ethical considerations have no force. He has nothing to say to them. But he needs to say something about them. He needs, as Williams puts it, to provide “a theory of error, a substantive ­account of how people may fail to recognize their real interests” (page 43, my emphasis). The account that Aristotle provides is in terms of upbringing. For Aristotle, virtuousness cannot be achieved without the right ­training—any more than other features of the life of rationality can, say literacy or numeracy. Those whose upbringing does not include the right training acquire bad habits of pleasure-seeking which cloud their judgment. Williams is unimpressed by this account, largely because he is unimpressed by the underlying teleology that makes it appropriate to talk about what human well-being most fundamentally consists in. He is also skeptical about whether any modern scientific developments, in, say, evolutionary biology or psychology, can be used to plug this gap. He does think that there are some vital insights afforded by the Aristotelian picture, not least that ethical considerations derive whatever force they have from human nature, as expressed in people’s dispositions. But without the underlying teleology, this is not enough to fix what those considerations shall be. Human nature is subject to all sorts of social and historical conditioning, and is expressed in all sorts of dispositions. There are many different ethical outlooks that these dispositions can be used to support, some of which

14  A.W. Moore exclude one another. (Williams has more to say about this in the penultimate chapter, on relativism.) There is no such thing, to echo the quotation I gave earlier, as “the right life … for human beings as such.”

Chapter 4: Foundations: practical reason Having rejected Aristotle’s attempt to justify ethical considerations from an Archimedean point, Williams turns to Kant’s. Kant likewise wants to show that it is rational to act in accord with ethical considerations, or to act from duty as he would say. But unlike Aristotle, he does not see this in terms of human well-being. He takes as his starting point the very idea of rational action, prescinding altogether from what humans, either as a species or as individuals, might be disposed to want or feel. Kant argues that it is a precondition of being a rational agent that one be motivated by ethical considerations. Williams sees some hope for an argument along these lines. More specifically, he sees some hope for an argument to the effect that it is a precondition of being a rational agent that one value one’s own freedom. But that falls short of what Kant requires. To value one’s own freedom is not to be motivated by ethical considerations. (It is not to value the freedom of any other rational agent.) How does Kant take the extra step? By abstracting from all but the rational agent’s rational agency. Kant thinks that a rational agent must, if he is to be true to his own essence, act on principles of pure rational agency (“pure practical reason”). That is to say, he must act on principles that would be apt to regulate the actions of all rational agents. This does require that he value freedom, and indeed rationality, but not his own freedom, nor his own rationality; rather, freedom and rationality per se. He must value all rational beings for their own sake. As Kant puts it, “a rational being must always regard himself as lawgiving in a kingdom of ends,” where by “a kingdom of ends” he means a law-governed union of rational beings considered as ends in themselves (Kant 1996: 4: 433–4). Acting, for Kant, is in this respect like thinking. One does not think rationally unless one thinks in accord with principles that would be apt to regulate the thinking of all rational thinkers. Thus, it would be irrational to think that the real color of an object was whatever color one first took it to be. This would leave one vulnerable to the possibility that an object that one first took to be yellow was first taken by someone else, in different lighting conditions perhaps, to be orange. (Its real color could not be both yellow and orange. There would have to be some principled way of deciding between these conflicting appearances.) It is this analogy between acting and thinking in Kant’s approach that Williams takes to be precisely what is wrong with the approach. Acting and thinking, for Williams, are not alike in this respect. One does not think rationally unless one thinks in a way that is conducive to believing the truth, where what it takes for one to believe the truth is the same as what it takes for anyone else to believe the truth. But one can act rationally by acting in a

Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy  15 way that is conducive to satisfying one’s desires, where what it takes for one to satisfy one’s desires may be quite different from, indeed in tension with, what it takes for someone else to satisfy his or hers. Kant’s attempt to justify ethical considerations from an Archimedean point is, in Williams’ view, no more successful than Aristotle’s.

Chapter 5: Styles of ethical theory There may still be some real prospect of justifying ethical considerations from something other than an Archimedean point. For instance, it may be possible, by taking for granted the kind of force that ethical considerations can have, to justify specific ethical considerations against their rivals. Moreover, there is no reason why the Aristotelian justification and the Kantian justification, each of which may have failed in its own terms, should not be exploited in providing a justification of this kind. (Thus, while there may not be a rational requirement of the kind that Kant thought there was, to import the same impartiality into one’s deliberations about how to act as one does into one’s deliberations about what to think, there may be an ethical requirement to do so.) The most obvious shape for such a justification to take is that of an ethical theory. In pursuing the question whether anything of this kind is available, which Williams does in Chapters 5 and 6, he provides himself with an opportunity to discuss not only the very idea of an ethical theory but also some of the ethical theories that have actually been proposed—including one version of utilitarianism, which, along with Aristotelianism and Kantianism, is often reckoned to be the third apex of a dialectical triangle that has dominated moral philosophy. Williams defines an ethical theory as “a theoretical account of what ethical thought and practice are, which account either implies a general test for the correctness of basic ethical beliefs and principles or else implies that there cannot be such a test” (page 72). The reason for this rather strange disjunctive definition is that accounts of both kinds purport to tell us, on philosophical grounds, how we should think in ethics. One might suppose that only accounts of the first kind did this. But consider accounts of the second kind (the kind whereby there cannot be a test for the correctness of basic ethical beliefs and principles), and think what would be the limiting case of such an account. It would be the view that “holding an ethical position simply consists of choosing one and sticking to it” (page 74). Even this view purports to tell us, on philosophical grounds, how we should think in ethics. It does this by telling us “that we cannot really think much at all in ethics” (page 74). Williams, by contrast, wants to give an account of what ethical thought and practice are whereby we can certainly think in ethics, in all sorts of ways, but “philosophy can do little to determine how we should do so” (page 74, my emphasis). He is as skeptical about the prospects of a sound ethical theory as he is about the prospects of a successful foundational project of the kind that we saw Aristotle and Kant undertake.

16  A.W. Moore The two styles of ethical theory on which he turns his skeptical gaze in Chapter 5 are contractualism and utilitarianism. Contractualism is a close cousin of Kantianism and holds that ethical thought is concerned with what informed, unforced agreements people could reach. Utilitarianism holds that ethical thought is concerned with welfare and its maximization. Each of these leaves considerable room for further refinement (for example, in the case of utilitarianism, by leaving open whether it is individual acts or rules or practices or institutions that are to be assessed in terms of the maximization of welfare, and indeed what counts as welfare). The versions of contractualism and utilitarianism on which Williams focuses are those of Rawls and Hare, respectively, these being particularly clear and powerful versions and, as such, ideal non-strawman targets at which to direct his disquiet about both styles of theory.

Chapter 6: Theory and prejudice Let us return to the very idea of an ethical theory. As I have already indicated, this is one of Williams’ principal targets in the book. What kind of authority can such a theory have? To what must it be answerable? In the first instance, it must be answerable to intuitions that we have (for instance, about what it would or would not be acceptable to do in various situations). This is not to deny that an ethical theory can eventually be used to criticize and replace some of our intuitions. Indeed, one of the roles that such a theory will be expected to play is precisely that of eliminating conflict between our intuitions, using some of them to overturn others. The point, however, is that no ethical theory can play this rôle except by imposing some coherent, manageable structure on to our intuitions that preserves as many of them as possible. No ethical theory can play this rôle except in this way. There are other less systematic ways of eliminating conflict between our intuitions. For example, we can simply exercise our judgment about each particular conflict as it arises. Ethical theories can claim no special authority simply by virtue of their capacity to eliminate conflict. From where, then, does their supposed authority derive? In large part, from what Williams calls “a rationalistic conception of rationality” (page 18). This is an application to personal deliberation of an ideal of public life, whereby “in principle every decision … [is] based on grounds that can be discursively explained” (page 18)—an ideal that is not realized when we reach a decision by simply exercising our judgment in some particular case. But why should we grant the application of this ideal to personal deliberation? Does it not encourage us to look for an orderliness, a systematicity, and an economy of ideas that are quite unsuited to the complexities of real-life personal deliberation? And anyway, what does the ideal add to the intuitions themselves? As ­Williams memorably insists elsewhere, “‘You can’t kill that, it’s a child’ is more convincing as a reason than any reason which might be advanced for its being a reason” (Williams 1981b: 81; cf. pages 113–4).

Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy  17 To be sure, it is important for us to reflect on our intuitions. And if we do, we may expose some of them as irrational prejudices, but irrational inasmuch as they are based on self-deception or social deceit, say, not inasmuch as they conflict with some ethical theory that we have constructed. It is not a requirement on reflection that it issue in any kind of theory. Nor, for that matter, should we attach special weight, among our ethical views, to those that are the product of reflection. Utilitarians, notoriously, do attach special weight to those of our ethical views that are the product of reflection; notoriously, because it is both a familiar and an objectionable feature of their theory that it promotes disharmony between those of our ethical views that are the product of reflection and those that are not. (In its less objectionable form, the contrast is between different views that we have at different times: in the “cool hour” of reflection and in the heat of the moment. In its more objectionable form, the contrast is between different views that different groups among us have: the reflective élite and the rest. The latter is what Williams calls “Government House utilitarianism” (page 108).) Utilitarianism has this feature because the intuitions in favor of it, which its advocates see as the product of enlightened reflection, themselves provide a reason to preserve and encourage non-utilitarian thinking at the unreflective level: this is because people are more likely to maximize welfare at that level by trying to do something other than maximize welfare. By the end of Chapter 6, the idea of an ethical theory has more or less withered in the glare of Williams’ general skepticism about philosophical ethics, “a scepticism,” as he comments dryly on page 74, “that is more about philosophy than it is about ethics.”

Chapter 7: The linguistic turn There are some large issues in moral philosophy concerning the metaphysics of value. Is there, for instance, some fundamental distinction between fact and value, between the way things are irrespective of what we think about them and the evaluations that we project on to the way things are? So far, these issues have been in the background. In Chapters 7–9, Williams brings them to the fore. His concern in Chapter 7 is to see what insight can be gained into these issues using the principal methodological tool of analytical philosophy: the analysis of language. Many people believe that there is a distinction to be drawn between evaluative words, such as “heinous,” “supererogatory,” “reprehensible,” and “good,” and non-evaluative words, such as “sulfuric,” “octogenarian,” “waterproof,” and “blonde,” and that it is impossible to define any word of the former kind using only words of the latter kind. The name “naturalistic fallacy,” which was coined by Moore (1903: §10), is often used for the misguided attempt to do this impossible thing.4 Provided that there is indeed such a distinction to be drawn, then we might reasonably expect to gain a great deal of insight into the metaphysics of value by attending to the different ways in which words of the two kinds are used.

18  A.W. Moore In fact, however, Williams thinks that this is back to front. He thinks that, in so far as we have any idea what we are supposed to be attending to, indeed in so far as there is any such linguistic distinction to be drawn, this is due to some insight that we are already able to bring to bear on language concerning the metaphysical distinction between fact and value. “In so far as” is in any case the operative phrase. For although Williams himself acknowledges a distinction of sorts between fact and value, it is a very subtle distinction and one that he thinks is not at all well reflected in our language. He thinks that, on the contrary, our language does much to hide it from us, and to foster various illusions about the metaphysics of value (and about the nature of ethics more generally). What we actually find in language are hundreds upon hundreds of “hybrid” words, such as “chaste,” “unfaithful,” “brutal,” and “proud.” These are words that stand for what Williams calls “thick” ethical concepts. The notion of a thick ethical concept is an extremely important one for Williams. It is also one of his most significant legacies. What a thick ethical concept is is a concept that has both an evaluative aspect, in that to apply it in a given situation is, in part, to evaluate the situation, and a factual aspect, in that to apply it in a given situation is to make a judgment which is subject to correction if the situation turns out not to be a certain way. Thus, if I claim that you have been unfaithful, I thereby censure you, but I also say something straightforwardly false if it turns out that you have not in fact gone back on any relevant agreement. Nor is the concept of infidelity just a value-free concept with a flag of disapproval attached. Williams, in opposition to many who have considered these concepts, argues vigorously that fact and value are inextricably intertwined in them. This is one reason why the language in which they are couched gives such a poor indication of the underlying metaphysics. The analysis of language is of very limited use in moral philosophy, then. Nevertheless, it is of some use. It can serve to remind us that our ethical life, just like our ethical language, is a complex multifarious social phenomenon, which varies from one time to another and from one group to another; and that ethical understanding, which needs to account for such variation, also thereby “needs a dimension of social explanation” (page 131).

Chapter 8: Knowledge, science, and convergence Chapter 8 is the heart of the book. It is in this chapter that Williams directly confronts these issues about the metaphysics of value (the issues flagged at the beginning of the previous section). These issues are also issues, in some sense, about the objectivity of our ethical thinking, and it is in these terms that Williams broaches them. He thinks that there is a kind of objectivity which, on any realistic view of the matter, fails to attach to our ethical thinking, even though it does attach to our thinking in other areas. (This connects with my earlier claim that he acknowledges a distinction of sorts between fact and value.) The question is: what kind of objectivity?

Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy  19 The word “objectivity” is used in a bewildering variety of ways. But on any construal, objectivity has something to do with agreement. To say that there is a kind of objectivity which does or does not attach to our thinking in a given area is to say something about the prospect of our reaching principled agreement in that area, or, as Williams puts it, of our converging in our beliefs in that area. Very well, then; what exactly is it that Williams is prepared to say about the prospect of our converging in some of our beliefs which he is not prepared to say about the prospect of our converging in our ethical beliefs? This turns out to be a surprisingly delicate question. Williams’ position is not that we can reasonably expect to converge in some of our beliefs but cannot reasonably expect to do so in our ethical beliefs. Still less is it that we actually do converge in some of our beliefs but never do so in our ethical beliefs. Nor does it have to do with whether, where there is convergence, the beliefs in question merit the title of “knowledge” or not. It has to do with the different ways of explaining whatever convergence there is. The fundamental contrast is between science and ethics. Williams’ position is as follows. We do sometimes converge in our ethical beliefs, and those beliefs do sometimes merit the title of “knowledge.” This can happen when the beliefs in question involve a thick ethical concept. Thus, people who use the concept of chastity might have no difficulty in agreeing, and indeed in knowing, whether a certain act is chaste. The crux, however, lies in what is involved in their using the concept of chastity in the first place. Granted the concept’s distinctive combination of evaluation and factuality, using it is part of living in a particular social world, a world in which certain things are prized and others abhorred. People need to live in some such social world. But, as history amply demonstrates, there is no one such social world in which people need to live. They certainly do not need to live in a world that sustains the concept of chastity. Thus, any good reflective explanation for why people converge in their beliefs about what is chaste must include an explanation for why they use the concept of chastity at all; why they live in that social world. (This is the “dimension of social explanation” to which Williams refers at the end of Chapter 7.) This explanation cannot itself invoke the concept of chastity because it must be from a vantage point of reflection outside the social world in question. So, it cannot directly vindicate their beliefs. (That is, it cannot conform to the schema: “These people converge in their beliefs about x because they are suitably sensitive to truths about x.” It cannot represent them as agreeing about what is chaste because of insights that they have into what is chaste.) By contrast, a good reflective explanation for why people converge in their beliefs about a particular range of scientific issues, say in their beliefs about what oxygen is like, can invoke the very concepts at work in the beliefs, and hence, provided that the beliefs have been arrived at properly, can vindicate them. (It can conform to the schema specified above. It can represent these people as agreeing about what oxygen is like because of insights that they have achieved into what oxygen is like—because of what they have discovered about oxygen.) One consequence of this position is that whatever ethical knowledge people have they have by unwaveringly and unguardedly exercising their thick

20  A.W. Moore ethical concepts. There is no ethical knowledge to be had by reflecting on whether it is “right” to use those concepts or not. This is why Williams presents his argument for the existence of ethical knowledge by invoking the fiction of a “hypertraditional” society, a society that is “maximally homogeneous and minimally given to reflection” (page 142). It is there, for Williams, that the clearest examples of ethical knowledge are to be found. But Williams goes further. He argues that in a society such as our own, where there is plenty of reflection, the reflection can have an unsettling effect. People can come to abandon some of their thick ethical concepts, say because they realize that those concepts are associated with false beliefs, or simply because they become aware of alternatives. That makes it impossible for them to retain whatever knowledge they had by exercising the concepts. It is thus that Williams comes to draw one of the most striking and most controversial conclusions in the book: “the notably un-Socratic conclusion,” as he calls it, “that, in ethics, reflection can destroy knowledge” (page 148, his emphasis). This conclusion is “un-Socratic” because Socrates, whose reflective question initiated this whole enquiry and who insisted that a life without reflection— an “unexamined” life—was not worth living, believed that “nothing unreflective could be knowledge in the first place” (page 168). I shall return to the idea that reflection can destroy knowledge in the final section.

Chapter 9: Relativism and reflection The contrast between science and ethics that Williams explores in Chapter 8 leads him to say that “science has some chance of being more or less what it seems, a systematized theoretical account of how the world really is, while ethical thought has no chance of being everything it seems” (page 135). In particular, ethical thought “can never fully manifest the fact that it rests in human dispositions” (pages 199–200). I have already referred to the hope which Williams expresses, in the postscript to the book, that our ethical experience may stand up to any self-understanding that exposes it as other than it seems. In Chapter 9, Williams addresses the question of how, given the onslaught of Chapter 8, it can do this. What we need, he says, is confidence. This is a social phenomenon. Although it is individuals who possess confidence, their confidence is typically fostered and reinforced by such social devices as upbringing, the support of institutions, and public discourse. (What does not much help it, Williams insists—developing one of his main themes—is philosophy. On the contrary, philosophy helps to create the need for it.) Confidence enables individuals to abide by their thick ethical concepts despite the unsettling effects of reflection. It is a good thing. But it is not a supremely good thing. Some ways of achieving it, for example by suppressing rational argument, involve undue sacrifice of other things that are good, and they are to be resisted. Another question that Williams addresses in Chapter 9 is what form of relativism his conception entails, if any. (By “his conception,” I mean

Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy  21 his conception of different social worlds sustaining different thick ethical c­ oncepts—in some cases, irreconcilably different thick ethical concepts.) It certainly does not entail the crudest form of relativism, whereby we should “be equally well disposed to everyone else’s ethical beliefs” (page 159). There is nothing in his conception to stop us from finding some people’s ethical beliefs abhorrent and, where those beliefs impinge on us, trying to combat them. How can there be? It is, as Williams points out, “seriously confused” to think that a relativism about ethical beliefs can issue in “a nonrelativistic morality of universal toleration” (page 159). Even so, Williams’ conception, by drawing our attention to the striking differences between our own ethical outlook and the ethical outlooks of other societies, is bound to leave us dissatisfied with the blank thought, “We are right, and everyone else is wrong.” So does it not entail some form of relativism? Strictly speaking, Williams thinks, it does not. That is, it does not preclude the blank thought, “We are right, and everyone else is wrong.” Nevertheless, having made that blank thought look very unattractive, it does leave room for some form of relativism, some way of going beyond the blank thought. It is in this connection that Williams introduces what he calls “the relativism of distance” (page 162). This is the view that only when a society is sufficiently “close” to ours, which is to say, roughly, only when it is a real option for us to adopt the ethical outlook of that society, is there any question of appraising its ethical outlook (as “right,” “wrong,” “unjust,” or whatever). The relativism for which Williams thinks his conception leaves room is a qualified version of this—“qualified” because he does not deny that some appraisal of the ethical outlooks of distant societies is allowed and may even, in the specific case of appraisal with respect to justice, be required. Such a qualified relativism of distance may look pretty attenuated. But again there is “the” contrast with science. A scientific outlook, however distant the society to which it belongs, must always be considered either right or wrong.

Chapter 10: Morality, the peculiar institution Chapter 10 is something of an addendum to the rest of the book. In the section on Chapter 1 above, I talked about Williams’ antipathy to the particular style of ethical thought that he calls “morality.” It is in Chapter 10 that he explains what morality is, “and why we would be better off without it” (page 174). I shall not rehearse what I have already said about this. Two points are worth adding briefly. First, despite Williams’ opposition to the idea of a moral obligation, he does not oppose all ideas of obligation. He readily admits that, to live in society with one another, we need to have certain basic and more or less categorical expectations (such as the expectation that we shall not be lied to, and the expectation that we shall not be killed), and that one way in which an ethical life can help here is by instilling in people dispositions to treat the corresponding requirements (in these two cases, the requirement not to lie, and the requirement not to kill) as obligations.

22  A.W. Moore Someone under such an obligation may conclude that he or she absolutely cannot, or absolutely must, do a certain thing. But, Williams insists, this type of conclusion is not, contra morality, peculiar to ethics. Someone may reach the same type of conclusion “for reasons of prudence, self-protection, aesthetic or artistic concern, or sheer self-assertion” (page 188). The second point is that Williams gives a very persuasive diagnosis for the appeal of morality. It expresses “the ideal that human existence can be ultimately just” (page 195). It does this by casting the personal quality that matters more than any other, namely being moral, as beyond all luck, in contrast to being happy or being gifted or being loved, say. But this is precisely where Williams takes greatest exception to morality. “The idea of a value that lies beyond all luck is,” he insists, “an illusion” (page 196). It is the idea of a value that lies “beyond any empirical determination”; a value that lies “not only in trying rather than succeeding, since success depends partly on luck, but in a kind of trying that lies beyond the level at which the capacity to try can itself be a matter of luck” (page 195). There is, for Williams, no such place for it to lie. In the concluding sentence of the chapter, he castigates morality as “a deeply rooted and still powerful misconception of life” (page 196).

Conclusion Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy is a wonderful book. To some readers, it may appear unduly negative. Too much of it, they may say, consists of attacks on other people’s attempts to achieve things in moral philosophy: for instance, on Aristotle’s and Kant’s attempts to justify ethical considerations from an Archimedean point, on the attempts of those with theoretical aspirations to justify ethical considerations from something other than an Archimedean point, on the attempts of analytical philosophers to gain insights into the metaphysics of value through the analysis of language, and on the attempts of moralists to secure some ultimate justice in our lives. But, even granted that the bulk of the book is negative in this way, there is something positive, indeed courageous, about the very project of coming to terms with all these attacks.5 As far as the positive element in the book is concerned, the discussion of confidence in Chapter 9, along with the account of ethical knowledge in which that discussion is embedded, is one of its most significant moments, and I shall close by trying briefly to allay some worries about this account. For there are many critics of the book who wonder whether what Williams says about ethical knowledge even makes sense. What has concerned them most is his claim that ethical knowledge can be destroyed by reflection. Williams intends this claim in such a way that those whose knowledge has been destroyed can, in reflecting, still recognize their former knowledge as knowledge. This looks incoherent. How can they recognize their former knowledge as knowledge unless they still know what they knew at the time? To make sense of Williams’ claim, it helps, I think, to invoke the notion of a point of view. Ethical knowledge is knowledge that involves some thick

Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy  23 ethical concept, and is ipso facto from some point of view, an ethical point of view defined, in part, by the beliefs and evaluations that give the thick ethical concept its point. (Scientific knowledge, by contrast, is, or at least may be, from no point of view. Inasmuch as it is, it can help to constitute what Williams famously calls an “absolute conception” of reality (page 111)—an idea that he first developed in his book on Descartes (Williams 1978: 64–8).) Ethical knowledge is by no means the only knowledge that is from some point of view. Tensed knowledge—knowledge about what was the case, or about what is the case, or about what will be the case—is another obvious example. In the case of tensed knowledge, the point of view in question is a temporal one, rather than an ethical one. Now, we no longer occupy temporal points of view that we once did. So, we are no longer in a position to know some of what we once knew from those points of view. For example, we are no longer in a position to know what we knew when we claimed, pre-1969, “No-one has ever walked on the moon.” (Admittedly, there are issues here concerning the individuation of knowledge. For of course we are in a position to know that no-one had then ever walked on the moon. But I think that there are ways of addressing these issues which leave us free to distinguish between what we know now and what we knew then, and which vindicate the claim that what we knew then we are no longer in a position to know.) This does not prevent us from reflecting on our former knowledge and still recognizing it as knowledge. Why, then, should there be any problem in the ethical case, where our no longer occupying an ethical point of view can likewise mean that we are no longer in a position to know what we knew from that point of view? To be sure, there are further questions concerning what warrant we have for saying that our former knowledge has been destroyed. It needs to be impossible for us, in the full light of reflection, to readopt the abandoned point of view (just as it is impossible for us, given the passage of time, to readopt a temporal point of view). Furthermore, it needs to be impossible in a suitably demanding sense of “impossible.” The mere psychological impossibility of our readopting the abandoned point of view would not suffice. To see how reflection can indeed create a suitably stringent impossibility here, consider the related case of someone who, after reflection, is afflicted by Cartesian doubts. Such a person may once have known perfectly well that there was a table in front of him but now find, after reflection, that he has no more than a shaken belief that there is a table in front of him, a belief which no longer counts as knowledge and which cannot, while he is reflecting, be converted back into knowledge. What sense of “cannot” is this? Certainly, there is a psychological impossibility in this case. But is there not more? Has the reflection not created a demand for justification that is unmeetable, with the result that no reflective state that he can now get into is properly to count as a state of knowledge? If it would not be absurd to say that it has—and I think it would not be—then neither would it be absurd to say that the impossibility in cases of the sort that Williams envisages is similarly constitutive.6 This would certainly make the impossibility strong enough for his purposes.

24  A.W. Moore Williams himself has much to say on these issues, of course (see especially pages 167–71). Suffice to conclude that, like everything else in this book, it withstands a good deal of reflection.7

Bibliography The works by Williams that are most closely related to Ethics and the L ­ imits of Philosophy are those to which I referred in the Introduction, namely, (Williams 1973a), his contribution to (Smart and Williams 1973), and (Williams 1993). Also relevant are the last six essays in (Williams 1973b); all but the last two essays in (Williams 1981a); all the essays in (Williams 1995a), especially those in Parts I and III; and (Williams 1996). There are many reviews of the book. The two most outstanding of these are Blackburn’s contribution to (Blackburn and Williams 1986), to which Williams replies in his contribution to the same; and (McDowell 1986). An excellent collection of essays on Williams’ moral philosophy, largely inspired by Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy, is (Altham and ­Harrison (eds) 1995). Within this collection, special mention should be made of (Hookway 1995) and (Jardine 1995), both of which are concerned with the distinctions that Williams draws between science and ethics; (­McDowell 1995), which is concerned with the project of founding ethics on pure reason; (Nussbaum 1995), which is concerned with Aristotle’s foundational project; (Taylor 1995), which is concerned with Williams’ treatment of “morality”; and (Altham 1995), which is concerned with the claim that reflection can destroy knowledge. There are replies to all of these in (­Williams 1995b). Another excellent collection which is largely inspired by Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy is (Harcourt (ed.) 2000). (Harcourt 2000), which is Harcourt’s own introduction to this collection, and (Fricker 2000), which further explores Williams’ notion of confidence, are particularly recommended. The collection also contains a fine piece by Williams (2000). A third excellent collection is (Heuer and Lang 2012). The many outstanding essays in this collection cover all aspects of Williams’ moral philosophy, including aspects that, although they inform Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy, are more prominent in other work of his. In particular, there is a whole section on Williams’ “internalism”—the view that a person cannot have any reason for doing anything that does not depend on his or her motives—and on the implications of this for use of the word “ought.” For a critical discussion of Williams’ conception of science, see (­Putnam 1992), chapter 5, “Bernard Williams and the Absolute Conception of the World.” For further discussion of the idea that reflection can destroy knowledge, see (Moore 2003), in which I develop the argument sketched in the Conclusion, and (Quinn 1993).

Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy  25

Notes 1 Although the contrast is helpful, the terminology is less so, and the reader needs to beware that many standard uses of the word “moral” and its cognates, which Williams himself appropriates, have more to do with what he dubs “ethics” than with what he dubs “morality.” The most blatant example of this is in the very phrase “moral philosophy.” Another example which we shall encounter shortly is the use of “amoral” to describe someone who is completely unmoved by ethical considerations. 2 This phrase is not meant to suggest that considerations of self-interest are ­always shallow: see the beginning of the next section. 3 See above, endnote 1. 4 But, as Williams says on page 121, “it is hard to think of any other widely used phrase in the history of philosophy that is such a spectacular misnomer.” For a “fallacy” is normally taken to be a mistake in inference, and a “naturalistic” view is normally taken to be a view “according to which ethics [is] to be understood in worldly terms, without reference to God or any transcendental authority” (page 121), but neither of these has much to do with the attempt to define evaluative words using only non-evaluative words. 5 This is related to the message conveyed in the poem by Stevens from which Williams quotes at the very beginning of the book. Stevens, in the extract that Williams cites, begins by heralding the “cold … vacancy/when the phantoms are gone and the shaken realist/first sees reality.” He then goes on to celebrate “the yes of the realist …, spoken because under every no/lay a passion for yes that has never been broken” (Stevens 1954: “Esthétique du Mal”). 6 It is worth considering in this connection Williams’ comment about the innocence in certain abandoned points of view: that it “cannot be recreated, since measures would have to be taken to stop people raising questions that are, by now, there to be raised” (page 164). 7 I am very grateful to Anita Avramides and John Shand for their comments on an earlier version of this essay. I am also very grateful to John Shand for permission to reprint this essay, which first appeared in Shand (2006), a volume originally published by Acumen and now published by Routledge.

References Altham, James E. J. (1995) “Reflection and Confidence”, in (Altham and Harrison (eds) 1995), pp. 156–169. Altham, James E. J. and Harrison, Ross (eds). (1995) World, Mind, and Ethics: Essays on the Ethical Philosophy of Bernard Williams, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Blackburn, Simon and Williams, Bernard. (1986) “Making Ends Meet: A ­D iscussion of Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy”, Philosophical Books, vol. 27, pp. 193–208. Fricker, Miranda. (2000) “Confidence and Irony”, in (Harcourt (ed.) 2000), pp. 87–112. Harcourt, Edward. (2000) “Introduction”, in (Harcourt (ed.) 2000), pp. 1–20. Harcourt, Edward (ed.). (2000) Morality, Reflection, and Ideology, Oxford: ­Oxford University Press. Heuer, Ulrike and Lang, Gerald (eds). (2012) Luck, Value, and Commitment: Themes from the Ethics of Bernard Williams, Oxford: Oxford University Press.

26  A.W. Moore Hookway, Christopher. (1995) “Fallibilism and Objectivity: Science and Ethics”, in (Altham and Harrison (eds) 1995). Jardine, Nicholas. (1995) “Science, Ethics, and Objectivity”, in (Altham and ­H arrison (eds) 1995), pp. 32–45. Kant, Immanuel. (1996) Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, trans. Mary J. Gregor in Immanuel Kant, Practical Philosophy, trans. and ed. Mary J. Gregor, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. McDowell, John. (1986) “Critical Notice of Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy”, Mind, vol. 95, pp. 377–86. McDowell, John. (1995) “Might There be External Reasons?”, in (Altham and Harrison (eds) 1995). Moore, Adrian W. (2003) “Williams on Ethics, Knowledge, and Reflection”, Philosophy, vol. 78, pp. 337–54. Moore, George E. (1903) Principia Ethica, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Nussbaum, Martha C. (1995) “Aristotle on Human Nature and the Foundations of Ethics” in (Altham and Harrison (eds) 1995), pp. 86–131. Plato. (1961) Republic, trans. Paul Shorey in Plato, The Collected Dialogues of Plato, eds Edith Hamilton and Huntington Cairns, Princeton: Princeton University Press. Putnam, Hilary. (1992) Renewing Philosophy, Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Quinn, Warren. (1993) “Reflection and the Loss of Moral Knowledge: Williams on Objectivity”, reprinted in his Morality and Action, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Shand, John (ed.). (2006) The Twentieth Century: Quine and After, Volume Five of Central Works of Philosophy, Chesham: Acumen. Smart, John J. C. and Williams, Bernard. (1973) Utilitarianism: For and Against, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Stevens, Wallace. (1954) The Collected Poems, London: Faber and Faber. Taylor, Charles. (1995) “A Most Peculiar Institution”, in (Altham and Harrison (eds) 1995), pp. 132–155. Williams, Bernard. (1973a; 2nd edition, 1993) Morality: An Introduction to Ethics, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Williams, Bernard. (1973b) Problems of the Self: Philosophical Papers 1956–1972, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Williams, Bernard. (1978) Descartes: The Project of Pure Enquiry, Harmondsworth: Penguin. Williams, Bernard. (1981a) Moral Luck: Philosophical Papers 1973–1980, ­C ambridge: Cambridge University Press. Williams, Bernard. (1981b) “Conflicts of Values”, reprinted in (Williams 1981a). Williams, Bernard. (1993) Shame and Necessity, Oxford: University of California Press. Williams, Bernard. (1995a) Making Sense of Humanity and Other Philosophical Papers 1982–1993, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Williams, Bernard. (1995b) “Replies”, in (Altham and Harrison (eds) 1995). Williams, Bernard. (1996) “Truth in Ethics”, in Brad Hooker (ed.), Truth in Ethics, Oxford: Basil Blackwell. Williams, Bernard. (2000) “Naturalism and Genealogy”, in (Harcourt (ed.) 2000). Williams, Bernard. (2002) Truth and Truthfulness: An Essay in Genealogy, ­P rinceton: Princeton University Press.

2 Lonely in Littlemore Confidence in Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy Simon Blackburn

Scots to the Rescue? For me, revisiting Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy (ELP) is like renewing acquaintance with an old and valued, slightly irritating and alarmingly clever friend. Doing so reminded me as well how much of my own work has consisted in positioning myself beside, or apart from that book—surely the richest, most intelligent, deepest, short work on moral philosophy published in the 20th century. I agree with Bernard on many major points: the close relation between philosophy and other humanities; the mistrust of the idea of analysis as the unique method for philosophy, a broad naturalism, and a pronounced scepticism about the idea of the one true theory in moral philosophy. I also find that I have published work centred on many of his themes: on the absolute conception and scientific objectivity, on direct and indirect versions of consequentialism, on moral luck, on thick concepts and their disentangling, on relativism, on dilemmas, and on internal and external reasons, sometimes defending him and sometimes disagreeing with him, or with what I perhaps mistakenly took him to be saying. Indeed, my main misgiving about attending this conference was that I would find nothing new coming to mind when I again revisited the work. But what a pleasure it was to do so: the speed, the sparkle, and the aphoristic wit are as enjoyable as ever. My pleasure is not however unalloyed, since when it first came out I wrote a brash and not altogether complimentary review of it in Philosophical Books, that I now feel a little guilty about, but even that is a reminder of one of Bernard’s salient virtues, since he never appeared to hold it against me. Anyhow, I was younger then. One of the criticisms I made was that Bernard had ignored the Humean tradition in moral philosophy, and that became the subject of a three-way symposium between him, me, and Alasdair Macintyre shortly after the book’s publication. Since the symposium took place in Notre Dame, I took a mischievous delight in saying that as far as I could see Bernard could comfortably join the Church of Hume, so I felt rather like Father Dominic Barberi must have done in 1845 travelling to Littlemore near Oxford, to wait patiently for the big prize fish John Henry Newman to finally come

28  Simon Blackburn over to Rome. Bernard replied, as he did in the original issue of Philosophical Books in response to my review, that by his lights Hume had a naïve Enlightenment confidence in a single human nature, which was no use to Bernard, in his explorations of the ways that different histories and cultures shape different ways of living and their associated mores and ethics. So his problem was that by being complacent about a single human nature, Hume was not modern enough. This may have been right as far as it went, but I am still not happy that it went very far, even apart from the obvious fact that Hume himself was fascinated by human diversity, and devotes the dialogue at the end of EPM as well as several essays to what he calls the ‘moral causes’ that underlie it—moral causes being exactly the kind of social and cultural environmental variations that interested Bernard. And I continue to think that there are elements in ELP that remain relatively weak, precisely because of a failure to engage with Hume and the Humean tradition. Consider, for instance, the following passage: I have referred for the most part to the “reactions” to others that are involved in having ethical dispositions. It is a conveniently broad and unrevealing term, and there is much to be said about the range of attitudes, both positive and negative, that may fall under this heading. It is surprising how little of it has been said by moral philosophy, at least in the English-speaking tradition. By far the most important reason for this is the domination of morality, which is disposed to class all the relevant—that is to say, “moral” reactions—under headings such as judgment, assessment, and approval or disapproval. This is misleading in several ways. First, all these notions suggest the position of a judge, and this is so even if they occur within a moral theory that does not encourage superiority. Moreover, they are supposedly directed only toward the voluntary: no one can properly attract moral judgment for what is not his fault. Because in this way it tries to cleave to an ultimate justice, morality does not merely provide a typology of reactions. It is not concerned simply with the question of what reactions are to be called moral. The justice that is the aim of morality reaches further than the question of what your reactions should be called, to the issue of what reactions you may justly have, so that it comes to demand first a voice, then supremacy, and at last ubiquity. The “nonmoral” reactions such as dislike or resentment or contempt, or such minor revelations of the ethical life as the sense that someone is creepy, are driven by a well-schooled moral conscience into a grumbling retreat, planning impersonation and revenge. This might be fair if we confine our attention to the 20th century of Ross, Prichard, or Ewing, and even if we take in Sidgwick or Mill. But, it is ­impossible to agree to it if we widen our gaze to include Hume or, especially,

Lonely in Littlemore  29 Adam Smith. Hume talks at least as often of love and esteem, admiration and sympathy as he does of judgement, assessment, approval, or disapproval, while Adam Smith’s book is almost entirely devoted to a dissection and classification of the different ways in which our various passions may harmonize or not with those of others, it being only in virtue of this harmony or dissonance that we can enter a judgement as the propriety of the feelings of another person. Both Hume and Smith are careful to distinguish the sentiments excited by grandeur and dignity, nobility of mind and spirit, from those due to more ordinarily agreeable and pleasurable traits. Smith also anticipated recent writers such as Stephen Darwall who emphasize the fundamental role of second-person, I-you, interactions in generating moral sentiments, it being the resentment of an injured party that is the engine of moral censure and blame in the first place, working by engendering indignation, which is the third-person emotion, whereby the impartial spectator sympathizes with personal resentment. Again, as Bernard acknowledged in his response to me, it is impossible to see Hume as signed up even to the idea that morality only concerns the voluntary: the fourth appendix of EPM points out that whether a quality of mind is useful or agreeable to ourselves or others has nothing to do with whether it is manifested only in ‘free’ acts of the will so that Hume vehemently denies the distinction between virtues and mere talents, concluding that the voluntary/involuntary distinction has no interesting part to play in our moral engagements with others. Hume may overplay his hand here, but it is the hand that he is playing.1 I talk about the feeling that someone is creepy later. Ignoring all this might, indeed, be a forgivable historical omission on Bernard’s part. But it becomes more than that when we notice that his only discussion of the sentimentalist tradition in moral thought concentrates on its emergence in the prescriptivism of R. M. Hare. Hare notoriously thought that the criterion of sincere acceptance of a ‘moral judgement’ was doing or intending to do what it prescribed one should do. Bernard was brisk in his dismissal, pointing out correctly that sincerely judging that a hotel is good is far from prescribing to oneself that one choose it: one might, for instance, suppose that good hotels are necessarily expensive, and therefore likely to be patronized by rich people whom one prefers to avoid. Calling a hotel good is, of course, a doubtful example of any kind of moral judgement, so he may be putting words into Hare’s mouth by choosing such an example. But let us waive that, supposing that Hare would have applied his theory to value judgements across the board, and that this is one of them. If we suppose that, then although the objection damages Hare, it clearly has no force at all against the wider class of sentimentalist theories. Attitudes such as liking, esteem, love, and admiration have no simple criterion in terms of choice and action, any more than beliefs do. It all depends what else is in the holistic mental mix. I may like someone, but wish to avoid them because their good company interferes with something else that I also like, or wish to do. People may love others, but want to hurt them.

30  Simon Blackburn I can admire someone without having any disposition to emulate them and so on. Whereas Hare cannot make comfortable room for akrasia, Hume, with his usual realism cheerfully recognizes that knowing that a course of action is forbidden can actually increase the desire to do it. Defending his subtle view that ‘opposition’ to a passion naturally inflames or increases it he infers: Hence we naturally desire what is forbid, and take a pleasure in performing actions, merely because they are unlawful. The notion of duty when opposite to the passions, is seldom able to overcome them; and when it fails of that effect, is apt rather to increase them, by producing an opposition in our motives and principles. (T, II, iii, iv, 5, p. 421) In short, once the wider class of direct and indirect passions is substituted for the anaemic ‘accepting a self-addressed imperative’ Bernard had little reason to avoid the expressivist or sentimentalist tradition. But he is quite candid about his dislike of metaethics, and his belief that it cannot be separated from first-order moral theory. Unlike John Henry Newman, he lived and died outside the one true church. Bernard had other good things to say about ‘the business of making rules’ which he rightly sees as being at the heart of the Kantian approach to morality. One is that this is hardly a business that one wants to pursue almost permanently, as the ‘morality system’ suggests we do. Prescribing is a particular activity, and typically involves an asymmetric relation of authority and power to whoever the prescription is addressed. A master can tell a student to open a window, but a student can hardly tell a master to do so, although he might wish that he would or prefer it that he would. Once more, the sentimentalist tradition only gains by the comparison. Liking and disliking, grading and evaluating, and desire and aversion do not require us to appropriate some special status for ourselves, and need issue in no direct expression. Arguably, they are features of our psychologies that are permanently on duty: just as perceptions select saliences, so waking experience grades and evaluates. At any rate likes and dislikes can and do go on quietly in the background. Furthermore, they are free of the taint of authoritarianism that Bernard saw as corrupting the ‘morality system’. They typically relate to things we do together. It is no accident that the greatest single triumph of the Humean story is the emergence of the social habits or institutions of convention, cooperation, and trust. It requires no act of command or authority to get such things going, and to sustain them, any more than it takes one to invent or sustain a language. So bringing in the Scottish tradition not only injects a welcome psychological realism but also opens a way to dispelling at least some of the scepticism that pervades ELP. It may be true that ethics has no chance of being everything it wants to be, if its aims are confined to discerning a single

Lonely in Littlemore  31 human teleology (as in the classical tradition), or discerning a single administrative cost-benefit structure (as in utilitarianism), or discerning the ­deliberations of a disembodied community of purely rational agents (as in Kant), and still less if one of its aims is to provide an argument proving to each person that they have overwhelming reason to behave well. But if it is comfortable with a historical and socially set budget of desires and aversions, transformed in naturally intelligible ways into generators of emotions such as resentment, indignation, anger, shame, or guilt, and by other naturally intelligible transformations into the creation of institutions of justice, property, and government, and by yet others translated into judgements and verdicts, then perhaps there is nothing wrong with it, and the lurking bogies of fiction, error, or illusion can be exorcised. It is true that the sentimentalist tradition promises nothing in the way of a moral theory as Bernard defines it: an account that ‘either implies a general test for the correctness of basic ethical beliefs and principles, or else implies that there cannot be such a test’ (p. 72). But then, it has no need of a theory, conceived in this sense as either a positive or a negative solution to a general decision procedure any more than, say, aesthetics does. Although one puzzling aspect of this definition is that Bernard’s own work, both in ELP and elsewhere, comes very close to implying that there cannot be such a test, and therefore by his own definition counts as actually giving a negative moral theory. Sentimental approaches likewise pull one strongly towards the same negative result, so Bernard cannot object to them on that ground.

Confidence regained I now want to turn, at last, to an issue that this paper was advertised as discussing, that of confidence. I have postponed doing so because I am not sure I have anything to say about it, beyond, perhaps trying to amass an assemblage of reminders. In ELP, the issue of confidence is entwined with the discussion of at least three other things: thick concepts, reflection or its absence, and the relativism of distance. There are many elements in Bernard’s thoughts about each of these that demand discussion, but I do not wish to go into them in the depth they no doubt deserve. I will simply sketch one or two reservations, but then go on to give a more positive characterization of how I see the issue of ethical confidence. My first reservation concerns the striking claim that reflection can destroy knowledge. In Bernard’s view, a totally, or at least maximally unreflective society, perhaps unconnected with the modern world, can deploy the thick terms of its folkways, and thereby voice genuine knowledge. But reflection can destroy that knowledge. The relationship Bernard had in mind was not the simple one that applies to any subject matter, whereby reflection can induce unease, and unease eats away certainty so that since knowledge (or at least claims to knowledge) imply a fair degree of certainty, reflection corrodes knowledge.

32  Simon Blackburn Yet if this is not the model, it is less clear what is. We may not like disentangling, and the simplest versions of it are certainly inadequate to what needs saying about many thick terms. But to be relevant at all thick terms have to couple together something on an input, or descriptive side, and something on an output, or practical side. And if reflection has destroyed that coupling, it is surely inappropriate to think that we used to know something that embodied it, whereas now we don’t. Much more naturally, we would think that we used to be blinkered or simplistic or simply wrong. As I pointed out in my review, an unreflecting society may be entirely ­comfortable with the judgement whose best translation is that some child or prisoner is ripe for sacrifice, or some young girl ready for FGM, but we are hardly likely to say that either judgement is true, and if reflection has enabled the unreflective society to cast off their blinkers, neither are they. Consider as a parallel an affect-laden perception. Suppose we just see someone as creepy, to take Bernard’s example of a reaction that ought to be in the moral lexicon. There is something weird about the way they look to us, and because of that, we are therefore a little mistrustful, suspicious, or uneasy in their company. But now suppose that further acquaintance dissolves this take on them: we start to see them instead as shy and nervous and a little gauche. We cannot after this conversion look back and think that there was something right about the way we took them before: something we once knew which we have now lost. On the contrary, we look back on our past selves with embarrassment rather than pride. And this is inevitable. As Adam Smith insists, ‘to approve of another man’s opinions is to adopt those opinions, and to adopt them is to approve of them’. 2 If your take on a person is dissonant with mine, I will think you are wrong, and the same is true if I now think differently from my past self. The same seems to me to be true if the conversion results from a social change rather than a purely personal change. If we now think that women have the right to the same educational opportunities as men, we cannot look back with satisfaction at a time when this was not thought, and suppose that in those undisturbed days people really knew, for instance, that a woman ought to be satisfied with a life of Kinder, Küche, Kirche. This is not to deny that someone such as a disenchanted feminist might feel nostalgia for a past time when things were simple, when reflection had not upset a placid stream of life that she might now regard with a kind of envy. If the affection is strong enough, she might think that we knew how to carry on then, but are lost now. She would be supposing that reflection—or more likely, other social and cultural changes—have led us up the wrong path. But she cannot think this while occupying the different state and holding the different views that the path has led us into. A man might look nostalgically at some imagined 1950s when children were politely deferential and women happy to stay at home and do the housework. He may regret all the consciousness raising that disturbed that happy world. But he, and we, can only describe that state as one in which

Lonely in Littlemore  33 children and women literally knew their place, if we also deny that there was any value or truth in the reflections that disturbed it, and we cannot say that while subscribing to the thoughts that define our altered state, notably the thought that women have the right to pursue lives that go beyond Kinder, Küche, Kirche. Bernard says, rightly, that there is no route back from reflection, and that ‘even if there have been contented hierarchies, any charm they have for us is going to rest on their having been innocent and not having understood their own nature. This cannot be recreated, since measures would have to be taken to stop people raising questions that are, by now, there to be raised’ (p. 164). This is well said, but the idea of reflection destroying knowledge then shrinks, becoming just the view that badly conducted reflections or mistaken and delusive reflections can destroy knowledge, which is scarcely surprising. They can do the same applied to any subject matter at all. Another issue about which I have less to say is that of the ‘relativism of distance’, a phrase that Bernard launched on the world in ELP, and that has had a flourishing life ever since. I am not entirely comfortable with it, since the discussion that introduced it seemed to me to associate two different things that might be said about our relation to the ‘others’, those whose ways are different. The first is whether it is a ‘live option’ for us to go over to the other side: that is, would it be possible practically for one to adopt this different form of life, in a way in which it would not be possible for us to live the life of a Bronze Age chieftain, or medieval samurai. The other question is whether, if this is not possible moral judgement simply lapses, giving way to the relativistic thought that this was how they did it, this is how we do it, and that’s all that is to be said. I do not think that the answer to the first question dictates an answer to the second. I do not think it is an option for us in the west to ‘adopt’ the way of life of a Somali herdsman, but neither do I think this silences our moral repulsion at the ubiquity of FGM in that society. I quite agree that distance makes the issue of blame inappropriate, but even if I do not blame any particular Somali for the historical and cultural forces that have led them to their awful practice, still, I think the practice is awful and can wish to change it by any means that the politics of the situation allows. I may not blame the Romans for their attachment to their bloody entertainments, any more than it would make sense for me to resent them for having been as they were. But I think less well of them because of it, and am certainly horrified at any signs of weakening in the cultural barriers that stop us from being like them. There is of course much more to say about the issue of blame, and Bernard was right to highlight its obscurity, in one of his subsequent papers. It has uneasy relations with free-will, and with the Kantian issue of whether purely by way of their rationality every agent has the capacity to be moved by anything that ought to move any agent. But one thing Peter Strawson surely showed us is that blame and resentment are not disposable add-ons, making a peculiar and parochial practice called ‘the morality system’, which we might

34  Simon Blackburn do well to be without. 3 Of course, punitive and moralistic standpoints on life can wax and wane, and on the whole it is pleasanter when they wane, but Strawson was surely right that we would not want them to disappear entirely. The issue of confidence is in one respect less troublesome for the sentimentalist tradition. Sentiments, passions, or other stances or ‘postures of the mind’ are not fundamentally assessed in terms of confidence. The way we feel about something can just be there, as it were: some things including actions and the traits of character that they manifest excite love and admiration or the reverse, and there is little if any sense in talking about whether we are confident in feeling as we do. Of course, this is only at a very basic level: we very quickly deploy a vocabulary of assessment, comparing our feelings with those of others, defending their degree and their direction, and worrying whether they fit with other dispositions of our minds, including other beliefs and other attitudes. But our spades are quite quickly turned, and at a fundamental level there would be little sense in asking whether we are ‘right’ to feel as we do about, say, happiness being better than misery, or malevolence being unlovable, or to search for yet deeper reasons for supposing that these reactions are the ‘right’ ones. When issues of confidence do come up there is a trap to avoid, and I am pleased that I signposted it back in 1986. If we think in terms of trying to justify a particular form of life against others, indeterminacies, pluralities of values, and hard and insoluble choices present insuperable obstacles. But if instead of pursuing the good, we think of avoiding the bad, things brighten up a little. African refugees may have only vague and indeterminate ideas of what to expect from the Europe they are desperate to enter, but they know perfectly well what they want to avoid. A form of life d ­ eserves confidence insofar as it does well in avoiding those things: insecurity, war, poverty, displacement, lawlessness, random violence, and misery, to name just a few. So the natural place to look, it seems to me, is to the comfort offered by the economical, natural, and vindicatory genealogies that can be offered to explain and justify many of our social practices. If initially you are inclined to think of property as theft, or of promises as hot air, the Humean genealogy of each stands in your way. It boosts our confidence that we don’t just happen to do those things, but that they are adaptive and that we would be poorer without them. Bernard’s silence about the justificatory power of such genealogies contrasts strongly with his attachment to Nietzschean genealogies that purport to do the reverse, showing that institutions or practices of which we might be proud have their feet in some rather nasty clay: slave moralities, ressentiment, and the like. But Bernard also talks admiringly of the Neurath’s boat image and its application to moral epistemology, and there is nothing in that image to support the idea that genealogy is in general one-sidedly destructive, or sceptical. We can often enough be proud, not embarrassed by the journey we seem to have

Lonely in Littlemore  35 taken: we have avoided a lot of the things that need to be avoided, even if others linger on, and yet others may one day await us. Finally, I want briefly to defend myself against a charge already touched upon as lurking in Bernard’s mind, which is that metaethics is boring when it is disengaged from first-order ethics, and apt to overreach itself when it promises results in that area. That may generally be true, and perhaps he would have found services in the church of Hume to be particularly boring. But one first-order leitmotif that can be heard throughout ELP, but especially at the end, is that of the peculiarity and the disposability of the ‘morality system’ and the desirability of avoiding it. Now, I think the Scotsmen I have mentioned had a sound and grounded and decent confidence in the core morality system: It requires but very little knowledge of human affairs to perceive, that a sense of morals is a principle inherent in the soul, and one of the most powerful that enters into the composition. But this sense must certainly acquire new force, when reflecting on itself, it approves of those principles, from whence it is derived, and finds nothing but what is great and good in its rise and origin. Those who resolve the sense of morals into original instincts of the human mind, may defend the cause of virtue with sufficient authority; but want the advantage, which those possess, who account for that sense by an extensive sympathy with mankind. According to their system, not only virtue must be approved of, but also the sense of virtue: And not only that sense, but also the principles, from whence it is derived. So that nothing is presented on any side, but what is laudable and good. (Hume, T, III, iii, vi, p. 619) And I think it is important not to lose that. I do not really believe that the world would become better if we all played Bernard’s tune. As I have already touched upon, moral emotions can be overdone. People carry insupportable burdens of guilt or shame, often quite unnecessarily. People also react moralistically when it is sympathy and understanding that are needed, not cheap moralizing. But I find it hard to look at the modern world, with its endemic inequalities, its endemic injustices, its pandemics of corruption, its lies and its lack of principle, and think that it suffers from too much morality. It is hard to see the Vladimir Putin, or the Donald Trump as bowed down by an overdeveloped sense of shame. The tree that Bernard wanted to uproot may need pruning and shaping, but I do not think we should uproot it, and we even need to look out for when it needs watering. And if Bernard’s work, which is after all a work of metaethics as much as it is a work of ethics, made people think otherwise, then he could hardly maintain that metaethics is irrelevant to practice, nor that a happier confidence in what we say and do cannot alter that practice, perhaps even for the better.

36  Simon Blackburn

Notes 1 There is one footnote on Hume in later work where Williams expresses unqualified admiration for Appendix 4 of EPM, saying that it remains an ‘indispensable text’ on the issue of whether moral and non-moral dispositions can be distinguished at all. Shame and Necessity, p. 198, footnote 41. 2 TMS, I.i.3.2, p. 17. 3 Peter Strawson ‘Freedom and Resentment’ first published in Proceedings of the British Academy 48, 1–25.

3 Hume’s optimism and Williams’s pessimism From “Science of Man” to genealogical critique Paul Russell I once had great admiration for Hume. Now I think that he suffered from a somewhat terminal degree of optimism. –Bernard Williams

Bernard Williams is widely recognized as belonging among the greatest and most influential moral philosophers of the 20th century – and arguably the greatest British moral philosopher of the late 20th century. His various contributions over a period of nearly half a century changed the course of the subject and challenged many of its deepest assumptions and prejudices. There are, nevertheless, a number of respects in which the interpretation of his work is neither easy nor straightforward. One reason for this is that both his views and his methods evolved and shifted in significant ways, especially around the time that he wrote and published Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy (i.e. the early 1980s).1 One way of gauging and assessing these changes in Williams’ views and outlook is to consider his relationship and attitude to other philosophers during this period. Of particular interest is his changing attitude to the moral philosophy of David Hume. This relationship is of considerable importance not only because it serves as a useful tool for the interpretation of Williams’ views but also because it provides us with some critical insight into the respective strengths and weaknesses of both Hume’s and Williams’ contributions.

The morality system and its modes Perhaps the most important and influential contribution that Williams made to ethics is his critique of “the morality system”. It is presented, most explicitly, in Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy (esp. Chp. 10), but it unites many, if not most, of the core features and issues that Williams pursues on this subject. The precise nature of the morality system, as W ­ illiams points out, is rather elusive and not easy to pin-down or summarize. ­Nevertheless, its essential features can be characterized. The key ­feature as Williams describes it is “a special notion of obligation” (Williams  1985a:  7–9, 193)

38  Paul Russell which serves to generate a “sharp boundary” between “moral” and “nonmoral” considerations, giving the former overriding weight that uniquely serve as “practical necessities” for the agent (Williams 1985a: 209, 218). This sense of obligation is intimately bound up with two other key ­concepts: voluntariness and blame. Moral obligations, grounded in reasons that are available to all – what Williams describes as “the universal constituency” (Williams 1985a: 16) – have a “stringency” that attracts blame when the agent violates these requirements or demands (Williams 1985a: 200). 2 With this conceptual apparatus in place, other key factors of the morality system that Williams rejects fall into line. This includes the “purity of ­morality”, which insulates it from any pollution of “emotional reactions or social ­influences” and, most importantly, the immunity of morality from the influence of luck, to satisfy its aspiration to “ultimate justice” (­Williams 1985a: 216–8). With these contents and requirements all in place, it is also crucial that moral obligations do not c­ ­onflict and fit into a coherent, harmonious scheme and hierarchy of ­reasons (Williams 1985a: 195; see also 59 and 77). One point that Williams emphasizes is that the morality system is not “the invention of philosophers” (Williams 1985a: 194). It is, on the contrary, “part of the outlook of almost all of us” (Williams 1985a: 194). At the same time, however, the morality system is intimately linked with a certain view about the aims and role of philosophy. In particular, “ethical theory” is constructed to provide a general test for the “correctness” of our basic ethical beliefs and principles – or to show that there cannot be such a test (Williams 1985a: 80, 103). The paradigmatic representative of the morality system is, of course, Kant but utilitarian theory is (at least) a “marginal member” (Williams 1985a: 197–8). Among the features of ethical theory that Williams specifically objects to are its propensity to reductionism and denial of diversity, and its simplifications and efforts to compress all our (diverse) ethical considerations and concepts into “one pattern” (Williams 1985a: 17–9, 95–6, 117, 129–30). All “theorizing” of this kind distorts, impoverishes and diminishes our understanding of the diversity and complexity of ethical life and the resources available to us for ethical reflection (Williams 1985a: 129–30). Williams is deeply sceptical about “philosophical ethics” conceived in these terms (Williams 1985a: 82–3, 87, 98–102, 123–6, 130–2). His point here is not that we cannot think in a reflective critical way in ethics but that “philosophizing can do little to determine how we should do so” (Williams 1985a: 83). A final feature of the morality system that needs highlighting is its aspiration for some view of human life and ethical life in particular that reveals humans to be “in harmony with their world” (Williams 1993: 164–5). It is this deep aspiration of the morality system that Williams identifies as particularly vulnerable to ethical reflection – a point he emphasizes throughout Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy and other writings (Williams 1985a:

Hume’s optimism and Williams’s pessimism  39 57, 59, 77, 123, 169–70, 181–7; see also Williams 1995a: 19 [“How free does the will need to be?”]; and Williams 1982: 29–30 [“Moral Luck”]). It is here that Williams, making common cause with Nietzsche, looks back to Greek tragedy as a more truthful and “realistic” account of our predicament. Crucially, however, it is not a more consoling or comforting picture. According to Williams’ analysis, we face a fundamental question whether or not we believe that somehow or other, in this life or in the next, morally if not materially, as individuals or as an historical collective, we shall be safe; or, if not safe, at least reassured that at some level of the world’s constitution there is something to be discovered that makes ultimate sense of our concerns. (Williams 1993: 164) The morality system is strongly oriented towards this optimistic assumption – however varied its modes and forms may be. Its proponents include the likes of Plato, Aristotle, Kant and Hegel. For Williams there is, of course, no turning back to the Greeks who opposed this outlook. Nor is there any need to suggest that “modernity is just a catastrophic mistake” or that “there has been no progress” (Williams 1993: 7, 11). Nevertheless, we share more with the Greeks than the dominant “progressivist” account suggests and to the extent that we diverge we have important things to learn from them – not the least, they may help us free ourselves from distortions and illusions encouraged by the morality system.

Hume and the morality system The above taxonomy of the morality system provides us with a schema for considering the Hume-Williams relationship and, more specifically, for assessing where Hume stands in relation to the morality system itself. Although the elements are diverse, there are three core aspects that we might separate out: 1 “The Blame system” (Williams 1985a: 216), 2 Ethical theory, 3 Optimism and the aspiration to “harmony” and “good news” (Williams 2007: 49 [“Women of Trachis”]). Each element listed above deserves careful and detailed analysis, and this requires sifting through the complexities of Hume’s system. For now, however, it will suffice to provide a more rapid overview. In each of the above dimensions, the relationship between Hume and Williams is, I suggest, complex enough that it resists any simple “close”/“distant” dichotomy. There is, however, a useful contrasting pair of assessments on this

40  Paul Russell topic in the form of an exchange between Lorenzo Greco and Paul Sagar, both of whom have some illuminating observations to make (Greco 2007; Sagar 2013). Greco argues that Williams’ ethics “is close to the Humean project of developing and defending an ethics based on sentiments which has its main basis in the virtues” (Greco 2007: 312). Although Greco does make reference to “the anti-theoretical spirit” of Williams’ ethics, the Humean elements that he is most concerned with relate to “the blame system”. This account places particular emphasis on Williams’ criticisms of a Kantian conception of morality and the way in which he and Hume “converge on many important points” in this regard (Greco 2007: 313). Rather than basing morality on rational foundations, what Hume and Williams share, according to Greco, is the view “that ethics has to do with individuals whose human nature is basically specified by being essentially sentimental rather than rational” (Greco 2007: 315). In this way, Greco draws out various features of Williams’ moral psychology that have obvious Humean sources. We find, for example, that Williams influential views about practical reason are broadly Humean (Williams 1982: Chp. 8 [“Internal and External Reasons”]) and that his concern with virtues and vices rather than commands and obligations is also broadly Humean (Greco 2007: 318–9). Another example that Greco mentions are the similarities between Hume and Williams on the issue of free will and moral luck. Both of them, Greco argues, reject the central role of voluntariness that morality insists on and are committed to a view of moral responsibility that is not narrowly focused on intentional action (Greco 2007: 321). 3 Having reviewed these and other common elements in their ethical systems, Greco concludes that “Hume and Williams develop ethical reflections which definitely have more in common than is normally believed” (Greco 2007: 325). This is a conclusion which is entirely consistent with Williams’ own remark that he “once had a great admiration for Hume” (Williams 1999: 256). The problem for Greco’s general hypothesis that there exists a “close” relationship between Hume and Williams on the subject of ethics is that in the same 1998 interview, in the same passage, Williams goes on to say that he now thinks that Hume “suffered from a somewhat terminal degree of optimism”. This remark certainly suggests that there is some “distance” between Hume and Williams – whatever early influence Hume may have had on Williams. It is Paul Sagar’s concern to identify what this distance or distancing involved. According to Sagar, although the parallels between Hume and Williams that Greco cites exist, “they mask profound differences” (Sagar 2013: 2). Williams’ work following his early contribution on “internal reasons”, Sagar maintains, “constitutes a profound shift away from Hume’s ethical outlook” (Sagar 2013: 1). The Hume-Williams contrast reflects much the same contrast we find between Hume and Nietzsche, with (the later) ­Williams coming down decisively on the side of Nietzsche. Both Hume and

Hume’s optimism and Williams’s pessimism  41 Nietzsche attempt to provide naturalistic explanations which may “destabilize certain human practices”: …. But Hume’s ethical thought maintains a crucial distance from Nietzsche’s. Whilst Hume’s Natural History of Religion shares structural features with Nietzsche’s later ‘genealogy’ critique of morality, the point is that Hume did not think morality vulnerable to the same critique of religion. Humean ethical practice could not be destabilized the way religion could, because living within ethics is a necessary part of fully realized human nature for Hume. Whereas we would actively be better off living without religion, this is not true, not even a coherent possibility, with regard to ethics…. (Sagar 2013: 22 – emphasis in original) The issue that Sagar is pointing to here concerns, in the first place, Hume’s emphasis on the uniformity of human nature and human sentiments (T: 3.2.8.8n/547n; 2.1.11.3/318; 3.3.1.7/575; also EM 9.7/273) as a basis for providing a naturalistic explanation of human ethical life. This is certainly one point on which Williams insists that he diverges from Hume. Whereas Hume seeks to emphasize the uniformity of human nature (and the significance of this for ethical life), it is Williams’ concern to emphasize the “diversity” and variation of our ethical concepts and practices (Williams 1986: 204, 206). Although Hume is an early practitioner of genealogy he is, Williams suggests, insufficiently “impressed by the problems raised by moral diversity”. These concerns about diversity and genealogy are rooted in a fundamental gap between the “inside” and the “outside” perspective – this being a gap that is forced upon us when we reflect upon diversity and ethical variation when we confront other cultures and radically different forms of ethical life (Williams 1985a: 57; also Chp. 9, esp. 177–8). From inside ­ethical life, it is not true “that the only things of value are people’s dispositions; still less that only the agent’s dispositions have value” (Williams 1985a: 58). The welfare of others, requirements of justice and other such things have value. However, from the alternative outside perspective, the “ultimate supports of ethical value” are people’s dispositions, and so there is a sense in which the ethical point of view depends on the existence of these dispositions. If the agent reflects from the outside point of view, in a way that abstracts from these dispositions, he is likely to find that “he cannot get an adequate picture of the value of anything, including his own dispositions” (Williams 1985a: 58). As Sagar puts it, in these circumstances “ethical vertigo threatens”, as the inside/outside gap encourages the thought that there is no validating or justifying foundation for our values (Sagar 2013: 8). After reflection, the view of our dispositions as the supporting basis of our values makes us aware that our ethical orientation is just one of many possibilities and may not secure a “harmony” of the various values and ends we may have (Williams 1985a: 59, 77–9, 129–30, 169–70).

42  Paul Russell Sagar is certainly correct that Williams believes that Hume is not sufficiently genealogically sensitive and that, like others following him, he is too confident that our natural explanations for ethical life, as rooted in human nature and sentiments, need not disturb us or radically alter ethical life and practice itself.4 Having said this, there are at least two respects in which Sagar misrepresents the relevance of the “gap” between inside/outside for understanding the Hume-Williams relationship. As Sagar presents it, Hume is substantially committed to the morality system (Sagar 2013: 20–4), as revealed by Hume’s tendency to be ethically conservative in the implications he draws from his sentimentalist theory. Although Sagar grants that Williams is “Humean” in respect of his “internal” theory of practical reason, Williams’ critique of the morality system goes well beyond anything that Hume endorses. This is not, however, an adequate account of Hume’s commitments, as Williams himself makes clear. Williams points out, for example, that Hume “resolutely” rejects what he [Williams] calls “morality” (Williams, 1986: 206) and that Hume shows “striking resistance” to its central tenets (Williams, 1985b: 20n12 [“How free does the will need to be?”]). What Williams is particularly impressed by – and that Sagar largely ­overlooks – is that the key elements of “the blame system” are firmly rejected by Hume. It is a mistake, therefore, by Williams’ own lights, to place Hume on the side of the morality system, in opposition to Nietzsche and Williams. Whatever the issue may be, it should not be characterized in this form. The other respect in which Sagar characterizes the contrast between Hume and Williams concerns Hume’s attitude to the inside/outside gap that Williams is focused on. According to Sagar, although Hume was aware of this distinction, he “chose not to adopt it himself” (Sagar 2013: 14). Hume is committed to the view that the “gap” is really an “illusion” – it is not so much that it can be “closed as that it never really existed” (Sagar 2013: 17–8). The inside perspective is the only perspective available to us and the only one that we need. The justificatory apparatus required for supporting ethical life comes from our “inside” resources, in which our happiness and well-being coincide with virtuous practice. Hume is undisturbed, on this view, by the outside perspective and experiences none of the “vertigo” or conflict that troubles Williams. While it may well be true that Hume appears to be less troubled or disturbed by the “gap” than Williams is, it is not obvious that Hume dismisses concerns of this nature as wholly illusory. After all, Hume is well aware that there are many philosophers who seek to ground moral distinctions, in some way or other, in “the fabric of the world” – independently of our contingent, variable human sentiments. 5 It is a major sceptical concern of Hume’s to show that these ambitions are neither credible nor necessary for ethical life (see, e.g., T, 3.1.1–2; EM, 1, 9, App. 1).6 He is, nevertheless, also well aware of the disturbing and disconcerting effects of sceptical reflections of this kind – in ethics and beyond. While Hume gives expression to these observations in more dramatic form when discussing the impact

Hume’s optimism and Williams’s pessimism  43 of scepticism with regard to human understanding, it is evident that the threat of “despair” and “melancholy” may extend to sceptical reflections concerning the foundations of ethics (T, 1.4.7; see also T, 3.1.1.16; EM, 1.2, 5.3, 5.39, 9.5–9). Hume believes that it is possible to contain and control responses of this kind, but it is still a challenge that has to be met, not just dismissed as illusory. One of the challenges that has to be met is to establish that the position taken is not a sceptical position about ethics itself – a charge that was raised against Hume from the beginning.7 Hume labours hard to make clear that he is not a sceptic, so considered, but he is entirely aware that both his sentimentalism and his conventional theory of justice may be construed this way and will be found unsatisfactory and unconvincing by all those who seek groundings in something external and independent of our (pre-existing) ethical dispositions – as encouraged by the “outside” perspective. What Hume does believe is that his naturalism, and the realistic psychology it relies on, is adequate to the task of fending off the sort of nihilistic vertigo that is generated by the aspiration to root our ethical concepts and practices in “the fabric of the world”. On Hume’s account, human nature provides resources that are more than sufficient to resist any fundamentally destabilizing or eroding influence generated by the “outside” view. The key elements of this are sympathy and the mechanisms of the indirect passions, both of which serve to ensure that we remain engaged and ­motivated by ethical considerations. These are, moreover, aspects of Hume’s ethical system that Williams singles out for praise and draws from himself (­Williams 1972: 26, 82; Williams 1986: 206; Williams 1995b: 205, 222n18). ­Williams has no objection to appealing to the resources of a realistic moral psychology, something that “ethical theory” and the morality system are both generally resistant to. The difficulty from Williams’ point of view is that the materials Hume is working with are inadequate to their task – which is to close the “gap” and insulate us from the sort of pessimistic attitudes which the outside view is liable to encourage.

Optimism, convergence and consolation: where Hume and Williams diverge While Sagar’s analysis points us in the right direction, which is to see that Williams wants to distance himself from Hume in some crucial respects, we still require a more refined picture of what this comes to and what conclusions we should draw about the Hume-Williams relationship in light of it. Williams makes clear that what concerns him most about the limits of Hume’s analysis – and renders him an “insufficiently modern” thinker – is that Hume underestimates the importance of ethical and cultural diversity and overestimates the uniformity of the general sentiments of humankind (Williams 1986: 206). This conceals from Hume the limits of his ability to deal with the “gap” issue that is Williams’ primary concern.  Where

44  Paul Russell Hume fails to address the challenge we face here is not with regard to any ­continued commitment to key elements of the morality system but in his excessive confidence that an “optimistic” outlook can be retained even when these ­elements of the morality system are discarded. This is a failure that ­Williams believes carries on in the contemporary “Humean tradition” – and that separates that tradition from Nietzsche and Williams. There are two dimensions to Hume’s ethical outlook that Williams may well view as expressive of an implausible “terminal optimism”. The first concerns our ability to secure mutual understanding and agreement about ethical matters on the basis of our shared human nature. Although Hume is certainly aware of ethical variation and diversity he believes that underneath this, we are still able to converge on some shared moral “standard” (T, 3.3.1.13–18/581–4; 3.3.3.3/602–3; EM, 5.42/228–9; 9.5/272; App. I, 9–10/288–9).8 This moral standard is, however, a weak standard. It provides no “test” for moral right or wrong, nor does it suggest any (unique) life plan. Most importantly, this moral standard or “general point of view” is entirely consistent with ethical dilemmas and conflicts persisting among our various competing ethical concerns and interests. Such conflicts and dilemmas are not always, in principle, resolvable from this perspective. Hume is not a sceptic, where this is understood to involve denying that we can establish any shared moral standard, but he is a pluralist about the virtues and suggests no algorithm or rule by which conflicts and differences between them can be adjudicated.9 Nevertheless, despite these limitations of the moral standard, Hume is still confident that we have such a standard available to us such that we can handle ethical diversity and variation and reach some shared ethical point of view. It is this form of optimism that Williams is sceptical about and finds complacent. In making the claim that Hume “suffered from a somewhat terminal degree of optimism”, Williams may be understood as placing Hume on “the same side” as Plato, Aristotle, Kant and Hegel, of whom Williams says: … all believed in one way or another that the universe or history or the structure of human reason can, when properly understood, yield a pattern that makes sense of human life and human aspirations. (Williams 1993: 163; cp. Sagar 2013: 20–1) This is, as we have noted, a matter of the deepest importance for Williams’ critique of the morality system in all its dimensions. Although Williams, conspicuously, does not mention Hume in this context, a case may be made that Hume is playing on the side that Williams is batting against. In particular, Hume’s “science of ethics”, while it dispenses of many of the elements of the blame system, tries to retain the “optimism” that these discarded elements were intended to support. In this regard, Hume is in denial about how significant the losses are when we strip-away the morality system.10 The first casualty that Hume’s system fails to fully or adequately appreciate

Hume’s optimism and Williams’s pessimism  45 is our “confidence” after moral reflection (i.e. in light of the inside/outside gap). Faced with ethical diversity, and the modes of “confrontation” that this involves, we lose the (moral) knowledge that comes with belonging to a “hyper-traditional society” (Williams 1985a: Chp. 9; and see also 157–8, 164–7, 185–6). This is, as Williams puts it, our contemporary predicament after “the Fall” that is generated by “the growth of reflective consciousness” (Williams 1985a: 181; see also 167–70). In respect of these developments, Hume is not sufficiently “a modern thinker”. The root of Hume’s complacency – like those who follow him – is that he fails to appreciate that our shared human nature, although it demands a commitment to some form of ethical and social life, radically underdetermines what those options are (Williams 1985a: 59, 169–70).11 Once we recognize “that the agent’s perspective is only one of many that are equally compatible with human nature”, the agent’s particular ethical dispositions do not seem adequate to the task of maintaining “confidence” in our existing concepts and practices. Nor is this simply a point about “theory”. On the contrary, once we find ourselves in this reflective predicament, it has significant practical consequences and we have no reason to complacently assume that these observations “just leave everything where it was and not affect our ethical thought itself” (Williams 1985a: 177; also ­Williams 1986: 207). In all these respects, Hume is excessively conservative in respect of the implications he draws – or fails to draw – from his critique of the morality system and this reveals his own lingering commitment to a misplaced optimism. The second dimension of Hume’s ethical outlook that Williams plainly does not share is the supposition that there exists some more or less reliable connexion between virtue and happiness (Hume, T 3.3.6.8/620; EM, 9.10/276; also Hume ESY, 178 [“The Sceptic”]).12 This connection is, according to Hume, strong and steady enough to provide reflective support for our commitment to ethical life and practices. Sagar presents Hume in even more optimistic terms, which serves to put even more distance between Hume and Williams (Sagar 2013: 12, 15, 17–8). Any such picture of the human predicament is at odds with the more disturbing and troubling features that Williams emphasizes, drawing on Nietzsche and the Greeks. Even admirable ethical types may find themselves drawn into tragic conflicts and dilemmas or, more generally, subject to simple misfortune as this relates to other goods and interests, such as ill-health or melancholy. The aspiration of the morality system, with its Socratic roots, to assure the virtuous that they are not vulnerable to the play of fortune is an aim that Hume caters to. To the extent that Hume follows this path, it compromises his ethical outlook and it is less truthful than the sort of realism that Williams finds in the likes of Sophocles and Thucydides (Williams 1993: 163–4). The above analysis suggests that the “distance” that exists between Hume and Williams should not be understood in terms of Hume being

46  Paul Russell a proponent of the morality system but of Hume’s reluctance to abandon the optimistic aspirations of the morality system and provide some “good news” about the human predicament.13 Williams is well aware that Hume firmly rejects much of the morality system and the apparatus of the blame system which lies at its heart. He is also aware that Hume does not share the ambitions of “ethical theory” to provide some external or outside foundations or justifications for our existing ethical dispositions.14 Nevertheless, as Williams sees it, Hume is insufficiently impressed by ethical diversity and the limits of human nature – or philosophy – to dictate any particular form of ethical life. Much less adjudicate among them when they come into conflict. Related to this, Hume is too hopeful that ethical life, in its various forms, neatly and reliably integrates with human needs and interests of a broader kind. The world, as Williams finds it after “the Fall”, is a bleaker and less accommodating place for human beings seeking an answer to how they should live. The consolations that the morality system provided are simply no longer available to us. To the extent that we accept Williams’ (Nietzschean) critique, Hume’s system will be found wanting and there will be, as Sagar claims, some significant distance between Hume and Williams.

Distance without repudiation: further reflections and refinements If we accept the above account of the Hume-Williams relationship it suggests that as Williams’ thought matured he did, indeed, move away from Hume but this falls well short of Sagar’s claim that these developments in Williams’ thought “constitute a profound shift away from Hume’s ethical outlook” or reveal “profound differences”. These claims are too strong, as they tend to misrepresent and obscure the deep (and continuing) relevance and importance of Hume’s ethical outlook for the very problems that came to dominate Williams’s later work. In what follows, I want to make two further claims relating to the Hume-Williams relationship. The first concerns whether Williams is right in representing Hume as a “terminal optimist”. The second concerns how we should characterize the Hume-Williams relationship given the real and significant differences that do exist. With respect to the first matter, there are features of Hume’s outlook that do not fit neatly into any framework that presents him as systematically “optimistic” or entirely complacent about the significance of his own radical critique of the foundations of morals. Hume, for example, is plainly aware of the vagaries of the relationship between virtue and happiness and, indeed, emphasizes this point in several different contexts (see, e.g., ESY, 178 [“The Sceptic”]). Perhaps this “darker” side of Hume appears in the starkest form in his Dialogues, where Hume discusses the problem of evil. The miseries of human life are there described in some detail and it is clear that he is plainly sceptical of any metaphysical or moral

Hume’s optimism and Williams’s pessimism  47 outlook that pretends to secure “harmony” for human beings.15 Even if Hume does not endorse the more extreme (pessimistic) claims being made, he in no way endorses an easy or complacent optimism.16 Just as Hume’s optimism should not be overstated, neither should his emphasis on the uniformity of human nature. Williams’ remarks to the effect that Hume was insufficiently impressed by “moral diversity” are arguably ungenerous to Hume. Not only does Hume devote his final discussion in the second Enquiry to “A Dialogue” that takes up the issue of moral variation, he advances a genealogical account of the basis of justice that make clear that the conventions involved can and do vary a great deal (Hume, T, 3.2; EM, 3 and App.3). The ethical foundations of these conventional schemes are not arbitrary and arise and operate according to common principles and origins. They vary, nevertheless, radically and Hume proposes no rule or higher principle for deciding between them when they come into conflict. Moreover, much of what recommends any particular scheme, consistent with it being open to criticism and adjustment, is that it has been established through its own historical and cultural roots, something which provides a stability and authority that it would otherwise lack. All this is generally consistent with Williams’ own observation that human nature radically underdetermines ethical life and that particular historical and geographical contingencies serve to distinguish and separate the relevant concepts and practices involved. For this reason, it may be argued that Williams’ suggestion that Hume is too unconcerned about such matters is not entirely fair to Hume, given his considerable effort to address such concerns and considerations.17 In light of these considerations, it may also be argued that in important respects the differences between Hume and Williams on the optimist/ pessimist axis are more apparent than real and, to the extent that such differences can be found, it reflects their very different concerns, circumstances and aims. Briefly stated, Hume’s fundamental concern was to show that ethical life could be explained and accounted for in terms that did not require the apparatus of religious metaphysics and morals (Russell 2008, 2016). The aims and aspirations of the morality system are, of course, intimately rooted and connected with these theological commitments (as Williams makes clear: Williams 1985a: 217–8, 220; Williams 1993: 166). Hume’s core philosophical concerns involved trying to show how both philosophy and ethics could be freed of the corruptions and distortions encouraged by religion and theology. Hume was also clear that advances along these lines meant real, practical changes in the world. Discrediting religion and religious ethics would not “leave everything where it was”. There is, nevertheless, a pronounced tendency on Hume’s part to downplay the extent to which his philosophical critique of religion and religious ethics would disrupt and alter human life. What he was especially concerned to deny – contrary to what religious apologists maintained – was that secular ethics would encourage cynicism and nihilism.18 To defuse this general line

48  Paul Russell of criticism, Hume tends to emphasize the extent to which we can arrive at some shared moral standard rooted in a uniform human nature. This will suffice, he suggests, to avoid any ethical chaos or conflict generated by theological scepticism. In a similar vein, Hume tends to placate his (religious) critics by emphasizing the extent to which virtue and happiness coincide, in the hope of providing the sort of consolation that the religiously minded are seeking (e.g. via the doctrine of a future state). Historically speaking, these are intelligible concerns and positions for Hume to adopt and they do much to explain the “optimistic” features of his philosophy and what motivates them. These considerations also encourage us to view Hume’s “optimism” with some suspicion and to look for darker themes concealed behind this veneer. Williams is historically well “downstream” from Hume’s project of a “science of man”. His investigations begin, substantially, with materials that were provided by Hume. The Humean outlook, we may say, is the principal point of entry for the trajectory of Williams’ ethical thought. This includes his scepticism about the role of “ethical theory” in shoring-up the aims and objectives of the morality system. For Williams, however, this is not the endpoint, this is where we (moderns) must begin our own investigations. The problems we face are problems that Hume tends to suppress (given his own distinct concerns). Our reflections begin with the fact of moral diversity and fragmentation, as genealogical methods have made us aware that human nature underdetermines our ethical dispositions. To this extent, the very foundations of ethical life must be viewed as historically and culturally contingent, with no basis for privileged authority. It is these developments, as Williams sees it, that generate a crisis of ethical “confidence” and demand some response. While Williams’ ethical outlook has a Humean point of entry it exits with a Nietzsche set of reflections and concerns – and these do not encourage any easy optimism about our ethical predicament. It is, of course, important not to exaggerate the extent of Williams’ own pessimism. What we seek, on his account, is some basis for “bringing up children within the ethical world we inhabit” (Williams 1985a: 54, 58). What reflection – after “the Fall” – reveals is that the only adequate platform that can secure this project is one that is rooted to a “human point of view”, and has, as such, a particular, concrete historical and cultural location and identity (Williams 1985a: 123, 131–2). Williams retains some optimism that such ethical confidence can be achieved but it cannot be achieved either through the evasions of the morality system or through the illusory ambitions and methods of “ethical theory”. Nor should we try to collapse back into some reactionary retreat to “traditional societies” (Williams 1986: 206; cp. Williams 1985a: 181). These are the problems that Williams is addressing and whatever response to them may be available to us it is not one that offers comforting or “good news” about our

Hume’s optimism and Williams’s pessimism  49 predicament. It is at this point in these investigations that the contrast between Hume and Williams becomes sharper. Where does this leave us? Greco’s suggestion that we should see the Hume-Williams relationship as being “close” cannot, as Sagar suggests, be the whole truth. Having said this, we should not lurch to the opposite extreme and represent this relationship as ending on “profound differences” and involving “considerable distance” between these two philosophers. The reading that has been defended above suggests not only a more intermediate and qualified view but also a view that gives priority to the process through which Hume features in the evolution and development of Williams’ thought. It would be incorrect, among other things, to present Williams as in some way or other repudiating or rejecting his own early Humean origins and commitments. Humean commitments and origins persist in Williams’ philosophical outlook and they are not discarded. On the contrary, they serve as the relevant foundations for his later concerns and arguments. Williams does not reject them, nor does he come to regard Hume as a friend and ally of the morality system. The Nietzschean side of Williams, as it evolved and became increasingly pronounced in his later work, is a development from within the Humean tradition that gave shape and structure to much of Williams’ early thinking on this subject. The limitations of Hume’s thought, as Williams came to see it, were that despite overturning much of the morality system and the forms of “theorizing” that it encouraged, Hume remains too wedded to an unconvincing optimism about our ethical predicament – and fails to address the challenges that we now face in this respect. We may conclude by noting that there is, on this interpretation, a sense in which the Hume-Williams relationship mirrors the relationship between the early and later Williams. This is not a case of a thinker kicking away the ladder that he has climbed up on and dispensing with his earlier philosophical commitments. It is, rather, a case of coming to recognize the limitations and inadequacies of the earlier view and pressing on to confront the more disturbing and radical implications that they contain. To this extent, we may say that Williams unmasks the façade of optimism that the Humean outlook retains. As already explained, there is reason to suppose that Hume was not entirely unaware of these more disturbing implications and that he would not have denied them if pressed. Hume’s “terminal optimism”, although real, is in many respects superficial. If this is correct, then the distance between Hume and Williams is not as great as Williams took it to be. An early draft of this paper was read at a conference held in 2014 at The Oxford Research Centre in the Humanities (TORCH), Oxford University [“The Moral and Political Legacy of Bernard Williams”]. I am grateful to the audience on this occasion for their comments and discussion. I would also like to thank the editors of this collection for their encouragement and interest.

50  Paul Russell

Notes 1 The publication of Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy may be used to distinguish Williams’ earlier and later philosophy, although there was a period of transition from the late 1970s to the late 1980s that could itself be marked off as a “middle period.” 2 Related to this see Williams’ various remarks concerning “the citizens of the notional republic,” governed by its laws of reason (Williams 1985a: 70, 73, 114, 214). 3 On the Hume-Williams relationship as it concerns “the blame system” see Russell 2015: esp. 242–7. 4 In this respect, Williams’ outlook contrasts with J.L. Mackie’s. Mackie notes that for some the “denial of objective values can carry with it an extreme emotional reaction, a feeling that nothing matters at all, that life has lost its purpose” (Mackie 1977: 16–7, 34). He goes on to argue that denial of objectivity in this sense does not provide any “good reason for abandoning subjective concerns or for ceasing to want anything.” Williams is doubtful that we can insulate our subjective commitments from consciousness about their lack of objective foundations in the manner that Mackie supposes (Williams 1985b: 195–7). Williams also believes that Blackburn makes assumptions similar to Mackie’s and Hume’s. Our “understanding at a very general level of who we are and what we are doing” will, as Williams sees it, inevitably affect our deliberative reflections, as they are more intimately related than the separate realms model suggests (Williams, 1986: 206–7; cp. Blackburn 1986). 5 The quoted expression comes from Mackie 1977: 15. 6 Perhaps an especially important work in this regard is Hume’s essay “The Sceptic,” as well as his “Of the Standard of Taste.” Sagar discusses “The Sceptic” at some length and notes its considerable relevance to Williams’ concerns – but goes on to dismiss it as unrepresentative of Hume’s own views or problems (Sagar 2013: 12–4). 7 See, e.g., the charges levelled against Hume by one of his earliest critics in A Letter from a Gentleman (1745). 8 On this, see Russell 2013: esp. 97–104. 9 Although utility and sympathy serve as the basis for our moral standard, Hume does not endorse the suggestion of utilitarian theorists that conflicts should always be settled or decided with a view to maximizing utilitarian outcomes. As Hume sees it, this misrepresents the natural basis of the psychological operations at work and aspires to a form of quantifying and computing ethical problems that is illusory. 10 It is a mistake to suppose that Williams is wholly hostile to the mortality system, in an unqualified manner. On the contrary, there are important passages where Williams speaks with respect and admiration for the ideals or “morality” See, e.g., Williams 1985a: 217–8. 11 This is a long-standing view of Williams (see, e.g., Williams 1972: 76 – “While it is true….”). 12 On this, see Russell 1995: 154–60; Russell 2013: 103–4. 13 “Philosophy, and in particular moral philosophy, is still deeply attached to giving good news.” Williams 2007: 49 [“The Women of Trachis”]. 14 These ambitions drive ethical theory away from “the human point of view” to an increasingly “abstract” perspective leading eventually to “the absolute conception” as the idealized ethical point of view. It is a central theme in Williams’ work to discredit all such philosophical programs and “theorizing” as taking us in the wrong direction (Williams 1985a: 19, 77–8, 114–6, 123–6, 130–1). Although there are some aspects of Hume’s moral philosophy that are prone

Hume’s optimism and Williams’s pessimism  51

15

16

17 18

to these tendencies of “theory,” for the most part Hume is also resistant to them and aims to secure our understanding of ethical life grounded in a more concrete, realistic moral psychology. The flaw in Hume’s approach, as Williams understands it, is that he fails to recognize the extent to which “the human point of view” is highly variable and “local,” resulting an ethically fractured world that lacks “harmony.” In the context of the Dialogues, Hume expresses this bleak outlook in the voice of “Demea,” a theist who does not speak for Hume in any systematic way. Nevertheless, it is evident that Hume accepts much of Demea’s description of the human condition in this world and that (unlike Demea) he is sceptical of hopes for a better life in a future state. In assessing Hume as an Enlightenment thinker, we may contrast his outlook with that of Baron D’Holbach (also an atheist/irreligious thinker concerned with secular morality). Hume is much more sceptical about the prospects for human happiness and progress, as these may be secured in a secular world order. It could well be argued that, relative to his own contemporaries, Hume is unusually advanced in his thinking about such issues and their (troubling) implications. On this, see Russell 2008: Chp. 17; and also Russell 2013: esp. 112–5.

References Blackburn, Simon. 1986. “Making Ends Meet”. Philosophical Books. Vol.27/ No.4: 193–203. Greco, Lorenzo. 2007. “Humean Reflections in the Ethics of Bernard Williams”. Utilitas. Vol. 19/No.3: 312–25. Hume, David. 1739–1740. A Treatise of Human Nature. Edited by David F. Norton and Mary J. Norton Oxford: Oxford University Press. Abbreviated as T. ———. 1745/1967. A Letter from a Gentleman to His Friend in Edinburgh. Edited by Ernest C. Mossner and John V. Price. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. ———. 1751/1998. Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals. Edited by Tom L. Beauchamp. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Abbreviated as EM. ———. 1777/1985. Essays: Moral, Political, and Literary. Revised edition by ­Eugene F. Miller. Indianapolis: Liberty Classics. Abbreviated as ESY. Mackie, John L. 1977. Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong. New York: Penguin Books. Russell, Paul. 1995. Freedom and Moral Sentiment: Hume’s Way of Naturalizing Responsibility. New York & Oxford: Oxford University Press. ———. 2008. The Riddle of Hume’s Treatise: Skepticism, Naturalism and Irreligion. New York & Oxford: Oxford University Press. ———. 2013. “Hume’s Anatomy of Virtue”, In Daniel Russell, ed. The Cambridge Companion to Virtue Ethics,Cambridge University Press. 92–123. ———. 2015. “’Hume’s Lengthy Digression’: Free Will in the Treatise”, In ­A nnemarie ­Butler  & Donald Ainslie, eds. Hume’s Treatise: A Critical Guide, ­Cambridge University Press. 230–51. ———. 2016. “Hume’s Philosophy of Irreligion and the Myth of British Empiricism”. In Paul Russell, ed. The Oxford Handbook of David Hume. New York & Oxford: Oxford University Press. Sagar, Paul. 2013. “Minding the Gap: Bernard Williams and David Hume on ­Living an Ethical Life”. Journal of Moral Philosophy. Vol.11/No.5: 1–24.

52  Paul Russell Williams, Bernard. 1972. Morality: An Introduction to Ethics. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books. ———. 1982. Moral Luck. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ———. 1985a/2006. Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy. With a commentary by Adrian Moore and a foreword by Jonathan Lear. London & New York: Routledge. ———. 1985b. “Ethics and the Fabric of the World”. In James Rachels, ed. Ethical Theory 1: The Question of Objectivity. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ———. 1986. “Reply to Blackburn”. Philosophical Books. Vol.27/No.4: 203–8. ———. 1993. Shame and Necessity. Berkeley & Los Angeles: University of ­California Press. ———. 1995a. Making Sense of Humanity and other Essays. Cambridge: ­Cambridge University Press. ———. 1995b. “Replies”. In James E. J. Altham and Ross Harrison, eds. World, Mind and Ethics: Essays on the Ethical Philosophy of Bernard Williams. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ———. 1999. “Seminar with Bernard Williams”. Ethical Perspectives, Vol.6/ No.3–4: 243–65. ———. 2006. The Sense of the Past: Essays in the History of Philosophy. Edited by Myles Burnyeat. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

4 Williams (on) doing history of philosophy A case study on Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy Marcel van Ackeren Bernard Williams’ “leading influence in philosophical ethics” (Chappell 2013) can hardly be overestimated. “Contemporary moral philosophy has been so profoundly altered by Williams that if one subtracted his influence, it is hard to imagine the shape of what would be left” (Callcut 2008, 1). His importance as a contemporary moral philosopher working in the field of current philosophical ethics should not tempt us to overlook that Williams worked on contemporary issues and on the history of philosophy, especially on the Greeks, but also on Descartes, Kant, classical ­Utilitarians, and Nietzsche. This “and” should not be read as referencing a simple addition because this would take the historical side of his works to be a branch of his work that could be excluded when talking about his influence c­ oncerning first-order ethical questions. The linkage between historical references and first-order ambitions in Williams is not dispensable or accidental. Rather, there is a methodological commitment which makes the historical ­references an important part of his arguments for certain first-order claims. Clearly, Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy (ELP) is a case in point, but other works by Williams contain longer and more explicit reflections on the methodology of how to interpret historical texts to contribute to current debates (e.g., Williams 2002a, b, 2006). ELP is mainly an application of such a method.1 Given that Williams is one of the most prominent philosophers of the last half century and also that his influence on current debates depends, at least partly, on his interpretation of historical texts, one might expect the existence of substantial literature on the relation of historical and current perspectives in Williams’ work and its reception. But neither recent literature on Williams and on the discussion in ethics that he has influenced (Altham & Harrison 1995; Callcut 2008; Heuer & Lang 2012; Thomas 2007)2 nor the currently inflamed and general debate on methodology and metaphilosophy that is centered around the use of the historical perspective in current philosophical debates (see van Ackeren 2018a; Laerke, Smith & Schliesser 2013, Reck 2013; Sorell & Rogers 2005) pays much attention to Williams’ views on how to relate the historical perspective to philosophy. 3 A thorough investigation of Williams’ usage of the historical perspective

54  Marcel van Ackeren would, first, contribute to a better understanding of his many contributions to specific contemporary debates. Second, it would also enable an analysis of his general methodological and metaphilosophical views and maybe consider them a contribution to the more general debate on philosophy and the historical perspective. Finally, his method might prove to be fruitful for other debates and branches of philosophy. In what follows, I will not be able to pursue this large a project. What I can try to do, however, is present a case study on ELP. My aim is to especially elucidate the first three chapters of said work by explicitly clarifying which view concerning the relation of the historical and first-order perspective is applied in it and how this view shaped Williams’ argumentation. I will claim that the method used is the alienation effect, which is an original invention of Williams that differs significantly from two still dominant models of the debate, the dialogue, and the antiquarian approach, and also from his own genealogy. The alienation effect is plausible on its own. In short, I will try to show that ELP is also a major work when it comes to philosophical methodology. I will start by explaining two distinctions that provide the basis for understanding Williams’ method (“Two distinctions” section) and continue by elucidating how the method is applied in ELP (“The alienation effect at work in Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy” section). Finally, I will distinguish the alienation effect from genealogy and discuss the relation of it to the other main models suggesting a relation of the historical perspective to current philosophy (“Methodological pluralism” section). We should not take the alienation effect to be the only method because only a pragmatic position that holds that only a set of various methods, including the alienation effect, can do justice do the plurality of philosophy—past and present. To prepare my analysis, I will summarize the two theories that have dominated the debate at the time Williams wrote ELP4 and that Williams frequently referred to. On the one hand, more analytically minded scholars moved on from implausible views on the history of philosophy, such as historiophobia5 (see Glock 2008) and triumphant anachronism 6 (see Williams 1994, 20, 2006), and turned to a more fruitful method. Many label this view the dialogue model because a famous maxim by Grice suggests that “we should treat those who are great but dead as if they were great and living, as persons who have something to say to us now.”7 The dialogue model presupposes a transhistorical identity of questions.8 If the questions that are currently discussed have been answered in the history of philosophy, we can use historical texts like mines, hoping to find answers to the problems we are faced with. The answers are hidden in the context of the sediment and layers of texts. Mining rests on the belief that those historical arguments and answers can be decontextualized, isolated, and rationally reconstructed, so that we can use them independently of the historical context as answers regarding the same question in our current debate.

Williams (on) doing history of philosophy  55 On the other hand, the antiquarian approach (coined by Garber & Ayers 1998, 4) holds that philosophical theories must be understood in terms of their historical context (Critchley 2001, 62; Krüger 1984, 79). This is why philosophical questions that were discussed in the past might look like the ones we debate now, but a closer inspection reveals that “it was not the same challenge for them as it is for us” (Garber 2005, 138). Therefore, the antiquarian approach rejects taking historical accounts to be answers to our current questions, unlike the dialogue model. But this does not mean that the antiquarian approach considers the historical perspective unable to contribute to current philosophy. According to the antiquarian approach, however, this contribution of the historical perspective is not to be found in an answer to a specific question of a current debate, but rather on the metaphilosophical level.9

Two distinctions At the beginning of ELP, Williams introduces two distinctions that both seem very trivial, but are vital for the understanding of the book’s main thesis and the way the argument of the first three chapters proceeds. He first stresses the differences between the philosophy of distant periods, that is, the difference between ancient ethicists and current moral philosophy, and second, he makes a sharp distinction between questions and answers provided by philosophy. I will start by describing the two distinctions and then try to show that they are anything but trivial, at least in the way Williams makes use of them for his method of the alienation effect. The first distinction between past and present is mentioned in the Preface. Williams announces that the first three chapters are considering some ideas to be found in ancient Greek thought. This is not just the piety of philosophy toward its history. There is a special reason for it […]. The idea is certainly not that the demands of the modern world on ethical thought are no different from those of the ancient world. On the contrary, my conclusion is that the demands of the modern world on ethical thought are unprecedented, and that the ideas of rationality embodied in most contemporary modern philosophy cannot meet them; but some extension of ancient thought, greatly modified, might be able to do so. (Williams 2007, vii) One might think that the purpose of the modification of ancient theories is to bridge the historical difference between past and present philosophy. In this case, the modifications would allow us to read ancient texts in such a way that they can be taken to answer the questions that interest us today. The modification would bridge the historical gap and establish transhistorical identity. Though it is tempting to interpret Williams in that way,

56  Marcel van Ackeren because it could then be assumed that Williams follows the well-established and often applied dialogue model that presupposes transhistorical identity. But, he insists that we should not ignore or bypass the historical distance for two reasons: First, we know more texts and have a considerably longer tradition of philosophical study than, for instance, Socrates. To Williams, acknowledging the historical distance between us and the ancient Greeks cuts both ways. On the one hand, it would be futile to ignore the insights of many very sharp thinkers and not to make use of certain established knowledge, technicalities, or practices like a clear style. In this way, we can certainly make use of the history of philosophy. But acknowledging the distance also means seeing that moral “philosophy has its problems because of its history and its present practices” (Williams 2006, 2; emphasis added). So, besides being a helpful source, the history of philosophy also causes problems that we need help with. Second, we cannot ignore the difference between chronologically distant theories because the reflectiveness that Plato has introduced as a new and special feature of philosophy and has become characteristic for many other disciplines or practices outside academia. Hence, philosophy cannot claim to be especially suited to solve problems anymore. The fact that Williams stresses the difference already reveals that his strategy is at odds with the main presupposition of the dialogue model, that is, with the assumption of transhistorical identity of questions and problems. But if the difference between ancient und current moral philosophers is that important, we are left with a very puzzling question: If we cannot and should not modify ancient theories in a way that we can think of them as answering recent questions, how can they help us with our unprecedented questions? I will come back to this in the next section, after introducing the second distinction. Williams also distinguishes questions and answers. As trivial as the distinction appears, it is also important for his method of relating the historical perspective to his first-order ambitions. The opening lines of the first chapter read as follows: It is not a trivial question, Socrates said: what we are talking about is how one should live. Or so Plato reports him, in one of the first books written about this subject. Plato thought that philosophy could answer the question. Like Socrates, he hoped that on direct one’s life, if necessary redirect it, through an understanding that was distinctively philosophical—that is to say, general and abstract, rationally reflective, and concerned with what can be known through different kinds of inquiry. The aims of moral philosophy, and any hopes it may have of being worth serious attention, are bound up with the fate of Socrates’ question, even if it is not true that philosophy, itself, can reasonably hope to answer it. (Williams 2006, 1; emphasis added)

Williams (on) doing history of philosophy  57 Williams stresses that he is skeptical about the powers of philosophy when it comes to answering the question. There is a tempting but misleading explanation for this skepticism. Williams could be taken to express the view that philosophy is not about giving answers but rather about gaining a deeper understanding of questions (without providing answers).10 This metaphilosophical view would perfectly explain why Williams focuses on the Socratic question, why he dismisses various historic attempts to answer it, and why he goes even so far as to make the more general and fundamental claim that philosophy in general cannot answer it. Williams’ own concept of philosophy might be taken to imply this particular metaphilosophical view, for example, when he writes, “Philosophy’s methods of helping us to understand ourselves involve reflecting on the concepts we use, the modes in which we think about these various things; and sometimes it proposes better ways of doing this” (Williams 2002a, 7). However, as the last part of the sentence already indicates, to Williams, doing philosophy does not mean completely refraining from giving resolute answers to questions or from presenting answers as solutions to problems. In many cases, concerning different philosophical questions, Williams gives clear-cut and firm answers, for example, concerning question of moral luck, external reasons, or the desirability of an eternal life. Even if one doubts that Williams presents plausible answers to philosophical questions, it is hard to deny that he actually gave answers that were meant to be more than an understanding of a question. Thus, his skepticism concerning philosophy’s ability to answer the Socratic question is not part of a general metaphilosophical view, according to which philosophy cannot (or should not) answer any question or solve a problem. The reason for his view concerning the possibility of answering the Socratic question must then be rooted in something that has to do with the issue at hand. It is important to note that, although the outcome seems to be purely negative, the skepticism concerning philosophy’s ability to answer the Socratic question is significantly limited by the following aspects. First, the claim that past and present moral philosophers cannot answer, it is skeptical only if one assumes that the reputation of moral philosophy rests on such an answer. But the less one takes this answer to be the essential task of philosophy, the less skeptical Williams account ­appears. ­ illiams’ Surely, lowering expectations in this matter amounts to accepting W conclusion, but doing so also helps to see that the arguments of the first three chapters should also be regarded as presenting positive claims and conclusions. Second, he takes his argument that the Socratic answer cannot be answered to be a “progression” (2006, 4). Though he is skeptical concerning an answer to the Socratic question, he is less skeptical about answering questions concerning philosophy and its limits. By trying to answer the Socratic question, philosophy “determines its own place” (ibid. 4).

58  Marcel van Ackeren Third, in the course of this progression, Williams discovers two important elements of ancient philosophy, virtues, and well-being. In doing so, he is selective and also explains why: What matters for moral philosophy is whether the elements that are culturally more specific can be separated from the main structure. Some of them can be, and these include serious matters: an Aristotelian outlook is not committed to Aristotelian views on slavery or on the position of women. (ibid. 35) Hence, Williams accepts the central idea of ancient theories concerning virtues and well-being, that is, their “main structure,” but rejects specific, culturally influenced aspects on the periphery of the ancient accounts. I will come back to this point at the end of the next section. First, however, I will explain why this is another important hint at Williams’ methodology. In the quote from the Preface, cited above, Williams suggests that we need some “modifications” of ancient theories before they can help us with our contemporary problems. Above, I have also argued that the modification does not amount to the establishment of transhistorical identity and that Williams thus rejects the main presupposition of the dialogue model. We can now see that he suggests something that is known as rational reconstruction, which involves ignoring some (culture-bound) aspects of historical accounts that are unwanted for certain reasons and impossible to uphold in modern times. This is a particularly important methodological claim because it makes clear that Williams also rejects the second standard account of the debate, namely the antiquarian approach, the key feature of which it is to strictly consider the historical context. Fourth, and most importantly, the distinction between the questions and answers may be trivial, but the Socratic question itself is not, as Williams points out immediately in the first sentence of the first chapter. Williams is convinced that the Socratic question is better than the initial questions favored by contemporary moral philosophy, as it presupposes less and is not only more fruitful but also leads to less problems. He thereby shifts the emphasis and importance from providing an answer to the questions. The contribution that the method of referring to ancient texts brings about does not lay in answering contemporary question, but in finding a new and better question. This significantly relativizes the skepticism regarding philosophy’s ability to answer the question. Williams’ reading of ancient texts gives us something else, something that is positive and valuable, namely a question that is better than the common starting points of modern moral philosophy. So far, I have referred to two distinctions that are central to Williams’ method: that between past and present, and that between answers and

Williams (on) doing history of philosophy  59 questions. Both are part of Williams’ method of utilizing historical references, and both will help explain why his method differs from the two ­dominant positions, that is, the dialogue model and the antiquarian approach. He also argues that ancient theories must undergo rational reconstruction because only core ideas are acceptable today. I will now turn to the method explaining this view and the contribution it brings about.

The alienation effect at work in Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy To my knowledge, the methodological position of the alienation effect is explicitly defended only years later, in a paper on Descartes and the Historiography of Philosophy (Williams 2006). At the beginning of “­Methodological pluralism” section of the present chapter, I will briefly suggest that it also differs from the genealogical approach he put forward in his late writings. I will focus on two aspects, or questions, that are of interest with regard to the ways of relating the study of the history of philosophy to current philosophy: Which method leads to a productive contribution? What does this contribution that a certain method brings about consist in? The results of the previous section indicate that Williams’ position can be located midway between the dialogue model and the antiquarian approach, sharing certain views with each. Like the dialogue model, Williams does not pay attention to the context and thus favors some kind of rational reconstruction that lets the texts have in impact on our contemporary debates. And like the antiquarian approach, he thinks the contribution of the historical perspective to current philosophy lies in providing alternatives rather than answers to allegedly transhistorical questions. To the main presupposition of the dialogue model, namely “to treat something written by Plato, for instance, as though it had come out in Mind last month,” Williams objects that “Collingwood insisted, correctly, that the questions being answered by Plato and Hobbes, for instance, were not the same, and you literally could not understand them unless you understand this” (Williams 2006, 344). To Williams, assuming transhistorical identity of questions is leading to a mode of doing history of philosophy that has the right aim insofar as the dialogue model is about studying the history of philosophy for a philosophical purpose, namely to contribute to current debates in philosophy. However, by assuming transhistorical identity, the dialogue model still fails to provide a reason of studying the history of philosophy. If the historical difference does not matter or is flattened, we also forfeit the reason to, for instance, learn Greek and read Plato because we will only find the questions and problems that are already ours. The dialogue model is right in assuming that historical philosophers were colleagues, but only insofar as they were philosophers. The dialogue model goes too far in assuming that

60  Marcel van Ackeren historical philosophers are like contemporary colleagues that they have answered the same questions, applied the same methods, and had the same philosophical aims. The denial of transhistorical identity is also an essential claim of the antiquarian approach (see, e.g., Ayers 1978, 55), but there are two important differences between it and Williams’ position. First, to Williams, detecting the diachronic difference of questions does not depend on the methodological decision to describe historical arguments as being closely related to or even dependent on the context. Proponents of the antiquarian approach rather argue that we cannot understand historical texts unless we understand that the questions and answers are meaningful only in relation to their context. The second difference between Williams and the antiquarian approach concerns the possibility of a contribution to current philosophy after having detected the historical difference. According to Williams, the antiquarian approach does not allow relating historical arguments to current philosophy because the arguments are “trapped in history” or “overtaken by history” (Williams 2006, 262). This is why he thinks that this way of doing history of philosophy “is history before it is philosophy” (Williams 1978, xiii). Proponents of the antiquarian approach need not feel offended because they have called for a “more historical approach” (Garber & Ayers 1998, 1). Because the dialogue model ignores the historical aspects of doing history of philosophy and the antiquarian approach overemphasizes them, Williams suggests a reading of historical texts that maintains a historical distance to the present, but only to an extent that allows the texts to keep their identity as philosophical texts. This way, historical texts are still meaningful to us because the arguments that might help us are highlighted, and they are not turned into dusty exhibits in a museum. But what is the actual help that we can get from ancient texts if they are not concerned with our problems, as Williams mentions in the Preface? Williams draws on Nietzsche’s claim of the purpose of classical studies: I cannot imagine what [its] meaning would be in our own age, it is not untimely—that is, to act against the age, and by so have an effect on the age, and, let us hope, to the benefit of a future age. (Nietzsche 1990, 88; quoted according to Williams 2006, 259) I will take up his references to Nietzsche at the end of the section. First, it is important to be clear about the effect that Williams is describing here as the main contribution of doing history of philosophy. In an allusion to Viktor Shklovsky’s theory of art or, more likely, Berthold Brecht’s theory of theatre and acting,11 he describes the effect as an alienation effect: “One way in which the history of philosophy can help to serve this purpose is that basic and familiar one of making the familiar seem strange, and conversely” (Williams 2006, 259).

Williams (on) doing history of philosophy  61 In general, the alienation effect helps with what Williams takes to be philosophy’s main task, namely to gain a better reflective understanding of our own concepts and thereby make more sense of our human enterprises (Williams 2000, 479 and 483). Adrian Moore who compiled Williams’ notes for an envisaged essay has provided the most compact description of Williams’ method, which also provides further hints at the contribution itself: The contribution [of the history of philosophy to philosophy] was not, as philosophers in the analytic tradition used to think, to indicate voices of yore which could be heard as participating in contemporary debates: precisely not. It was to indicate voices of yore which could not be heard as participating in contemporary debates, and which thereby called into question whatever assumptions made contemporary debates possible. (Williams 2007, ix). First, the alienation effect has same diagnostic function as a contrast agent in radiology. The historical contrast should help us to discover what we are presupposing when dealing with a certain question. If philosophy is about figuring out one’s own conceptual framework, comparing it to a different set is a good heuristic device. Second, Williams stresses that we have to make the “familiar seem strange, and conversely.” It is important to stress the “and conversely” here, for we do not only have to be willing to see something as being different from our framework, we must also be willing to become aware of the contingency of our presuppositions. Brecht’s theory of the alienation effect is about distancing oneself from one’s own convictions to get a different view on oneself and challenge the all-too-familiar and unnoticed presuppositions. It is about breaking up with the routine of dealing with certain questions in ways which are not reflected anymore but taken for granted. To do so, we have to try to familiarize with the historical alternative. Only then can we compare our set of claims with the historical set in a way that is not hopelessly biased. It is now easier to see how this theory concerning the relation of historical and first-order perspectives is at work in the opening chapters of ELP, which are all about changing our questions and the ways in which we think about important ethical issues. Maybe, it is possible to distinguish two forms of contribution here because a change of questions might be seen as a more indirect contribution and the one concerning the concepts we should use when thinking about answering the questions as a more direct one—at least if one takes the reflection of one’s owns conceptual framework to be the main task of philosophy. However, the distinctions should not be taken to imply that indirect contributions, which refer to the questions, are less important or less

62  Marcel van Ackeren influential because assuming this seems to presuppose that only answers matter in philosophy. Advocating the Socratic question can be regarded as a form of a more indirect contribution and advocating virtue ethics as a more direct one. Williams carefully compares the Socratic question with other modern questions of morality or ethics and their status as a starting point and he provides many angles and arguments for this comparisons. The upshot of these comparisons is that we should give up modern questions as they are too narrow, too limited or pointing in the wrong direction, and that we should start doing ethics on the basis of the more general Socratic question. I will give just one example here, illustrating the importance of the change of the starting question. The Socratic question is said to be good because it is “ambiguous” in the sense that it can be answered by all sorts of considerations, moral as well as nonmoral. However, this does not imply that the Socratic question requires accepting the distinction of moral and nonmoral reasons or even a dualism of practical reason. The quality of the question rather lies it is openness concerning this distinction. This also illustrates a point mentioned above. Williams holds the view that going back to ancient philosophy can provide us with fresh and better starting points because some problems of current modern moral philosophy are caused by developments in the history of philosophy. Going back in the history of philosophy to an account that did not lead to the problems that we are stuck with then means that this historical account must seem strange, at least from the view of the current debate. In our case, the view that practical reasons are either moral or nonmoral reasons or that there is a dualism of practical reason is clearly a distinction that emerged many centuries after Socrates. And it has caused lots of problems, triggering, for example, the question of how to weigh different kinds of reasons against each other and so forth. The Socratic question is a better starting point insofar as it does not require the latter, troublesome distinctions.12 ­Furthermore, the Socratic question does not ask about moral obligations, which are, according to Williams, closely connected to the morality system. In an article on Collingwood, Williams quotes from his Autobiography: […] in ethics, a Greek word like dei cannot be legitimately translated by using the word “ought,” if that carries with it the notion of what is sometimes called “moral obligation.” Was there any Greek word or phrase to express that notion? The “realists” said there was; but they stultified themselves by adding that the “theories of moral obligation” expounded by Greek writers differed from the modern theories like Kant’s about the same thing. How did they know that the Greek and the Kantian theories were about the same thing? Oh, because dei (or whatever word it was) is the Greek for “ought.” (Collingwood 1939, 63f.; quoted according to Williams 2006, 344)

Williams (on) doing history of philosophy  63 This introduces the second—maybe more direct—from of contribution, which lies in finding new paths for contemporary ethics via studying the history of philosophy. Williams clearly accepts the ancient ethicists’ orientation toward well-being and virtue. Virtue is closely connected to the point made by Collingwood because it is not quite clear whether virtue ethics, ancient or modern, can or should accommodate for the deontic distinction between permissible, forbidden, and obligatory actions. Of course, there are endless debates concerning the advantages and disadvantages of doing ethics with or without said distinctions. Hence, it is perfectly fine if one doubts that Williams actually found a better option, or if one argues that his account is too skeptical in the sense that it provides us with too little to proceed answering questions. The point is that once these doubts are raised and the advantages and disadvantages of ancient questions and concepts are discussed, the alienation effect is already in effect because its decisive methodological point is to find alternatives to the contemporary debate in history rather than to project our current problems onto history. These alternatives must then be discussed and supported with reasons. The alienation effect neither presupposes nor necessarily leads to the conclusion that “older” philosophy is better philosophy, but it doubts that current philosophy is better philosophy just because it is more up to date. The alienation effect is about improving our current discussions by forcing to see that questions, concepts, and answers in ethics are contingent, and that they can therefore be challenged, defended, or given up. Thus, finding alternatives is just the first step. Williams’ discussion of virtue and well-being in the third chapter is also an example of the mandatory second step. Above, I have mentioned that he proposes to use rational reconstruction to separate the main philosophical structure from ideas that are culturally influenced and cannot be accepted today, for example, the ancient acceptance of institutional slavery, arguments in favor of there being slaves by nature, the idea that woman or craftsmen have no active or passive rights concerning political participation, and not to speak of ­religious aspects. This form of rational reconstruction is just the first step because it only enables us to discuss the arguments of ancient philosophers as philosophy today. Only as such they represent an alternative and a challenge that forces us to argue whether ancient ideas are not only different but also a better option today for us. We might reject certain ancient moral ideas not only because they applied in a culturally different context, and are as such inacceptable for us, but also on philosophical grounds. This second step of the alienation effect is taken, for example, in the third chapter. Williams accepts the main idea of virtue, but when it comes to specific aspects of ancient theories, he argues, for instance, that “we have no reason to believe” in the doctrine of the mean and that we should not accept the idea of “a certain, cultural, and indeed political life as a harmonious culmination of human potentialities, recoverable from an absolute

64  Marcel van Ackeren understanding of nature.” Williams rather points out that “[…] the general outline of the description of the ethical life we have recovered from the ancient writers is correct,” but that “[a]t the same time, we must admit that the Aristotelian assumptions […] collapsed.” Still, “[n]o one has yet found a good way of doing without those assumptions” (Williams 2007, 52–3). Pointing to alternatives in the history of philosophy is no guarantee to find theories that can simply be adopted today. And even finding certain outlines or bits that work today does not reduce the work we need to do in terms of arguing for or against them. The alienation effect increases our need for arguments by enhancing our knowledge about theoretical options.

Methodological pluralism I will start this section with a very brief explanation of the difference between the alienation effect and genealogy because many scholars take genealogy to be Williams’ only method of relating the historical perspective to current philosophy. I will then turn to more critical and general questions of how to relate the alienation effect to the other main models I have discussed in the previous section, that is, to the dialogue model and the antiquarian approach. I will suggest a pragmatic approach that allows for the application of all of them, depending on the specific case. The aim is to establish a set of methods that is in accordance with plurality in philosophy—past and present—and also helps us to understand it. It is very tempting to think that the alienation effect and genealogy are just two aspects of or even only two names for the same method because Williams makes reference to Nietzsche concerning both cases. Furthermore, both methods have some common goals, namely showing us the contingency of our own conceptual framework by pointing to a different one in history. However, Williams also distinguishes between the study of the history of philosophy and “the history of concepts which philosophy is trying to understand” (Williams 2002a, 7). The alienation effect and genealogy differ in scope and also with regard to what they refer to. The scope of genealogy is limited to practical concepts because concepts of natural sciences can be understood without knowing anything about their history. In stark difference to genealogy in Nietzsche, which is mostly about debunking the authority of (Christian) morality, Williams thinks that genealogy can positively contribute to vindication “in the sense that we can understand it and at the same time respect it, support it and live within it” (Williams 2002a, 9). This is not the place to decide whether Williams commits a fallacy by confusing a genealogical account of a normative practical concept with giving reasons for it, as is claimed by Glock (2008, 878–9). What matters for the purpose of this paper is that the alienation effect and genealogy should be seen as separable. However, the fact that Glock’s criticism is only targeting genealogy and does not make sense with regard to the alienation effect, further supports making

Williams (on) doing history of philosophy  65 the distinction. This, of course, also means that Glock’s criticism, even if plausible, does not affect the alienation effect. Compared to the alienation effect, genealogy has a limited scope because genealogy is important only for concepts in the practical domain and then for normative practical concepts, and then to normative practical concepts in which the genealogy of the concepts can be helpful for vindication. But the alienation effect does not have any of these limitations. The alienation effect can be applied as a form of history of philosophy without any reference to the history of concepts. As our glance at the first chapters of ELP has revealed, the alienation effect can be employed concerning questions and not only concepts, and the chapters do not discuss any history of concepts. Maybe I am overemphasizing the difference between the alienation effect and genealogy, and there should certainly be more thorough investigations concerning their differences and connections because the alienation, due to its wider scope, might be helpful for using genealogy. For the same reason, however, this does not hold true the other way round. Thus, they are separable and this already indicates that there might be more than one fruitful method. Williams clearly advocates the alienation effect, but the relation of it to the two other models, which he criticizes, is anything but clear—­neither in Williams’ own writings nor in the current and more general debate on the relation of the historical perspective to today’s philosophy. ­Williams sometimes admits that the other two models, the dialogue model and the antiquarian approach, are not completely mistaken. In case of the dialogue model, he concedes that there might be cases of transhistorical identity which would allow us to pursue it. But he immediately doubts that this will yield a substantial new contribution because, to him, the dialogue model finds in historical texts only what it already presupposes (Williams 2006, 260–1). About the relation between the antiquarian and the analytical and philosophical approach, he says: “It is obvious that these two activities cannot be totally separated from one another, and each needs to some extent the skills of the other” (Williams 2006, 257). This might be taken to assume that the different models do not only coexist, but that there is also at least some mutual dependence. But, again, Williams is eager to make sure that there is no fusion of the methods. He argues that the antiquarian approach always just shows that later philosophy differs significantly from former philosophy. And he also claims that the antiquarian approach and the more philosophical approach “are bound to yield partly incompatible products” (Williams 2006, 257). One wonders how the claim about mutual dependence and the one concerning incompatibility can be reconciled. Williams does not fully explain which coherent position is behind these remarks about the relation of the different methods. It might be the case that Williams really thinks that there is room for mutual dependence or coexistence of different models. It might be case that he simply was not interested in those cases. Or he thinks that

66  Marcel van Ackeren those cases are not significant and that only his alienation effect is a philosophically viable method of relating the historical perspective to current philosophy. However, this obscurity is not a speciality of Williams, it can also be found in current contributions to the more general debate. Many authors, even though they highlight and favor one particular method, would admit that other methods have advantages too.13 But if it is actually the case that more than one method has considerable advantages, we need to say something about their relation. Thus, I would finally like to suggest a pragmatic position, holding that the different methods and contributions that were mentioned so far can all be put to use because different constellations of historical texts and current debates allow for or even call for different methods. The pragmatic approach thus reacts to the observation that there is plurality in past and present philosophy, including stable disagreement concerning the concept of philosophy itself. The pragmatic approach does not aim at establishing a completely new, independent method of relating the historical perspective to current philosophy, thereby enabling a profoundly new contribution. The basic idea is rather to think of the previously discussed models as items of a single toolbox. The toolbox of methods allows us to pick different methods at different points, depending on their suitability for a certain case or purpose or to gain a more complete picture by applying more than method. As to the question which methods should be included in the toolbox, my main concern here is Williams’ claim that the antiquarian approach does not yield any philosophical contribution and thus should not be in the philosopher’s toolbox. But the antiquarian approach, even in its extreme form of trapping arguments in their context and thus making it hard to find any relation to current philosophy, can provide valuable philosophical insights. For example, paying attention to the context can be helpful in arguing for some sorts of relativism and contingency of our concepts, questions, and criteria for evaluating philosophical answers. By saying this, I do not want to claim that relativism and contingency can only be explained by referring to the context, nor do I want to claim that everything in philosophy is contingent or relative. But in assessing the truth and scope of a claim, like Strawson’s famous assertion regarding the existence of an “ahistorical core of human thinking” (Strawson 1959, 10), in the form of a conceptual framework, the antiquarian approach might be helpful. Furthermore, the antiquarian approach is helpful for discussing the circumstances, aims, and functions of philosophy within society. Likewise, to me, there is no reason for excluding that the dialogue model can lead to new results because the dialogue model only presupposes transhistorical identity of questions, not of answers. Williams would hopefully agree that some historical texts concern questions that are sufficiently similar to currently debated ones (although probably more in theoretical than practical philosophy). But historical texts might entail answers and arguments that are unknown or new to the current debate and thus can contribute to them

Williams (on) doing history of philosophy  67 without making use of the alienation effect, simply by helping us find a new or better argument regarding our questions, one that seems to be fine as it is. So far, I have only indicated that all these methods should be included in the toolbox, which would result in a larger stock of methods enabling us to investigate every relation between a historical text or argument and a specific current modern debate with one of them. But, as I have also claimed above, it might be possible in some cases to apply more than one method. This idea faces a serious objection that Williams has raised, namely ­incompatibility. I think we need to distinguish two forms of incompatibility, namely incompatibility concerning methods and incompatibility concerning results. Williams argues that the antiquarian approach is incompatible with a philosophical approach, and that a fusion of these two approaches into one method is impossible. But from the fact that certain methods require certain procedures which are incompatible, in the sense that they cannot be applied simultaneously, it does not follow only one method should be applied. Take the following example from biology: If we are interested in the function of a protein in a cell, we, for instance, use a microscope to learn in which compartment the protein localizes in the cell and whether it changes its localization in response to an internal or external stimulus. But we might also want to use mass spectrometry to learn about the quantity of the protein and whether it is modified by a chemical group such as phosphate. Both methods are incompatible in the following sense: To make use of mass spectrometry, we need to lyse cells and transfer the protein from the liquid phase into the gas phase as protonated species, but as such we cannot put it under a microscope. Thus, scientists do not fuse methods because the methods require specific procedures that are mutually exclusive. Nonetheless, the data, that is, the results obtained through the different methods, can be combined to obtain a more complete picture of the protein and its potential function. The methods are complementary. I believe that something similar is applicable with regard to historical texts. Though we cannot pay attention to the context and, at same time, not pay attention to the context, we can use the different methods from our toolbox in a complementary way, for example, for different readings, which will eventually provide us with a more complete picture not only about the text but also about its relation to a contemporary debate. After the incompatibility of application, we need to consider the second form of incompatibility, namely that of results. Can this kind of incompatibility also occur in the sciences? If the microscope and the mass spectrometer yield conflicting data, for example, if one method shows that the protein is in the cell and the other that it is not in the cell, we can conclude that something has gone wrong. However, this does not speak against one of these two methods in general, nor does it mean that they cannot be applied one after the other. It just means that the scientist made a mistake when applying the methods. But maybe incompatible results are possible in philosophy, for example, when the philosophical approach leads to the conclusion that a historical and current debate are about identical questions and the historical approach results in the opposite verdict. Like in the protein case, this does

68  Marcel van Ackeren not speak against one of the two methods, but, in this case, it seems to mean that we cannot or should not apply both of them because in philosophy we cannot explain conflicting results by assuming that the application of at least one of the used methods was faulty. Nonetheless, I suggest to resist the temptation to exclude the application of more than one method, even if they tend to lead to incompatible results, as was suggested by Williams. To me, this incompatibility of results seems to indicate differences in the presuppositions and perspectives of philosophical approaches, for example that the results of a philosophical investigation depend on the methods it uses. This notably includes the idea that we need not remain neutral in those cases. Incompatible results of different approaches to historical texts are a good basis for determining the different approaches’ suitability with reference to different cases and purposes. These cases might be excellent for learning how to do philosophy. Incompatible results might not help us answer a particular question, but they teach us something about the philosophy. Finally, the pragmatic approach does not imply that all philosophical debates should take history into account. It is not committed to the view that philosophy can be done only by means of its history. The central idea was to point to the advantage of having a plurality of methods at hand, which matches the plurality in philosophy—past and present. My reason for stressing the plurality of philosophical methods is not based on the idea that I equally like all sorts of philosophical strands and methods. Just as Williams was skeptical about philosophy’s capability of providing a compelling answer to the Socratic question and convincing an amoralist to become moral, I am skeptical about philosophy’s capability to answer the question of what philosophy is and how it should be conducted so that one philosopher gives up his questions and methods and starts doing a completely different form of philosophy. And like Williams, who argued that not being able to answer the Socratic question does not mean that morality collapses, I cannot see that philosophy collapses if we cannot get all philosophers to agree. Thus, my ultimate reason for accepting a plurality of philosophical approaches to the history of philosophy is that we cannot eliminate plurality. The pragmatic approach is just my idea of making the best of a situation that simply cannot be changed. “And if all indeed is said and done, there will be no hope of discovering still further arguments to settle our differences” (Lewis 1983, x). Studying the history of philosophy might not help solve our problems once and for all, but it helps dispel the fog of such a hope to find the eternally existing one true form of philosophy.

Acknowledgment Apart from the participants of the conference that was the nucleus of this volume I would like to thank the Henkel Foundation, Oxford’s Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics and the Excellence Strategy of the German Federal and State Governments (CIBSS - EXC 2189).

Williams (on) doing history of philosophy  69

Notes 1 Furthermore, other works more clearly reveal the metaphilosophical underpinning of his views in Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy, for example, in the form of the assumption that philosophy cannot be split into branches, and that therefore a division of labor is not possible, at least not in the way it is practiced in the sciences (Burnyeat 2006, xvii). 2 Exceptions are Burnyeat (2006), Long (2007), and Nussbaum (2009). 3 If Williams is mentioned at all, only the methodology of fictional genealogy, which he started to develop rather late in his career (Williams 2002a, b), is discussed (see Glock 2008). 4 For a more elaborate account of the debate, see van Ackeren (2018a). 5 “Just say no to the history of philosophy!” (Harmann, quoted in Sorell 2005) is the slogan of historiophobic analytical philosophy, which advocates the view that studying the history of philosophy is not part of doing philosophy, just as studying the history of a science is not part of doing that science, but of another (historical) discipline (see Sorell 2005). 6 This position assumes that predecessors were trying to answer the same questions as current philosophers, but that they were simply not as skilled as we are now. 7 Grice (1986, 66), cited according to Textor (1996, I) and Bennett (2001, 1); see also Rorty (1984, 49), Hacking (1984, 27), and Ryle (1971, 10–11). 8 Glock, for example, “presupposes that there is also ‘vertical’ continuity across time. The problems, arguments and claims of remote philosophical theories must be intelligible to us, so that we can assess them for their trans-historical merits” (Glock 2008, 885). 9 […] the study of the history of philosophy gives us something else. Part of being a good philosopher is being reflective about what exactly philosophy is, what kinds of questions it treats, what kind of enterprise it is, how it relates to other intellectual and non-intellectual enterprises. […] in times like these, where the analytic paradigm is in what many consider a crisis, we need to think larger thoughts; we need a larger vision of what we are doing (Garber 2005, 145). 10 This view is endorsed by, for example, David Lewis (1983) and Peter Hacker (2009). 11 In performance, as the performer “observes himself”, his objective is “to appear strange and even surprising to the audience. He achieves this by looking strangely at himself and his work. As a result, everything put forward by him has a touch of the amazing” (Willett 1964, 91). 12 In many respects, Joseph Raz has followed this route by going back to an account that does take moral and nonmoral reasons not to be deeply divided classes of reasons (see Raz 1999). 13 See, for example, Perler (2018).

References Ackeren, M. v. (2018a), ‘Philosophy and the Historical Perspective: A New Debate on an Old Topic’, in: Ackeren, M. v. (ed.), Philosophy and the Historical Perspective (Proceedings of the British Academy, vol. 214), Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1–17. Ackeren, M. v. (2018b), ‘On Interpreting Historical Texts and Contributing to Current Philosophy’, in: Ackeren, M. v. (ed.), Philosophy and the Historical Perspective (Proceedings of the British Academy, vol. 214), Oxford: Oxford University Press, 69–87. Altham, J.E.J., & Harrison, R. (1995), World, Mind, and Ethics: Essays in Honor of Bernard Williams, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

70  Marcel van Ackeren Ayers, M. (1978), ‘Analytical Philosophy and the History of Philosophy’, in: Rée, J., Ayers, M., & Westonby, A. (eds.), Philosophy and Its Past, Hassocks: ­Harvester, 42–66. Bennett, J. (2001), Learning from Six Philosophers: Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz, Locke, Berkeley, Hume, Oxford, Clarendon Press. Burnyeat, M. (2006), ‘Introduction’, in: Williams, B. (ed.), The Sense of the Past. Essay in the History of Philosophy, ed. by M. Burnyeat, Princeton: Princeton University Press, xii–xxii. Callcut, D. (2008), ‘Introduction’, in: Callcut, D. (ed.), Reading Bernard Williams, London: Routledge, 1–6. Chappell, S.G. (2013), ‘Bernard Williams’, in: Zalta, E.N. (ed.), The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2015 Edition), https://plato.stanford.edu/ archives/spr2015/entries/williams-bernard/ Collingwood, R.G. (1939), An Autobiography, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Critchley, S. (2001), Continental Philosophy: A Very Short Introduction, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Garber, D. (2005), ‘What’s Philosophical about the History of Philosophy’, in: Sorell, T., & Rogers, G.A.J. (eds.), Analytic Philosophy and History of Philosophy, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 129–46. Garber, D., & Ayers, M. (eds.) (1998), The Cambridge History of Seventeenth-­ Century Philosophy, Cambridge & New York: Cambridge University Press. Glock, H.-J. (2008), ‘Analytic Philosophy and History: A mismatch?’, Mind 117, 885–97. Grice, P. (1986), ‘Reply to Richards’, in: Grandy, R.E., & Warner, R. (eds.), Philosophical Grounds of Rationality: Intentions, Categories, Ends, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 45–108. Hacker, P.M.S. (2009), ‘A Contribution, Not to Human Knowledge, But to Human Understanding’, in: O’Hear, A. (ed.), Conceptions of Philosophy, New York: Cambridge University Press, 129–53. Hacking, I. (1984), ‘Five Parables’, in: Rorty, R., Schneewind, J. B., & Skinner, Q. (eds.), Philosophy in History, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 103–24. Heuer, U., & Lang, G. (eds.) (2012), Luck, Value, and Commitment. Themes from the Ethics of Bernard Williams, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Krüger, L. (1984), ‘Why do We Study the History of Philosophy’, in: Rorty, R., Schneewind, J.B., & Skinner, Q. (eds.), Philosophy in History Cambridge, ­Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 77–102. Laerke, M., Smith, J.E.H., & Schliesser, E. (eds.) (2013), Philosophy and Its ­History. Aims and Methods in the Study of Early History, Oxford: Oxford ­University Press. Lewis, D. (1983), ‘Introduction’, in: Lewis, D. (ed.), Philosophical Papers X, ­Oxford: Oxford University Press, ix–xii. Long, A.A. (2007), ‘Williams on Greek Literature and Philosophy’, in: Thomas, A. (ed.), Bernard Williams, Cambridge & New York: Cambridge University Press, 155–80. Nietzsche, F. (1990), ‘History in the Service of Disservice of Life’, in: Arrowsmith, W. (ed.), Unmodern Observations, New Haven: Yale University Press, 73–146. Nussbaum, M. (2009), ‘Bernard Williams: Tragedies, Hope, Justice’, in: Callcut, D. (ed.), Reading Bernard Williams, London: Routledge, 213–41.

Williams (on) doing history of philosophy  71 Perler, D. (2018), ‘The Alienation Effect in the Historiography of Philosophy’, in: Ackeren, M. v. (ed.), Philosophy and the Historical Perspective (Proceedings of the British Academy, vol. 214), Oxford: Oxford University Press, 140–54. Raz, J. (1999), Engaging Reason – On the Theory of Value and Action, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Reck, E. (2013), ‘The Owl of Minerva: Is Analytic Philosophy Moribund?’, in: Reck, E. (ed.), The Historical Turn in Analytic Philosophy, London: Palgrave, 326–47. Rorty, R. (1984), ‘The Historiography of Philosophy: Four Genres’, in: Rorty, R., Schneewind, J.B., & Skinner, Q. (eds.), Philosophy in History, Cambridge: ­Cambridge University Press, 49–76. Ryle, G. (1971), ‘Autobiographical’, in: Wood, O., & Pitcher, G. (eds.), Ryle, ­London: Macmillan, 1–5. Sorell, T. (2005), ‘On Saying No to History of Philosophy’, in: Sorell, T., & Rogers, G.A.J. (eds.), Analytic Philosophy and History of Philosophy, Oxford: ­Clarendon Press, 43–59. Sorell, T., & Rogers, G.A.J. (eds.). (2005), Analytic Philosophy and History of Philosophy, Oxford, Clarendon Press. Strawson, P.F. (1959), Individuals: An Essay in Descriptive Metaphysics, London: Methuen. Textor, M. (1996), Bolzanos Propositionalismus, Berlin & New York: De Gruyter. Thomas, A. (ed.) (2007), Bernard Williams, Cambridge & New York: Cambridge University Press. Willett, J. (ed. and trans.) (1964), Brecht on Theatre, New York: Hill and Wang. Williams, B. (1978), Descartes: The Project of Pure Enquiry, Harmondsworth: Penguin. Williams, B., (2000), ‘Philosophy as Humanistic Discipline’, Philosophy 75, 477–96. Williams, B. (2002a), ‘Why Philosophy Needs History’, London Review of Books 24, 7–9. Williams, B. (2002b), Truth and Truthfulness. An Essay in Genealogy, Princeton: Princeton University Press. Williams, B. (2006), The Sense of the Past. Essay in the History of Philosophy, ed. by M. Burnyeat, Princeton: Princeton University Press. Williams, B. (2007), Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy, London: Routledge. (First published by Fontana Press in 1985).

5 The good life and the unity of the virtues Some reflections upon Williams on Aristotle A.W. Price Reading the little that Bernard Williams published about Aristotle’s ­ethics – whether passingly, in Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy (1985), or selectively, and always searchingly, in three papers republished posthumously in The Sense of the Past (2006) – one may be suffused by a sense of nostalgia. Williams was writing as a member of a generation of Oxford philosophers for whom Plato and Aristotle were a familiar and central part of the philosophical curriculum. When he raised the question, central to their ethics, of the unity of the virtues, he was taking up an issue that at once related intimately to ancient texts and engaged with current concerns. He could expect an overlapping audience of readers of Greek and practicing philosophers – overlapping, since many (not only in Oxford) were both. In 2016, anyone who takes this issue up in a Greek context must expect a readership of others equally devoted to what has become an interpretative enterprise isolated from contemporary philosophy. Williams retained a sense that thoughts arising within the reading of Greek texts can echo within current debates as reverberantly as any attached to recent issues and isms. He thus enjoyed a double sense of unity, one linking all contemporary moral theorists, the other connecting his own world to ancient Athens. That shared culture has now splintered, and each of us tries to make the best of selected fragments. Williams could recall two texts that were central to the Greats syllabus when he was young, Plato’s Republic and Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics [NE], with a combination of familiarity and detachment. This kept him alive to certain broad features of Greek thought that may now be over-­ familiar to some, and unfamiliar to others. Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy opens with a chapter titled ‘Socrates’ Question’ which itself starts as follows: ‘It is not a trivial question, Socrates said: what we are talking about is how one should live’ (alluding to Republic I 352d). Williams draws our attention to certain features of this fundamental and yet (we may think) unanswerable question. The question is not, as any of us might ask himself, ‘How shall I live?’ As Williams notes (1985: 4), ‘The generality of one already stakes a claim. The Greek language does not even give us one: the formula is impersonal’. It is assumed that there is a general answer that should provide a common

The good life and the unity of the virtues  73 contour to individual aspirations and predilections. The question is asked from a viewpoint that is timeless: ‘It invites me to think about my life from no particular point in it’ (19). Though it must have practical implications if it is not to be idle, it is itself rather ‘reflective’ than ‘immediate’ – ‘it is not about what I should do now, or next’, but about ‘a manner of life’ (4). It is anybody’s question not just in that anyone can ask it, but in that it is part of its sense that the question can be put to anybody (20). In this respect, it surely brings us close to the sphere of the ethical: the man who pretends to answer it must, in Hume’s words (1902: sect. IX, pt. I), ‘depart from his private and particular situation’ and ‘choose a point of view, common to him with others’. And yet the terms of the question are not explicitly ethical: the ‘should’ is not qualified by any adverb such as our ‘morally’. It will emerge that, for Aristotle as for Plato, the answer is in part ethical; yet that this holds only in part indicates that even the ethical aspect of the answer must recommend itself in a way that rests upon no specifically ethical presumptions. Williams offers this restatement of the question: ‘How has one most reason to live?’ (19). This is itself neutral between different possible reasons: as he remarks, ‘There is no special consideration for respectable justifying reasons’ (ibid.). How then are we to progress rationally from an unsubscripted ‘ought’ to an ‘ought’ that at least respects morality? Socrates may have hoped to make the transition through argument; yet, as Williams notes (39), Aristotle does not intend his ethical reflections to play a formative role in directing any agent toward some way of living well. Williams sees this as a restriction: ‘Ethical philosophy … no longer addresses its considerations to each person, so that each may answer the Socratic question’ (ibid.). There is no answer to that question that can be cogent for those who, having the wrong values, most need it (40). One becomes, or fails to become, virtuous only through habituation (39). Achieving an understanding of ethical matters is only beneficial to those who already desire and act in accordance with the logos (NE I.3 1095a10–11).1 It may then seem a contingency what kind of character a man achieves, and an open question whether this generates a way of life that can be recognized as, in some neutral sense, a ‘happy’ or eudaimōn one. However, the second anxiety would overlook another feature of Aristotle’s thinking to which Williams draws attention. Aristotle ‘held a very strong theory of general teleology: each kind of thing had an ideal form of functioning, which fitted together with that of other things’ (43). In the NE, this is most familiar within the so-called ‘function argument’. As can be overlooked, this has two distinct stages, of which the first sets the framework of the second. In I.7, it is first argued that men are marked out by a mode of activity that distinguishes them within the relevant comparison class, that is, among other animals; for man is a rational animal. This, rather obviously, must be rational activity. (It needn’t be a problem that there may be other rational beings who are not animals, notably gods.) At the next

74  A.W. Price stage, Aristotle advances the claim that the human good is to be found in rational activity that is good of its kind, that is, ‘in accordance with virtue’ (or ‘excellence’, 1098a16–7). 2 One should note that this is asserted only at a high level of abstraction: nothing here makes explicit what the relevant criteria of ‘virtue’ may be – and the qualification that follows (‘if there is a plurality of virtues, in accordance with the best and most perfect’, a17–8) is notoriously open-ended. And yet there is evidently a large assumption at work. For Aristotle, the virtuous agent can find no conflict between the view of things he takes from the inside as himself a virtuous agent and a view from the outside that perceives his virtuous dispositions as integral to the ‘full development of human potentiality’ (52). Of course, Williams considers this conception to be one that can no longer be taken seriously. However, it is worth exploring how it lends itself, recurrently if somewhat passingly, to speculations in the text whose effect, when we take them together, is highly relevant, and not uncongenial, to some of Williams’s’ own concerns. Familiar elsewhere in Williams (1981) is a contrast between internal reasons for action that derive from the desires of the agent, and supposed (but only suppositious) external reasons that stand free of any such grounding. Now it might easily be supposed – and Williams may himself have supposed – that Aristotle’s so-called ‘function argument’, if successful, must have the effect of grounding external reasons for action that are inescapable for any agent to whom, as a human being, it applies. And it might seem that the actual goals and projects of any such agent then fall away as irrelevant to where his true good is to be found. Yet I believe this to be a misapprehension. A first thing to note is one of which Williams was well aware. The ethical theories of Plato and Aristotle contrast with most recent ones in that they are egocentric. Williams puts this in terms of reasons: They suppose that they have to show to each person that he has good reason to live ethically; and the reason has to appeal to that person in terms of something about himself, how and what he will be if he is a person with that sort of character. (32) What is ethically good must therefore also be good for the agent, though not in that it benefits him in terms of ‘some set of individual satisfactions which is well defined before ethical considerations appear’ (ibid.). The good, and even the obligatory, do not relate to him as something external that makes demands upon him that are ultimately on behalf of others than himself. Sacrificing oneself, and one’s own happiness, for a moral end becomes not just supererogatory, but conceptually impossible. Saying this still leaves open whether the ethical good, identified in a way with the agent’s good, connects with his own projects and desires. Aristotelian teleology can operate quite outside the sphere of desire: acorns are as

The good life and the unity of the virtues  75 they are in order they may grow into oaks – which has nothing to do with any aspirations of theirs. However, we may fantasize that, if acorns had aspirations, they would aspire to become oaks. Human beings are creatures that are both objects of teleological explanation (most of our constitution serves ends that benefit each of us as an organic whole), and subjects of desire. It is then a natural presumption that the ends that explain our constitution should also register as targets of our appetency. This is more plausible in that these explanatory ends extend beyond the realm of the purely biological (though Aristotle sees sexual reproduction as enabling animals to ‘partake of the everlasting and divine in so far as they can’, De Anima [DA] II.4 415a29–b1, and so relates it to the same noble end by which he privileges theoretical contemplation, NE X.7 1177b33); for they extend to the sphere of the social and even intellectual. We are constituted as we are in order that we may cooperate and contemplate, sharing a language and using it both to understand the world and to benefit one another. Aristotle is then willing to surmise that there is a greater degree of underlying unanimity in our goal-directedness than may always be apparent. The proper role of habituation is then not to inscribe virtues rather than vices upon a tabula rasa, but to develop what is already present, making it dominant and efficacious. It is a significant feature of this teleology that it fleshes out what the function argument itself left abstract and schematic: that failed to specify what form rational activity must take if it is to accord with excellence; yet Aristotle explains human capacities as subserving ways of living that are less indeterminate, since they involve cooperation in social and intellectual life.3 And there is evidence that he supposed that human beings all aspire to such a life, even if it may also be true that, less authentically, ‘most men, and men of the most vulgar type’ prefer a life of pleasure like that of cattle (I.5 1095b14–20). We have a range of passages to bring together. An overlap of desires makes possible a kind of friendship even between the good and the acratic or even base: ‘An upright man may be a friend to a base man; for he may be useful in relation to his choice – the base man being of use to the virtuous in relation to the latter’s current choice, the upright man to the acratic in relation to this current choice and to the base in relation to his natural choice’ (Eudemian Ethics [EE] VII.2 1238b1–5). And further: ‘Again, they may be friends … in so far as there is something upright in all … or in so far as they suit one another; for all have something of the good’ (b9–14). The first sentence envisages a degree of cooperation that must require that the ‘natural choice’ of the bad agent be an actual goal of his, though one that contrasts with other goals of his; the second sentence supposes that such a ‘choice’ is natural to all men, otherwise good or bad. Similarly, it can be suggested that all creatures ‘pursue not the pleasure they think they pursue nor that which they would say they pursue, but the same pleasure; for all things have by nature something divine in them’ (NE VII.13 1153b31–2); and ‘perhaps

76  A.W. Price even in base beings there is some natural good stronger than themselves which aims at their own good’ (X.2 1173a4–5).4 Though Williams himself makes less of this than I would have wished, he may show himself aware of it when he writes, ‘In Aristotle’s teleological universe, every human being (or at least every non-defective male who is not a natural slave) has a kind of inner nisus towards a life of at least civic virtue’ (44); we have only to make it explicit that this ‘nisus’ is accessible to consciousness in the form of desire.5 There are two further ways of arguing that Aristotle saw things so. Firstly, there is his conception of the natural virtues: ‘All men think that each type of character belongs to its possessors in a way by nature; for from the very moment of birth we are just and inclined to temperance and courageous and so on’ (VI.13 1144b4–6). Now, it may well be that virtues, rather than vices, are instanced here just because the topic of the chapter is virtue (b1). However, we should recall an earlier remark: if eudaimonia comes of virtue, ‘it will also be widely shared; for all who are not disabled as regards virtue may win it by a certain kind of learning and care’ (I.9 1099b18–20, cf. EE I.3 1215a12–9), whereas ‘to entrust to fortune what is greatest and most noble would be a very defective arrangement’ (b24–5). Taken together, these passages imply that a degree of natural virtue is not a gift of fortune, but to be expected of any man. Secondly, there is a passage within NE IX.4 (1166b3–25) which describes not only the acratic but also the ‘thoroughly base and impious’ (b5), as being subject to intense inner conflict: Such men do not feel delight or grieve with themselves; for their soul is rent by faction, and one element in it by reason of its depravity grieves when it abstains from certain acts, while the other is pleased, and one draws them this way and the other that, as if they were pulling them in pieces. (b18–22) This implies that even the vicious are in two minds about acting viciously, for the reason that they are in part, and most plausibly by nature, virtuous also. It will follow, even according to Williams’s’ privileging of internal reasons over external, that all, or almost all, men have reason to act virtuously. (It is a further question whether they have most reason so to act; however, recall the claim that even the base have a natural nisus toward the good that is ‘stronger than themselves’, X.2 1173a4–5.) Now, I noted that the initial characterization of the human good as rational activity ‘in accordance with virtue’ (I. 7 1098a17) is itself highly abstract. It only later becomes clear that Aristotle has fairly specific conceptions of the various virtues of ­ illiams our composite nature, intellectual, and practical. A question that W then raises is whether he is right to expect that all our potentialities should

The good life and the unity of the virtues  77 be satisfactorily realizable without hard choices and residual regret. As he reports, ‘Aristotle saw a certain kind of ethical, cultural, and indeed political life as a harmonious culmination of human potentialities’ (52); by contrast, he thinks, ‘Our present understanding gives us no reason to expect that ethical dispositions can be fully harmonized with other cultural and personal aspirations that have as good a claim to represent human development’ (ibid.). However, it is an interesting implication of recent debate about how Aristotle saw the role of theoretical contemplation within the best human life that, if he did achieve a unified conception, it was not easily. Notoriously, he spells out the privileges of the contemplation of scientific truth in NE X.7 with such an excess of the higher salesmanship that it becomes arguable that he takes it to exhaust the true sphere of eudaimonia, and questionable whether he can justify placing restrictions upon the moral sacrifices (such as committing a profitable crime) that might be made for its maximization. It turns out to be the highest pleasures that throw in doubt the reconciliation of rationality and respectability. Famously, the same tension arises in Plato’s Republic, where the best ground that Socrates offers philosophers against the temptation to neglect their fellow citizens by lingering in an ivory tower is curiously parochial and prosaic: having been educated at the public expense, they owe the city their services in return (VII 520). About Plato, interpreters disagree whether we are permitted to enrich so spare a rationale by ideas that can be found elsewhere, inside or outside the Republic itself. About Aristotle, they disagree whether NE X.7 expresses Aristotle’s final word about the extent of eudaimonia, or whether it was always his intention to supplement it by the reflections in X.8 that remind us that men are not gods, and must find their central satisfactions in a life that is divine in certain respects, but also practical and human. It remains striking that, whatever he decided, Aristotle must view the unity of the best human life as less definite than debatable. Within its ethical aspect, questions arise about the unity of the various virtues of character. Here, Williams confidently contrasts Aristotle’s view with common sense. Aristotle believes in a unified variety of the virtues, not identifying them all with a single virtue (as Plato did in the Protagoras), and yet supposing that to have one is to have all. Williams has two, actually separate, grounds for rejecting this. Firstly, he takes a virtue to be a sensitivity to a certain range of considerations, and supposes that an agent may be appropriately sensitive to one such range, but hypersensitive, or imperfectly sensitive, to another. Secondly, he takes courage to be an executive capacity that does not provide motives of its own but assists virtues (or vices) in achieving their own distinctive goals (1985: 5).6 Characteristically, Williams remains canny enough to identify why Plato and Aristotle may always have supposed otherwise (9). They shared a strong view of what it is for a disposition to be a virtue; for they could not allow that, through the possession of some virtue, an agent should ever act worse than he might otherwise have done.7 Consequently, we cannot count

78  A.W. Price an agent as possessing justice as a virtue if he can be led, by considerations, say, of desert, to neglect some different consideration that should, in context, be overriding. Yet Williams rejects this. I believe that he is wrong, not about a common use of words like ‘just’ that is less demanding (see Price, 2011: 141–2), but in failing to find a place for the Greek ideal. It is at once an easy thought, and one that it is hard to escape, that to weigh a consideration rightly is not just to appreciate it in isolation, but to weigh it rightly against other considerations.8 Of course, one may go wrong in assigning no importance to considerations of a certain kind. Yet that is just one extreme: one may also go wrong in assigning them too much, or too little importance – and what can that mean except in relation to other considerations? So these too must be rightly weighed. Thus Williams’ own conception of most virtues as being distinguished by differing ranges of ­considerations leads us quickly to an acceptance of their unity.9 A further reflection is the following. What makes a virtue a virtue is not independent of its contribution to any life that we can recognize as a good life for a human being to lead within human society. What makes one virtue a virtue is thus not independent of what makes any virtue a virtue. Virtues cease to be virtues when they are cut off from a grounding that, without being consequentialist, is global. The ethical world is a unity, and not a federation of sub-worlds defined by different virtues. Thus to appreciate the values that make one virtue a virtue is not detachable from appreciating the values that make other virtues virtues. Yet there is more to be said about the special virtue of courage. This may be distinctive in that it is defined rather by a counter-goal (Pears, 1980; 174) than a positive target: to be brave is not to be inappropriately deterred from the pursuit of a goal by the presence of a danger. However, to infer from this that the value of courage is executive, and so instrumental, may be a mistake. There are several ways of arguing this. Take, firstly, an instance of misplaced bravado: it may demand nerves of steel to attempt to rob a bank with a dummy pistol; but can it idiomatically be called ‘courageous’? Surely not – which is not to say that it counts as ‘cowardly’ either (contrary to a tendency of politicians to apply the term to steely acts of terrorism).10 Secondly, Williams writes as follows in distinguishing courage from most other virtues (2006a: 194–5): Courageous or self-controlled things are not done ‘for their own sake’, and doing them for their own sake would be something quite special: something like doing a certain thing in a certain situation to display or develop one’s courage or self-control. I do not see how this can be cogent outside a consequentialist conception of courage that one would expect to be alien to Williams. It would appear to be a slip that he supposes that an act done to develop one’s courage might

The good life and the unity of the virtues  79 thereby count as done for its own sake. But should we accept that, if a brave act is performed for its own sake, this is in order to display courage? The term ‘display’ may itself be ambiguous: intentionally displaying a virtue to others may be ostentatious; displaying it intentionally to myself is possible (say in order to reassure myself about my possession of it), but indeed ‘quite special’. Does courage really contrast here with, say, generosity? I may serve a friend by benefiting him greatly but expensively, or by sacrificing my life for his (cf. IX.8 1168a18–20). Suppose that things go wrong, and that I fail to benefit him, or to save him, and yet still count as acting generously or courageously. Surely, I have still done something of value for its own sake; and I may well be encouraged by this thought to take a risk that I would otherwise not take. Where then is Williams’ distinction? And yet he is in a way acute about what is involved in acting on a virtue. The man who acts generously (say) typically orients his deliberations toward the goal not of acting generously, but of benefiting a recipient. Williams writes (2006a: 193), ‘Typically there is a kind of reason or consideration present to the agent’s thought that goes with the act’s being of this particular V kind’. He infers that, if we can say that a man chooses a generous act qua generous, this is rather de re than de dicto: ‘We understand what it is about the situation and the action that makes this action in this situation something that would seem to a generous person the appropriate thing to do’ (ibid.). Justice is ‘about the only case’ where we can speak of choosing a V act qua V de dicto (191). Possibly contrary to what Williams supposes (he is inexplicit), Aristotle may not disagree. The language of ‘choosing a generous act qua generous’ is not perspicuous. In search of an Aristotelian equivalent, we should recall his characterizations of choice: it is ‘a deliberate desire of things in our own power’ (NE III.3 1113a11), and ‘of this and for the sake of that’ (EE II.11 1227b37). Thus it is of a means to an end that has set deliberation in train.11 Though some commentators assume otherwise,12 there is no evidence of his holding that, say, a generous agent typically takes it as his goal to be generous, and then calculates how to achieve this in context. It may be distinctively that injustice becomes an explicit counter-goal of the just man: ‘With what purpose did he come? In order to get the money. And that in order to pay back what he owed; and that in order not to act unjustly’ (Posterior Analytics I.24 85b30–2). This connects with the nature of justice as what Kant was to distinguish as a ‘perfect’ virtue, in contrast to the ‘imperfect’ virtue of generosity: the generous man often (but not always – which would be nonsense) acts generously; the just man never acts unjustly, being inhibited by the explicit thought ‘That would be unjust’. What Aristotle envisages as a more typical starting point for deliberation is debatable. I take as most indicative a passage in the EE: The deliberating part of the soul is that which considers a cause of some sort. For the end [the hou heneka] is one of the causes: a cause is that

80  A.W. Price owing to which a thing is or comes about, and the end of a thing’s being or coming about we call its cause (for instance, of walking, the fetching of things, if this is the purpose for which one walks). That is why those who have no aim fixed have no inclination to deliberate. (II.10 1226b25–30) According to this, what makes possible a calculation (logismos) of means toward an end is the adoption of a practicable end that is sufficiently specific and concrete. Such an end is not selected by reason, but a state of character that, ideally, is a virtue: ‘Virtue makes the target [skopos] correct, and practical wisdom the things leading to it’ (NE VI.12 1144a7–9, cf. EE II.11 1227b12–25). The target is prompted in context by the standing concerns of a virtuous agent.13 It is indeed also true that he acts ‘for the sake of the kalon’ (the ‘fine’, or ‘noble’, e.g. NE III.7 1115b13, EE III.1 1229b27–9). This goal is particularly associated with courage: courage strictly so called (kyriōs) is shown in battle, precisely because that is ‘the greatest and noblest danger’ (NE III.6 1115a29–31). Yet, the noble becomes a target even of a temperate appetite (III.12 1119b15–6).14 Hence, the virtuous agent is concerned to pursue ends that are noble themselves, and can be achieved by means that are at least not ignoble. It does not follow that acting nobly is the initial goal that he sets himself, and which then directs all his deliberations. (Though always present to him as a general aspiration, it is too indeterminate to set deliberation in train.) If these issue in appropriate action, he will be conscious that he is acting well and nobly. And this may be a crucial compensation if, say, he is having to risk, or even to sacrifice, his life in battle: Aristotle infers from the case of a courage that is self-sacrificing, ‘It is not then the case that with all the virtues the exercise of them is pleasant, except in so far as it reaches its end’ (III.9 1117b15–6) – where he has in mind acting nobly as an abstract aspect of the concrete goal that constitutes the starting point of the agent’s deliberation, which might be saving the life of a friend (cf. IX.8 1169a18–9). (This is an important shift since, from an ethical point of view, we do not want to say simply, if he dies in an unsuccessful attempt, that he has failed.) If he possesses the concept of courage, he may well be conscious that he is acting courageously. Yet it would be misleading to say that he does what he does in order to be acting courageously, if that would imply a deliberation of the following form: ‘An acute danger is present. How can I face it courageously? I shall save my friend’s life’. Rather, he acts in order to save his friend’s life, valuing his friend for his own sake (cf. VIII.2 1155b31, IX.4 1166a30–2, IX.9 1170b5–7), certainly with the reassuring conviction that, whether he succeeds or fails, he is thereby achieving a great, because a noble, good for himself (IX.8 1169a18–26). To say that he acts as he does in order to be acting bravely, or indeed nobly, would distort the nature of his deliberations, and the different roles of virtue and reason.

The good life and the unity of the virtues  81 How then are we to demarcate the various virtues? We may seem to have on the one hand a medley of concrete goals adopted from occasion to occasion, and on the other entirely general goals such as acting well and nobly. Williams objects of the second that, if we identify acting virtuously with acting well for the sake of the noble, ‘the distinctness of the virtues will be under-represented in the agent’s thought’ (192). It may well be, as he supposes, that the virtues are distinguished by their sensitivity to different ranges of considerations.15 It was on the basis of this that I argued in favor of their unity earlier. A generous agent, taking into account all that he ought to take into account in deciding how much to give to whom, must be able to weigh it all together; otherwise, he will not possess generosity as a virtue.16 Consider acts of temperance. On occasion these may serve some distinctive end (say, the agent’s health or good condition, NE III.11 1119a16), and yet there is another common case (recurrent in Spenser’s Faerie Queene): engaged on a noble quest or project, I show temperance in refusing to be distracted from it even by a Belle Dame Sans Merci. (It is this that distinguishes an ethical concern to be temperate from valetudinarianism.) Dangers threaten pains that may have to be risked, while temptations offer pleasures that may have to be shunned, in both cases for the sake of overriding goals that have themselves nothing specially to do with either courage or temperance. If courage is always defined by a counter-goal (viz. a danger to be avoided), temperance is often characterized by one (viz. a pleasure not to be pursued); if courage is to count as an executive virtue, so, often, must temperance. It is better to recognize that all virtues demand an ability to weigh one kind of consideration against another, and so are mutually involving. If I have a single conclusion, it is hardly a striking one: Williams is always illuminating about the issues of Aristotelian ethics, but not always right. At least, when he is wrong he is wrong about things that matter. Reread in a time of specialization, he reclaims Plato and Aristotle for nothing less than philosophy.

Notes 1 On Aristotle’s lack of concern to justify his starting-points, see Karbowski (2015). 2 For renderings of Aristotle’s Ethics, I draw on Barnes and Kenny (2014). 3 Cf. Leunissen (2015: 221): ‘The “common task” humans share thus has both a biological and a moral dimension: humans naturally live and work together for the sake of survival (Politics [Pol.] I.2 1253a1–4), but must do so for the sake of living well, since this is the best goal, and this is why cities exist (I.2 1252b27–1253a1, III.6 1278b15–30).’ This finds explanatory the possibility of a rational life whose excellence is not indeterminate, but displayed in civic cooperation; and this demands virtues of the kind that Aristotle will describe. 4 The first ‘good’ in 1173a4–5 is suspicious, and may be spurious. The phrase ‘their own good’ has to be understood as de re rather than de dicto.

82  A.W. Price 5 Thus it is of a piece that men are by nature political animals, and desire to live together (Pol. III.6 1278b19–21); similarly, since friendship is necessary for life (viz. a human life), nobody would choose to live without friends (NE VIII.1 1155a4–5). In other cases, the nisus may be defined too theoretically to correlate with any plausible goal of desire (as with a nisus to achieve maximal ‘actualization’ – a concept invented by Aristotle), but may yet generate desires that are widely shared. 6 This connects courage to other virtues. Cf. Geach (2001: 44): ‘Any virtue may be corrupted by a failure of courage, in a world when there are dangers to face and afflictions to endure: if a man is prepared to intermit the practice of some virtue when that becomes too dangerous or too toilsome, then he does not really possess that virtue any more … It would be absurd to say of some judge: “He is really an upright judge, even though he bends the law sometimes under threats from the Mafia.”’ 7 ‘Worse’ here must mean ethically worse; for Aristotle has to concede, ‘Men have been undone … by reason of their courage’ (NE I.3 1094b18–9). 8 For a nice illustration, cf. Sachs (1960: 21) writing about his father: ‘He had the sense of justice pushed to excess, I mean pushed to the point of injustice.’ He refuses to count this really as justice. 9 Of course, such considerations give rise to the question, at once practical and theoretical, ‘How are we, and what is it, to weigh these things rightly?’ This is sometimes, though not always, hard to answer, and Williams was doubtless also motivated by a rich awareness of this. I can only mention it here. 10 For a contrasted and yet related case, cf. Plutarch reporting the Spartan king Agesilaus in his Apothegmata Laconica (208C): ‘When some criminal submitted calmly to torture, he remarked, “What an exceptionally wicked man he is to apply such endurance and fortitude to evil and disreputable ends!”’ If he indeed showed endurance, endurance is a quality, but not a virtue, of character. Yet there is a flexibility in our ways of speaking that also allows Philippa Foot to write, ‘Not every man who has a virtue has something that is a virtue in him’ (1978: 17). 11 This is disputed. Williams (2006a: 191) follows Sarah Broadie (and others) in not taking choice to require actual deliberation. Not all, but most, of the evidence is against that; see Price (2011: 213 n., 232 n.). 12 A recent example is Gill (2015). She overlooks a lack of evidence through omitting to look for any. 13 I take this also to be conveyed at VI.12 1144a31–3: ‘Deductions which deal with matters of action have a starting-point – “since the end, and what is best, is such and such” (whatever it may be: let it for the sake of argument be what it chances to be)’. This indicates a varying end adopted in context. It is possible, as Terence Irwin has suggested to me, that this end is nothing other than acting in accordance with some relevant virtue. Yet I would rather go by X.8 1178a17–8: ‘The starting-points of practical wisdom accord with the virtues of character’. 14 Exactly what this means is admittedly obscure, given that appetite, as one species of desire, aims at pleasure (DA II.3 414b5–6, NE VII.6 1149a34–b1), and (it becomes clear) bodily pleasure; perhaps it just means that temperate appetites are not merely controlled by, but fall in line with, the agent’s orientation toward the noble (cf. I.13 1102b26–8). 15 It is compatibly with this that Aristotle also tries to correlate different virtues with different emotions and motivations that they serve to direct. For a specific complaint that this conception misleads him in the case of justice, see ­Williams (2006b). However, Aristotle’s focus fits a thesis of Philippa Foot’s that the ­virtues ‘are corrective, each one standing at a point at which there is some temptation to be resisted or deficiency of motivation to be made good’ (1978: 8).

The good life and the unity of the virtues  83 Whether or not the virtues form a unity in Aristotle’s sense, the considerations to which they are sensitive interlock. Is it generous to rob Peter to pay Paul? (Cf. Foot, 2002: 70–2, on benevolence and justice.) Is it generous to give a friend a drink that it would be intemperate of him to consume? Such questions must rather trouble the denier, than the defender, of the unity of the virtues. 16 I make the same general point in Price (2011: 93) by distinguishing considerations of justice, which are distinctive, from considerations for justice, which have many sources. To possess justice as a virtue, an agent needs to be sensitive to both. (Sachs’s father was so obsessed by the first that he neglected the second.) Justice is characterized by considerations of a kind; one still needs the other virtues – and so justice as a virtue – to weigh these rightly in context.

References Barnes, J. & Kenny, A. (trs) (2014), Aristotle’s Ethics: Writings from the Complete Works (Princeton: Princeton University Press). Foot, P. (1978), ‘Virtues and Vices’, in her Virtues and Vices and Other Essays in Moral Philosophy (Oxford: Basil Blackwell), 1–18. ——— (2002), ‘Utilitarianism and the Virtues’ (1985), in her Moral Dilemmas and Other Topics in Moral Philosophy (Oxford: Clarendon Press), 59–77. Geach, P. (2001), Truth and Hope (Notre Dame: Notre Dame Press). Gill, M.L. (2015), ‘Virtue and Reason in Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics’, in Henry & Nielsen (eds), 94–110. Henry, D. & Nielsen, K.M. (eds) (2015), Bridging the Gap between Aristotle’s Science and Ethics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Hume, D. (1902), An Enquiry concerning the Principles of Morals, in L.A. Selby-­ Bigge (ed), (Oxford: Clarendon Press). Karbowski, J. (2015), ‘Endoxa, Facts, and the Starting Points of the Nicomachean Ethics’, in Henry & Nielsen (eds), 113–29. Leunissen, M. (2015), ‘Aristotle on Knowing Natural Science for the Sake of Living Well’, in Henry & Nielsen (eds), 214–31. Pears, D. (1980), ‘Courage as a Mean’, in A.O. Rorty (ed.), Essays on Aristotle’s Ethics (Berkeley & Los Angeles: University of California Press), 171–87. Price, A.W. (2011), Virtue and Reason in Plato and Aristotle (Oxford: Clarendon Press). Sachs, M. (1960), Le Sabbat (Paris: Gallimard). Williams, B. (1981), ‘External and Internal Reasons’ (1980), in his Moral Luck (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), 101–13. ——— (1985), Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy (London: Fontana/Collins). ——— (2006), The Sense of the Past: Essays in the History of Philosophy (Princeton: Princeton University Press). ——— (2006a), ‘Acting as the Virtuous Person Acts’ (1995), in Williams (2006), 189–97. ——— (2006b), ‘Justice as a Virtue’ (1980), in Williams (2006), 207–17.

6 Humanism and cruelty in Williams Lorenzo Greco

If one examines Bernard Williams’ conception of philosophical activity, what is striking is the connection he draws between the practice of providing explanation and consideration of the concrete existence of human beings. “I take philosophy to be,” says Williams, “part of a more general attempt to make the best sense of our life, and so of our intellectual activities, in the situation in which we find ourselves.”1 He also says that “philosophy is essentially reflective,”2 and is a “humanistic discipline.” This constant reflective questioning of human practices in an effort to provide meaning to our existence, given the circumstances in which we find ourselves, becomes especially clear in Williams’ thought at the point where ethics and politics meet. In this essay, I inquire further into the interplay between reflection and concern for the fate of human beings by focusing specifically on that meeting point. My approach is largely exegetical. I consider passages mainly from Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy but also from Williams’ political essays and from Truth and Truthfulness. I start with the question of an ethical justification of politics in relation to Williams’ version of political realism. I then examine the role that truth and relativism play in it. Finally, I consider what he says about the self-evidence of human rights. Those themes are at the heart of Williams’ take on ethics and politics, and I’m not the first to analyze them. However, I want to look at them from the specific angle of the capacity of human beings to suffer and to make others suffer. I argue that a plausible key to understanding the role of ethics in Williams’ conception of politics is his emphasis on human beings as individuals exposed to the possibility of suffering because of someone else’s cruelty. The vantage point offered by people’s vulnerability to others’ cruelty helps to make sense of Williams’ views about the powers and limits of philosophical reflection, and thus makes it clearer why Williams believes that philosophy should be seen as a humanistic discipline.

A historical justification? First, a brief reminder of Williams’ strategy for his political realism. ­Williams identifies a “‘first’ political question” on which political reflection

Humanism and cruelty in Williams  85 should be based. He frames it “in Hobbesian terms as the securing of order, protection, safety, trust, and the conditions of cooperation,” and crucially adds that, as “a solution to this first question [is] required all the time, it is affected by historical circumstances.”3 The need for a convincing answer to this question corresponds for Williams to a request for legitimation for the state. The state, which represents the solution usually given to the Hobbesian question, should not become part of the problem. Instead, the state should offer a justification of the exercise of its power that can be accepted by the people that are its subjects.4 The point for Williams is that such a request cannot be traced back to a moral principle preceding politics, but derives from the observation that too often the abuse of power is a matter of fact. Nor does the appeal to the “force of reason”5 help when it comes to oppose this abuse of power. In fact, by believing in the alleged force of reason, we end up telling ourselves a fairy tale: “Of course, one can imagine oneself as Kant at the court of King Arthur, disapproving of its injustices, but exactly what grip does this get on one’s ethical or political thought?”6 It is not just the case that a theory that appeals to the force of reason (be it Kantian, or utilitarian) won’t be able to secure “order, protection, safety, trust, and the conditions of cooperation.” It is the very justification the theory is putting forward that will make little sense; a justification for the exercise of power that doesn’t come to terms with the fact that the justification itself is the result of historical contingencies will be destined to remain a dead letter.7 Instead, the only reasonable consideration that appears to have some weight for Williams is that power never justifies itself so that the problem of political legitimation becomes that of finding a justification of power that, on the one hand, is always historical, but, on the other, never reduces itself to the acknowledgment, and to the supine acceptance, that a certain form of dominion happened to succeed. Notwithstanding Williams’ dismissal of moral principles in politics, and his sharp criticism of political moralism, it has been observed that he can avoid this impasse only by referring to a moral principle of some sort. There must be a “morality prior to politics,”8 or else ethical justification ends up being relativized to an historical accident.9 This seems like a dilemma, but I believe that Williams has a solution. For historical reasons, Williams notes, liberalism provides the most plausible justification for the request for legitimation. However, the liberal legitimation is not the only possible one.10 Today, Western society considers the exercise of power by liberal states as legitimate; nevertheless, what Western society considers legitimate is not necessarily considered so in other contexts and times. What Williams says with respect to liberalism should be taken literally; if liberalism is so convincing when compared to other solutions that have been offered to the request for legitimation, this is due to the success liberalism has obtained in the course of its history, making its justificatory power a matter of “constitutive luck.”11 Liberalism is the

86  Lorenzo Greco fortunate outcome of a specific political context that took place for the first time in the Enlightenment12 and does not represent the moral presupposition of that context. Lacking consciousness of its own history, liberalism has instead turned into “a revealed religion.”13 Conversely, if there is a lesson to learn from history, it is that history is not vindicatory. That is, we might like to see our ideas, like liberal ideas of equality and equal rights, as having won an argument against earlier conceptions, like those of the ancien régime. History, however, shows that though these ideas ‘won’, they didn’t win an argument. For the standards or aims of the argument practised by the proponents of liberal ideas were not shared by the defenders of the ancien régime. This brings home to us the historical contingency of our ideas and outlook.14 Liberals for Williams should acknowledge both the fact that more often than not there is no right answer in political conflicts, and the fact that our interlocutors might well not be reasonable agents, but “opponents”15 who should be treated as such. Therefore, the critique of non-liberal states should be based on historical considerations, not on the assumption of the universality of liberal principles. So is it an historical accident what can be said about the ethical justification of politics, as the case of liberalism suggests? For Williams, things are not so simple. Justification is given in history, but is not reduced to it. Consider here the importance of truth in politics. It might turn out that a certain state has based its legitimation on false or imposed beliefs, or on mythological narrations that do not correspond to any real historical event.16 It is essential, however, that in order for the state to be legitimate, those beliefs on which its legitimation is based must be true. Yet, truth alone is not the whole of the story. Human beings need to show “the ‘virtues of truth,’ qualities of people that are displayed in wanting to know the truth, in finding it out, and in telling it to other people.”17 These virtues are “Accuracy and Sincerity: you do the best you can to acquire true beliefs, and what you say reveals what you believe.”18 So if truth is considered fundamental, this is because it is connected to human practices regarding the recognition of truth, its diffusion and its safeguard. Truth can be traced back to the virtuous character trait of truthfulness,19 and, in turn, truth becomes a non-negotiable political value because it runs the risk of always being denied. As Williams observes discussing Orwell’s 1984, “it is a very basic exercise of power over another person to induce beliefs in that person without regard to their truth or falsehood; intentionally to induce false beliefs, for instance, just because they are false.”20 If this is the case, then “the idea that some of a person’s beliefs are true”21 becomes all-important, as well as that that person can freely express them. This is a central political issue, since

Humanism and cruelty in Williams  87 the possibility of being so [of being able to express one’s beliefs] is connected ultimately with some things being and some things not being in his power. Without that, we have no adequate idea of his freedom, nor, in the end, of what counts as his humiliation. 22 Truthfulness, as expressed by single individuals as well as groups, and as promoted by political systems such as the liberal ones, is so politically important because the negation of truth opens the gates to deceit and coercion, and eventually to pain and suffering. 23 When this happens, there is surely reason to protest. However, this is not because a moral principle has been ignored, but because deceit and coercion are forms of unjustified violence exercised by some people against some other people. All these forms of violence refer to the Hobbesian first question, and Williams’ remarks regarding the unavoidable historicity of our attempts to provide ethical justifications to our political practice are always backed up by a constant concern for the frail condition of human beings taken as real people. This concern is ethical in nature, but it is fully given and expressed within the realm of politics. For Williams, the appeal to abstract ethical principles cannot justify certain political regimes over others, but the persistent possibility of human suffering certainly does: “Liberal societies are more successful in the modern world than others in helping people (at least in their own territories – their influence elsewhere has been less benign) to avoid what is universally feared: torture, violence, arbitrary power, and humiliation.”24 So Williams’ acceptance of liberalism depends on his conviction that a political regime such as the liberal one gains its justification by succeeding in securing liberty from the intimidation that the stronger are always tempted to exercise to the detriment of the weaker and more vulnerable. 25 Liberty, in turn, needs to find a political formulation, moving from a “primitive freedom,” understood as the pure absence of external constraints, to “liberty,” understood as a political value to be defended from the prevarication of other human beings, and in particular from the arbitrariness of an illegitimate authority. 26 Primitive freedom applies to human beings considered as bodies that relate to each other in causal relations, and implies the possibility of preventing human beings from ­l iterally moving, both with the use of chains and with threats. As ­Williams observes, “[t]he basic sense of being unfree is being in someone else’s power, and that in the basic sense implies that what you do is directed by another person’s intentions even if you do not want to do those things.”27 Once one recognizes this, freedom turns into liberty. In this second sense, to determine which losses of primitive freedom can count as a loss of liberty, and especially when considering what counts as ‘humanly imposed coercion,’ we have to consider what someone could reasonably

88  Lorenzo Greco resent as a loss. Here, the question of the form of society that is possible for us becomes relevant. 28 Hence, what is important with liberty is not to define it in abstraction, but to realize it in political terms, through a reflective comprehension of what liberty has become for us. This reflective comprehension is certainly historical in nature, but this doesn’t make its conclusions less normatively pressing for us. The importance of values such as truth and liberty is indeed reflectively supported for Williams, even if not by appealing to any ethical principle. Reference to the grim consequences for human beings of denying truth, and of restraining freedom, can by itself provide a powerful ethical justification for those solutions, such as liberalism, that promote truth (by cultivating the virtue of truthfulness) and freedom (by promoting the political value of liberty). To paraphrase Williams’ quotations at the beginning, any form of reflection on human practices cannot abstain from the situation in which we, as flesh and blood human beings, find ourselves. As a consequence, reflection cannot be given outside history; however, this does not mean that reflection loses its grip on us because of that. What I’m suggesting is that by concentrating on the avoidance of human suffering Williams can explain how it is possible that such historically informed reflection can in fact provide a compelling ethical vindication. Williams’ discussion of relativism provides additional support to this interpretative line.

Relativism of distance It might appear that Williams’ reference to history makes his position close to communitarianism. Certainly, there are numerous points in common, for instance the criticism of the rational and autonomous liberal subject as lacking a defined character; such a criticism can be found in Williams’ “Persons, Character and Morality,” but is also central to a well-known essay by Sandel. 29 Or take the dependency of moral judgments on an ethical reality that is largely unrelated to the will of the agents; this is emphasized by Williams when he talks of “thick” ethical concepts30 but also by T ­ aylor under the notion of “strong evaluation.”31 Finally, consider Williams’ recognition, noted above, of the origins of liberalism in the Enlightenment. MacIntyre, Sandel, and Taylor all see liberalism as a product of the Enlightenment as well; however, they take their cue from the historical immanence of liberalism to move a large-scale criticism of modernity. Still, it is a mistake to see Williams as a communitarian. For him, communitarianism is basically a reactionary doctrine, and its upholders are nostalgic for a past era that never really existed; they accept local practices without scrutinizing them, ending up agreeing to political regimes dominated by coercive power. 32 Their criticism of liberalism reveals for Williams a basic naivety since they do not seem to realize that they are in the position of criticizing liberalism only because they take for granted the condition

Humanism and cruelty in Williams  89 of security provided by liberalism itself, which allows them not to fear the consequences of their attempts to undermine it. On the contrary, Williams is well aware that this condition of security, far from being definitively established, is precarious, and dependent on the ever-revisable successes liberalism has gained in the course of its history.33 Williams clearly departs from a “destructive” and “conservative” attitude toward the Enlightenment, typical of philosophers like Nietzsche and “many Hegelians,” when he observes that [a] respect for freedom and social justice and a critique of oppressive and deceitful institutions may be no easier to achieve than they have been in the past, and may well be harder, but we need not suppose that we have no ideas to give them a basis. We should not concede to abstract ethical theory its claim to provide the only intellectual surroundings for such ideas.34 This is why Williams is a passionate advocate of the Enlightenment’s achievements.35 As for the Enlightenment thinkers, so for Williams the possibility of critical thinking remains fundamental; nevertheless, this possibility cannot be decontextualized, and is always related to human concerns. This explains why Williams is not a relativist in ethics and politics. Granted, Williams subscribes to a “relativism of distance”; chapter nine of Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy is entirely devoted to its discussion. According to it, if it makes sense to compare any systems of beliefs, this comparison has to be a “real” one and not a “notional” one. 36 That is, when we consider a different system of beliefs from our own as a possible source of reasons for action, this system has to be a real option for us. It is the case that many systems of beliefs that are distant in space and time, like “[t]he life of a Greek Bronze Age chief, or a mediaeval Samurai, and the outlooks that go with those,”37 do not represent for us genuine life possibilities. We can, of course, reflect on those value systems, Williams believes, and find inspiration in them when examining our actual ways of living. However, what we cannot do is take on those systems of beliefs and replicate them as they are. 38 If there is a reason to be a relativist, this has to do with our attributions of meaning, which may differ from other meanings attributed by other individuals or groups that do not represent real options for us. However, this is different from endorsing the idea that anything goes, or that what is good or right is relativized to different traditions or communities. As we have seen, Williams never questions truth, and its preservation remains for him a fundamental political value: Manifestly, there is relativity – what makes sense to some people is contrasted with what makes sense to others. But it is not a relativity of truth. There is no way in which the king’s death could have happened “for” the Anglo-Saxon chronicler and not happened “for” us, or the

90  Lorenzo Greco Germans have invaded Belgium in 1914 “for” some cultures and not for others. The same holds for many small-scale explanations: if the king were murdered, someone killed him, period. What is relative is the interest that selectively forms a narrative and puts some part of the past into shape. Some large-scale patterns of interpretation can themselves fall victim to the truth … The distinctive claim of the “relativist” about historical interpretation is that one party can differ from another about what makes sense of the past without necessarily thinking that the other party’s interpretation is false.39 A system of belief is a real option for us, Williams observes, only if it can be connected to our own interests: In the case of such Ss [of such systems of beliefs], to stand in merely notional confrontation is to lack the relation to our concerns which alone gives any point or substance to appraisal. With them, the only real questions of appraisal are about real options.40 In this sense, Williams’ understanding of relativism does not correspond to “vulgar” relativism.41 His relativism of distance, by putting the accent on real options, draws attention to the fact that there are interests that human beings have always had, among which there is the interest not to undergo arbitrary punishment, and more generally the interest not to suffer because of someone else’s cruelty. We can certainly recognize and appreciate such interests as our own. Williams already provided an example of this in Morality: In the fascinating book by Bernal de Diaz, who went with Cortez to Mexico, there is an account of what they all felt when they came upon the sacrificial temples. This morally unpretentious collection of bravos was genuinely horrified by the Aztec practices. It would surely be absurd to regard this reaction as merely parochial or self-righteous. It rather indicated something which their conduct did not always indicate, that they regarded the Indians as men rather than as wild animals.42 Williams can be said to be a relativist only in so far as he acknowledges that others are at varying distances from us [and that] our reactions and relations to other groups are themselves part of our ethical lives, and we should understand these reactions more realistically in terms of the practices and sentiments that help to shape our life. Some disagreements and divergences matter more than others.43 Nevertheless, if this is the case, then “the distinction on which relativism hangs everything, that between ‘we’ and ‘they,’ is not merely given, and

Humanism and cruelty in Williams  91 to erect it at a certain point involves a political decision or recognition.”44 Williams’ denial of relativism stems from an act of recognition directed to real human beings. And as the case of the death of the king is an ascertainable fact that cannot be denied, so too is the misery caused by other people’s cruelty. Here, too, there is no need to pose a moral principle; reflecting on the possible misery human beings can undergo because of other people’s cruelty is enough to get the moral engine going.

The self-evidence of human rights In “What Might Philosophy Become?” Williams provides the following description of philosophy’s explicative capacity: Its special powers imply that what it says is always unobvious. There is more than one way of being that, and only some of them are technical (think of later Wittgenstein, or of Nietzsche). There are many true and obvious things to be said in the face of the world’s horrors, and many kinds of writing can and should say those things in an obvious way – but these are not usually the things that philosophy, if it is to be helpful in its special ways, has reason to say; or if it does on occasion have reason to say those obvious things, it will be its reason for saying them that will not be obvious.45 Nonetheless, obvious things to say about the human condition are many, and too often philosophy ends up forgetting them; at any rate, a certain kind of philosophy, too focused on precision of argumentation for its own sake. Conversely, Williams wants to remind “moral philosophers of truths about human life which are very well known to virtually all adult human beings except moral philosophers.”46 For him, what is needed for philosophy to be truly helpful is “[a] good appreciation of what is not there in the argument or on the page, and also some imagination.”47 Philosophy in general needs an exercise of imagination, and ethics and politics in particular need an exercise of imagination that considers the human condition as revealed in the lives of people. This is the case with truth and liberty. More generally, this is the case with all human rights. With them as well, what has been said so far stands. Human rights for Williams can be distinguished only historically, and thus politically, and our primary purpose is not that of providing them with a philosophical license, but that of protecting them from the abuse of power. Human rights, Williams claims, do not need any philosophical vindication because they are “self-evident,”48 revealing themselves when they are violated: The most important problem is not that of identifying them but that of getting them enforced. The denial of human rights means the

92  Lorenzo Greco maintenance of power by torture and execution; surveillance of the population; political censorship; the denial of religious expression; and other such things. For the most gross of such violations, at least, it is obvious what is involved.49 This sounds all well and good. However, one might insist that Williams is not allowed to talk in those terms. Human rights, one might protest, are a clear example of something that doesn’t depend on the contingencies of human affairs. Instead, human rights rise above history, safeguarding aspects of what it means to be human that should not be left at the mercy of fortuitous circumstances. How can Williams say that human rights are obvious if his own perspective is so radically historically informed?50 It seems to me that such a criticism misses Williams’ approach to rights. As he is not a denier of the value of truth, even though he advocates a relativism of distance, so is he not a denier of human rights, even though he doesn’t base them on an ahistorical foundation. Human rights are no abstractions; if it makes any sense to talk in terms of human rights, this is again because of the brute fact that human beings can suffer in consequence of the cruelty of other people, and human rights become immediately intelligible as soon as unjustified violence by someone over someone else is perpetrated. Williams can uphold the self-evidence of human rights exactly because he conceives them as located within the historical reality in which human beings act; the historical perspective from which human rights become visible is empirically verifiable, and relates to recognizable and shared human interests: “In their most basic form, violations of human rights are very obvious, and so is what is wrong with them: unmediated coercion, might rather than right.”51 Consider here what Williams says about the importance of equality. ­Williams defends the “tautology,”52 whereby human beings are all equal. If equality represents such a fundamental value in assessing human beings, this is because human beings are equal under so many basic aspects. They all “belong anatomically to the species homo sapiens, and can speak a language, use tools, live in societies, can interbreed despite racial differences.”53 What brings them together is also the capacity to feel pain, both from immediate physical causes and from various situations represented in perception and in thought; and the capacity to feel affection for others, and the consequences of this, connected with the frustration of this affection, loss of its objects, and the like.54 This is a matter of plain observation; nevertheless, “[t]he assertion that people are alike in the possession of these characteristics is, while indisputable and (it may be) even necessarily true, not trivial.”55 This is because equality, as expressed in these very obvious aspects of human nature, is all too often

Humanism and cruelty in Williams  93 deliberately denied and trampled on for no other reason than the desire of an individual or a group to dominate over another. It is with regard to human beings conceived as capable of being treated this way that an effort of imagination is required. This is why the tautology of equality is important and needs to be defended politically. Also, this sheds additional light on the nature of the Hobbesian first political problem. Given the strong dependence of the dimension of politics on fear and on the desire to avoid it, Williams’ reference to Hobbes makes perfect sense. However, notice how the capacity to suffer, and to be aware of other people’s suffering, ascribes importance to human beings as individuals with whom we can, and ought to, imaginatively sympathize: each person is owed an effort at identification and should not be regarded as the surface to which a certain label can be applied; rather, one should try to see the world (including the label) from that person’s point of view.56 It seems to me that this aspect of Williams’ thought can be traced back to the influence of Hume, and makes Williams’ realism more multifaceted than it might seem at first sight. Consider, for example, how Williams deals with the amoralist. 57 Williams’ strategy of extending the amoralist’s sympathies to make him consider other people’s situation, so as to extend the amoralist’s imagination to the point of grasping some primitive notion of fairness, appears to be deeply Humean not only in method but also in the very language used, which closely resembles that of Hume. 58 It remains true that Williams declared that Hume was too optimistic in his ambition of putting forward a “science” of human nature. 59 It is thus reasonable to believe that while Hume did represent an inspiration for Williams’ conception of ethics, especially in the works that preceded Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy, he wasn’t the only or the most important one. However, it is also reasonable to believe, I think, that Hume’s influence never fully abandoned Williams’ philosophy, lingering in his later works as well. The case of our sentimental receptivity to suffering is a clear example of that.60 In fact, if it is true that human nature’s imperfection is part of the problem, the same human nature offers also the solution to it. Fear is the starting point of political reflection. But fear depends, in turn, on people being responsive to others’ misery. This enables us to move from the simple observation that violence is a real possibility that should be avoided to giving importance to those who can experience it. Human beings are able to do this, thanks to an effort of imagination that is based on human sympathetic capacities. In turn, awareness of people’s suffering highlights Williams’ stress on the individuality of specific persons. This is a leitmotif throughout all his work. The conclusion of Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy is a declaration in that sense, providing meaning to the whole book. “How truthfulness to an

94  Lorenzo Greco existing self or society is to be combined with reflection, self-­understanding, and criticism,” Williams remarks, “is a question that philosophy, itself, cannot answer.”61 On the contrary, [i]t is the kind of question that has to be answered through reflective living. The answer has to be discovered, or established, as a result of a process, personal and social, which essentially cannot formulate the answer in advance, except in an unspecific way.62 However, if this is the case, then “a more substantial individualism is in question,”63 one that can secure the continuing possibility of a meaningful individual life, one that does not reject society, and indeed shares its perceptions with other people to a considerable depth, but is enough unlike others, in its opacities and disorder as well as in its reasoned intentions, to make it somebody’s.64 For Williams, “the primacy of the individual and of personal dispositions is a necessary truth,”65 and not losing sight of people’s unique existences allows us to provide additional meaning to his humanistic project.

Concluding remarks In this essay, I have interwoven in an integrated narrative various themes in Williams’ ethical and political thought, with the aim of offering a perspective on his humanism that centers on people’s exposure to cruelty. ­Ethics does matter for Williams when it comes to justify politics; however, ­ethics  cannot be formulated in ethical principles, which are ineffective. Ethics enters the picture through the fact of human suffering, and this can clearly be observed within human history. Ethics matters for Williams because individuals matter, and ethics informs politics because of that. People matter both ethically and politically because they can be objects of other people’s prevarication. This for Williams is something empirically ascertainable, and strikes us with the force of an intuition. If one looks at the human condition, cases in which violence is perpetrated are undeniable. Williams uses the terms “intuition,” “tautology,” and “self-evidence,” but we have seen that human suffering becomes evident to us because of our sympathizing with others. Our recognition of others’ sufferings is not intellectual, but sentimental; we are naturally capable of attuning with other people’s sentiments, and thus to increase our imaginative grasp of their condition. I have suggested that this is a Humean legacy in Williams’ thought. Reference to human suffering might not provide us with an “Archimedean point” from which to produce a final ethical justification that doesn’t fall victim of historical contingency. Nonetheless, it does give us a very strong

Humanism and cruelty in Williams  95 viewpoint from which to evaluate human activities, and thus eventually express sound ethical judgments in politics, even if they don’t fall under the umbrella of an ethical principle preceding history. I believe that Williams can acknowledge and accept all this. Williams’ humanism is a way of conceiving philosophy in general. But it is also an ethical position that attributes value to human beings considered as fragile creatures, both physically and mentally vulnerable to other people’s cruelty. I have argued that this represents the ethical thrust in Williams’ political thought, a thrust that philosophy alone is incapable of understanding and governing. Philosophical reflection on the human condition can be successful only if its picture of human beings is of them as seen in their concrete existence. If we forget this, philosophy becomes an idle exercise and, at worst, an ethically dangerous discipline.66

Notes 1 Williams, “Philosophy as a Humanistic Discipline,” 182. 2 Williams, “Political Philosophy and the Analytical Tradition,” 160. 3 Williams, “Realism and Moralism,” 3. 4 Williams discusses this issue in “Realism and Moralism.” See also “Human Rights and Relativism,” “From Freedom to Liberty,” and “Humanitarianism and the Right to Intervene.” For a discussion of Williams’ first political question and its consequent basic legitimation demand, see Greco, “L’umanesimo di Bernard Williams tra filosofia morale e filosofia politica”; Hall, “Bernard ­Williams and the Basic Legitimation Demand”; Sleat, “Bernard Williams and the Possibility of a Realist Political Theory.” On political realism, as related to (but not only) Williams, see Galston, “Realism in Political Theory”; ­Rossi-Sleat, “Realism in Normative Political Theory.” 5 Williams, “Human Rights and Relativism,” 66. 6 Williams, “Human Rights and Relativism,” 66. 7 On the dependence of politics on history, see also Geuss, Philosophy and Real Politics, 13–5. 8 Larmore, “What Is Political Philosophy?” 291. See also Bavister-Gould, “­B ernard Williams: Political Realism and the Limits of Legitimacy.” 9 See, e.g., Geuss, “Did Williams Do Ethics?” On the alleged inevitability of contingency in Williams’ ethical conception, see Cottingham, “The Good Life and the ‘Radical Contingency of the Ethical.’” 10 See Williams, “Realism and Moralism,” and “Human Rights and Relativism.” 11 Williams, “Moral Luck,” 21. 12 See Williams, “Pluralism, Community, and Left Wittgensteinianism.” 13 Williams, “In the Beginning Was the Deed,” 23. 14 Voorhoeve, Conversations on Ethics, 198–99. 15 Williams, “From Freedom to Liberty,” 78. 16 See Williams, Truth and Truthfulness, chap. 7. 17 Williams, Truth and Truthfulness, 7. 18 Williams, Truth and Truthfulness, 11. 19 “[T]he notion of truthfulness … should be understood as a virtue or desirable property, both of individual people and of collectivities, which combines the qualities that were labelled earlier as sincerity and accuracy. A truthful person both says (with numerous familiar qualifications) what he or she believes, and takes some trouble that his or her beliefs should be true. Because of its

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20 21 22 23

connection with accuracy, it is a quality that essentially involves mentioning the truth.” Williams, “Truth, Politics, and Self-Deception,” 157. The relation between truth and truthfulness is the main topic of Truth and Truthfulness, but notice that Williams had already considered this relation as discussed by Isaiah Berlin in his “Introduction” to Berlin’s Concepts and Categories. (Williams’ introduction to the volume was written in 1978.) The centrality of truthfulness is also emphasized in the Postscript to Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy. Williams, Truth and Truthfulness, 146. Williams, Truth and Truthfulness, 148. Williams, Truth and Truthfulness, 148. This brings Williams to formulate what he calls the anti-tyranny argument: precisely because of their peculiar powers and opportunities, governments are disposed to commit illegitimate actions which they will wish to conceal, as they also want to conceal incompetent actions. It is in citizens’ interests that these be checked. They cannot be checked without true information.

Williams, Truth and Truthfulness, 207. On the anti-tyranny argument, see also Williams, “Truth, Politics, and Self-Deception.” 24 Williams, Truth and Truthfulness, 208. 5 This being so, liberalism must reconsider itself, and according to Williams its 2 most persuasive reformulation is provided by Judith Skhlar’s “liberalism of fear” (Williams, “The Liberalism of Fear”). Shklar moves from the acknowledgment of the existence of “a summum malum, which all of us know and would avoid if only we could. That evil is cruelty and the fear it inspires, and the very fear of fear itself.” Shklar continues observing that “[t]o that extent liberalism of fear makes a universal and especially a cosmopolitan claim, as it historically always has done.” More specifically, the kind of cruelty Shklar has in mind “is the deliberate infliction of physical, and secondarily emotional, pain upon the weaker person or group by stronger ones in order to achieve some end, tangible or intangible, of the latter.” Shklar, “The Liberalism of Fear,” 29. See also Shklar, Ordinary Vices, chap. 6, and The Faces of Injustice, 113–26. On Shklar’s liberalism of fear in relation to Williams’ version of it, see Forrester, “Judith Shklar, Bernard Williams and Political Realism.” For a discussion of Williams’ liberalism of fear, see Hall, “Contingency, Confidence, and Liberalism in the Political Thought of Bernard Williams”; Sagar, “From Scepticism to Liberalism?”; Sleat, “Making Sense of Our Political Lives”; Thomas, “Rawls and Political Realism.” See Brooks, “Bernard Williams, Republicanism, and the Liberalism of Fear” and Talisse, “On the Liberalism of Fear: A Reply to Brooks,” for a consideration of Williams’ liberalism of fear in light of its similarities with republicanism. 6 See Williams, “From Freedom to Liberty” and “Conflicts of Liberty and Equal2 ity.” In Truth and Truthfulness, 145, this is how Williams defines being free: To be free, in the most basic, traditional, intelligible sense, is not to be subject to another’s will. It does not consist of being free from all obstacles. On the contrary, freedom has any value only if there is something you want to do, and if, moreover, the want you have is not one that you can change at will for another want. A central form of freedom, then, is not to be subject to another’s will in working toward something that you find worthwhile. On primitive freedom and liberty as a political value, see Hall, “How to Do Realistic Political Theory.” 27 Williams, “The Liberalism of Fear,” 61. 8 Voorhoeve, Conversations on Ethics, 200. 2

Humanism and cruelty in Williams  97 29 See Sandel, “The Procedural Republic and the Unencumbered Self.” 30 Williams deals with thick ethical concepts in Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy, chap. 8, “Internal Reasons and the Obscurity of Blame,” “What Does Intuitionism Imply?” “Who Needs Ethical Knowledge?” “Replies,” “Truth in Ethics,” “Modernity and the Substance of Ethical Life,” “Acting as the Virtuous Person Acts.” On Williams’ thick ethical concepts, see Blackburn, “The Absolute Conception”; Hawthorn, “Introduction”; Jenkins, Bernard Williams, 133–40; Moore, “Realism and the Absolute Conception,” and “Introduction”; Thomas, “The Nonobjectivist Critique of Moral Knowledge.” 31 See Taylor, Sources of the Self, 4, and “What is Human Agency?”; see also ­Taylor, “A Most Peculiar Institution.” 32 See Williams, “Pluralism, Community and Left Wittgensteinianism.” In “The Liberalism of Fear,” 54–5, Williams comments the following: My two associates in the view I am sketching are Alasdair MacIntyre and Charles Taylor. They are both Roman Catholics, though of different sorts. I used to find this a disquieting fact but no longer do so. All three of us, I could say, accept the significant role of Christianity in understanding modern moral consciousness, and adopt respectively the three possible views about how to move in relation to that: backward in it, forward in it, and out of it. In any case, we all assume some historical commitments, they on a more ambitious scale than I, and perhaps there is a rather nervous competition for who writes the most irresponsible history.

33 34 35 36 37 38

See also Williams’ reviews of MacIntyre’s After Virtue and Whose Justice? Which Rationality? and of Taylor’s Sources of the Self. See Williams, “The Liberalism of Fear,” 60. Williams, Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy, 198. One sees, for example, what Williams says about Montesquieu and Constant (but also Montaigne) in “The Liberalism of Fear,” 56, but one also thinks of Williams partaking for Diderot against Rousseau in Truth and Truthfulness, chap. 8. Williams, Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy, 160. Williams, “The Truth in Relativism,” 140. As Williams specifies, [e]ven Utopian projects among a small band of enthusiasts could not reproduce that life. Still more, the project of re-enacting it on a societal scale in the context of actual modern industrial life would involve one of those social or political mistakes, in fact a vast illusion. The prospect of removing the conditions of modern industrial life altogether is something else again – ­another, though different, impossibility. Williams, Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy, 161.

39 Williams, Truth and Truthfulness, 258–9. 40 Williams, “The Truth in Relativism,” 142. 41 “[P]ossibly the most absurd view to have been advanced even in moral philosophy.” Williams, Morality, 21. Specifically, relativism [i]n its vulgar and unregenerate form … consists of three propositions: that ‘right’ means (can only be coherently understood as meaning) ‘right for a given society’; that ‘right for a given society’ is to be understood in a functionalist sense; and that (therefore) it is wrong for people in one society to condemn, interfere with, etc., the values of another society. Morality, 21 Williams confirms his refusal of this kind of relativism in “In the Beginning Was the Deed,” 26:

98  Lorenzo Greco I must make clear that I am not raising here any relativist issue. The question does not involve the manifestly confused notion that these ideas might be somehow right for those that hold them and not for those who do not.

42 43 4 4 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57

58

59

60

61 62 63 64 65 66

On Williams’ relativism, see Jenkins, Bernard Williams, 140–6; Rovane, “Did Williams Find the Truth in Relativism?” Williams, Morality, 24. Williams, Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy, 160. Williams, “Human Rights and Relativism,” 68. Williams, “What Might Philosophy Become?” 213. Williams, “The Liberalism of Fear,” 52. Voorhoeve, Conversations on Ethics, 197. Williams, “In the Beginning Was the Deed,” 26. Williams, “Human Rights and Relativism,” 62. I would like to thank Sophie Grace Chappell and Alan Thomas for having pressed me on this point. Williams, “Human Rights and Relativism,” 72. Williams, “The Idea of Equality,” 99. Williams, “The Idea of Equality,” 99. Williams, “The Idea of Equality,” 99. Williams, “The Idea of Equality,” 99. Williams, “The Idea of Equality,” 103. “To get him [the amoralist] to consider their [other people’s] situation seems rather an extension of his imagination and his understanding, than a discontinuous step onto something quite different, the ‘moral plane’. And if we could get him to consider their situation, in the sense of thinking about it and imagining it, he might conceivably start to show some consideration for it: we extend his sympathies. And if we can get him to extend his sympathies to less immediate persons who need help, we might be able to do it for less immediate persons whose interests have been violated, and so get him to have some primitive grasp on notions of fairness. If we can get him all this way, then, while he has no doubt an extremely shaky hold on moral considerations, he has some hold on them; at any rate, he is not the amoralist we started with.” Williams, Morality, 11–2. For example, the expression “we extend his sympathies” is very similar to Hume’s expression “extensive sympathy,” as presented in A Treatise of Human Nature (book 3, part 3, sections 1 and 6, paragraphs 23 and 3 respectively, pages 586 and 619). See Williams, “The Legacy of Greek Philosophy,” esp. 35–6, “Hume on Religion,” esp. 270–1, and “Introduction to The Gay Science,” esp. 319. See also Williams’ “Reply to Simon Blackburn.” Hume talks in terms of “the science of Man” in the Treatise, Introduction, xv. I compare Hume’s perspective with Williams’ in Greco, “Humean Reflections in the Ethics of Bernard Williams.” For a different take on this, see Sagar, “Minding the Gap,” and Sagar, “From Scepticism to Liberalism?” See also Russell, “Hume’s Optimism and Williams’ Pessimism,” in this volume. Williams, Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy, 200. Williams, Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy, 200. Williams, Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy, 201. Williams, Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy, 201–2. Williams, Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy, 201. I deal with Williams’ individualism in Greco, “Reflection and the Individual.” Previous versions of this essay were presented at the conference “30 Years of Bernard Williams’ Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy,” University of Oxford, 3–5 July 2015, and at the workshop “Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy:

Humanism and cruelty in Williams  99 A  New Agenda for Contemporary Analytical Philosophy,” Università Vita-­ Salute San Raffaele, Milan, 15 September 2015. I would like to thank the participants to both events for the fruitful discussions, and Kate Abramson, Lucinda Armstrong, Sophie Grace Chappell, Roger Crisp, Alessandro Ferrara, and Dan O’Brien for having read and commented on an earlier draft.

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100  Lorenzo Greco Moore, Adrian W. 2006. “Introduction.” In Bernard Williams, Philosophy as a Humanistic Discipline, edited by Adrian W. Moore, xi–xx. Princeton and ­Oxford: Princeton University Press. Moore, Adrian W. 2007. “Realism and the Absolute Conception.” In Bernard ­Williams, edited by Alan Thomas, 24–46. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Rossi, Enzo and Sleat, Matt. 2014. “Realism in Normative Political Theory.” Philosophy Compass 9(10): 689–701. Rovane, Carol. 2009. “Did Williams Find the Truth in Relativism?” In Reading Bernard Williams, edited by Daniel Callcut, 43–69. London and New York: Routledge. Russell, Paul. 2019. “Hume’s Optimism and Williams’ Pessimism: From ‘Science of Man’ to Genealogical Critique.” In Ethics beyond the Limits: New Essays on Bernard Williams’ Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy, edited by Sophie Grace Chappell and Marcel van Ackeren, ???. London and New York: Routledge. Sagar, Paul. 2013. “Minding the Gap: Bernard Williams and David Hume on ­Living an Ethical Life.” Journal of Moral Philosophy 10(4): 615–38. Sagar, Paul. 2016. “From Scepticism to Liberalism? Bernard Williams, the Foundations of Liberalism and Political Realism.” Political Studies 64(2): 368–84. Sandel, Michael J. 1984. “The Procedural Republic and the Unencumbered Self.” Political Theory 12(1): 81–96. Sandel, Michael J. 1982. Liberalism and the Limits of Justice. Cambridge: ­Cambridge University Press. Shklar, Judith N. 1984. Ordinary Vices. Cambridge and London: Harvard University Press. Shklar, Judith N. 1989. “The Liberalism of Fear.” In Liberalism and the Moral Life, edited by Nancy L. Rosenblum, 21–38. Cambridge and London: Harvard University Press. Shklar, Judith N. 1990. The Faces of Injustice. New Haven and London: Yale University Press. Sleat, Matt. 2007. “Making Sense of Our Political Lives – On the Political Thought of Bernard Williams.” Critical Review of International Social and Political ­Philosophy 10(3): 389–98. Sleat, Matt. 2010. “Bernard Williams and the Possibility of a Realist Political ­T heory.” European Journal of Political Theory 9(4): 485–503. Talisse, Robert. 2013. “On the Liberalism of Fear: A Reply to Brooks.” In The Moral Philosophy of Bernard Williams, edited by Alexandra Perry and Chris Herrera, 114–18. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing. Taylor, Charles. 1989. Sources of the Self: The Making of Modern Identity. ­Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Taylor, Charles. 1985. “What Is Human Agency?” In Charles Taylor, Human Agency and Language: Philosophical Papers 1, edited by Charles Taylor, 15–44. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Taylor, Charles. 1995. “A Most Peculiar Institution.” In World, Mind, and Ethics: Essays on the Ethical Philosophy of Bernard Williams, edited by J. E. J. Altham and Ross Harrison, 132–55. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Thomas, Alan. 2007. “The Nonobjectivist Critique of Moral Knowledge.” In ­Bernard Williams, edited by Alan Thomas, 47–72. Cambridge: Cambridge ­University Press.

Humanism and cruelty in Williams  101 Thomas, Alan. 2017. “John Rawls and Political Realism: Realistic Utopianism or Judgement in Bad Faith?” European Journal of Political Theory 16(3): 304–324. Voorhoeve, Alex. 2009. Conversations on Ethics. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press. Williams, Bernard. 1972. Morality: An Introduction to Ethics. Cambridge: ­Cambridge University Press. Williams, Bernard. 1981. “Moral Luck.” In Bernard Williams, Moral Luck: Philosophical Papers 1973–1980, edited by Bernard Williams, 20–39. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Williams, Bernard. “The Truth in Relativism.” In Bernard Williams, Moral Luck: Philosophical Papers 1973–1980, edited by Bernard Williams, 132–43. ­Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Williams, Bernard. 1985. Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy. London: Fontana Press. Williams, Bernard. 1986. “Reply to Simon Blackburn.” Philosophical Books 27(4): 203–208. Williams, Bernard. 1995. “Internal Reasons and the Obscurity of Blame.” In ­B ernard Williams, Making Sense of Humanity and Other Philosophical Essays 1982–1993, edited by Bernard Williams, 35–45. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Williams, Bernard. 1995. “What Does Intuitionism Imply?” In Bernard Williams, Making Sense of Humanity and Other Philosophical Essays 1982–1993, edited by Bernard Williams, 182–91. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Williams, Bernard. 1995. “Who Needs Ethical Knowledge?” In Bernard Williams, Making Sense of Humanity and Other Philosophical Essays 1982–1993, edited by Bernard Williams, 203–12. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Williams, Bernard. 1995. “Replies.” In World, Mind, and Ethics: Essays on the Ethical Philosophy of Bernard Williams, edited by J. E. J. Altham and Ross Harrison, 185–244. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Williams, Bernard. 1996. “Truth in Ethics.” In Truth in Ethics, edited by Brad Hooker, 19–34. Oxford: Blackwell. Williams, Bernard. 1999. “Introduction.” In Isaiah Berlin, Concepts and Categories: Philosophical Essays, edited by Bernard Williams, xiii–xx. London: Pimlico. Williams, Bernard. 2002. Truth and Truthfulness: An Essay in Genealogy. ­Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press. Williams, Bernard. 2005. “Realism and Moralism in Political Theory.” In Bernard Williams, In the Beginning Was the Deed: Realism and Moralism in Political Argument, edited by Geoffrey Hawthorn, 1–17. Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press. Williams, Bernard. 2005. “In the Beginning Was the Deed.” In Bernard Williams, In the Beginning Was the Deed: Realism and Moralism in Political Argument, edited by Geoffrey Hawthorn, 18–28. Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press. Williams, Bernard. 2005. “Pluralism, Community, and Left Wittgensteinianism.” In Bernard Williams, In the Beginning Was the Deed: Realism and Moralism in Political Argument, edited by Geoffrey Hawthorn, 29–39. Princeton and ­Oxford: Princeton University Press. Williams, Bernard. 2005. “Modernity and the Substance of Ethical Life.” In Bernard Williams, In the Beginning Was the Deed: Realism and Moralism

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Humanism and cruelty in Williams  103 Williams, Bernard. 2006. “What Might Philosophy Become?” In Bernard ­Williams, Philosophy as a Humanistic Discipline, edited by Adrian W. Moore, 200–213. Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press. Williams, Bernard. 2014. “After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory, by Alasdair MacIntyre, Sunday Times (1981).” In Bernard Williams, Essays and Reviews 1959–2002, edited by Bernard Williams, 184–86. Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2014. Williams, Bernard. 2014. “Whose Justice? Which Rationality? By Alasdair ­MacIntyre, London Review of Books (1989).” In Bernard Williams, Essays and Reviews 1959–2002, edited by Bernard Williams, 283–88. Princeton and ­Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2014. Williams, Bernard. 2014. “Sources of the Self: The Making of the Modern Identity, by Charles Taylor, New York Review of Books (1989).” In Bernard Williams, Essays and Reviews 1959–2002, edited by Bernard Williams, 301–11. Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press.

7 Duty, beauty, and booty An essay in ethical reappropriation1 Sophie Grace Chappell

I Aesthetic normativity and moral normativity: how are they similar, and how are they different? Here are four familiar contrasts between them that are fairly standardly endorsed (as we shall see, this doesn’t mean that I endorse them): 1 Aesthetic normativity isn’t very demanding (if real at all). The most characteristic modality of aesthetic normativity is may. À chacun son goût: aesthetics offers us all sorts of objects of possible interest, but rarely minds if we shrug and walk away; rarely compels us with stronger modalities like should, ought, must. It remains plausible, of course, that there are some aesthetic shoulds and oughts and even musts. But even where these do occur, their demandingness doesn’t threaten our cosy way of life in the way that the demandingness of moral shoulds, oughts, and musts are often supposed to be able to. If anything, the contrary. “You must see the new ENO production of Götterdämmerung” doesn’t make our lives harder if acted on. (At least, not if we like Wagner.) 2 Aesthetic imperatives aren’t overriding—they don’t trump every other demand on us in the way that moral imperatives are often supposed to. 3 Aesthetic imperatives aren’t categorical: however forcefully expressed they may be, you can always get away from them by saying “But I’m not interested in opera/ natural beauty/ Henry Moore sculptures/ 1950s women’s fashion/ the great American novel”. (Is that right? Do we really suspend aesthetic imperatives if someone lacks the relevant desires? Or do we rather think “This person is deficient” in the relevant way?—Perhaps, but still this is a distinct kind of deficiency from moral deficiency: lack of taste is a quite different failing from vice, and most people would say a less important one.) 4 Aesthetic normativity is primarily about how to see and judge and feel and appreciate, not about how to act. There isn’t really any very well-defined concept of aesthetic agency at all, unless you want to talk about rescuing an art-gallery from a fire, sponsoring the ENO, abandoning your family and pushing off to Tahiti to paint, and things like that.

Duty, beauty, and booty  105 I suspect the fourth of these supposed differences is the key to the other three. I think the view that (4) expresses is false: there is a well-defined concept of aesthetic agency, but in the first instance it attaches to the artist, not to the critic or the audience of art. True, much of the difference between our aesthetic experience and our ethical experience boils down to the fact that in the aesthetic case we are typically spectators of the important stuff, whereas in the ethical case we typically have to do it. But this difference follows largely from one aspect of our society’s structure, its organisation around the ­massive-scale production, and dissemination of books, films, music, and other aesthetically significant items. So, it seems to be at least partly a contingent difference. There could be societies where aesthetic agency was much more important than it is in ours: societies where the balance between activity and passivity, between performance/creation and audience/consumption, was very much less weighted to the passive side than it is in our society. Quite possibly, in fact, given our unique technological achievements, every other society has been more weighted to the active or performance side than ours. (As in the curmudgeon’s cliché, “In my day we made our own entertainment”.) When we thus respond to (4) by giving the notion of aesthetic agency its due, I think we also see much that helps to explain (1–3), and to show why those three claims have whatever plausibility they do have (or not). Aesthetic agency in the sense I’ve just outlined, the making or performing of art, is what Aristotle calls poiesis, action within a technê, a craft or skill; for what we call “the arts” are a subclass of what Aristotle calls the technai. Technai mentioned by Aristotle that we would presumably count as non-artistic include generalship, cobbling, and politics. Then there are cases like bridle-making or pottery, or (repetitive) religious statuary of the kind that Socrates apparently had a trade in before he turned to philosophy that we might well count as crafts rather than arts. It’s interesting that the boundaries of our categories art and craft are so much less well defined than the boundary of the Greek notion of a technê. Aristotle’s category of technê is strikingly and of course non-accidentally similar, and not just in its extension, to MacIntyre’s category of practice.2 On Aristotle’s picture, which has seemed highly plausible to many contemporary philosophers (Daniel Russell, for example3), the technai have ends which tend to form a hierarchy of ends. There is an overall human end, namely eudaimonia. Subordinate ends like the ends of the particular technai are genuinely ends, and in one sense any end gets its endhood solely from the structure of the relevant technê. But in another sense—in their relation to my agency—ends get their endhood by derivation from the shape of my overall life. I have reason to pursue the ends of art, or of some particular art, just insofar as those ends cohere with and enrich my overall pursuit of eudaimonia, good human living in general. On this picture,4 it is obvious why—even if we recognise the point about aesthetic agency that I have been making—we might think that ethical normativity, as contrasted with aesthetic normativity, is (1) more demanding,

106  Sophie Grace Chappell (2) more overriding, and (3) categorical, not hypothetical. The contrast is that between the normativity of some particular technê (or practice), with its particular end, and the normativity of the overall hierarchy of technai—the normativity that takes the living of my whole life as its end. Of course, the pursuit of particular technai can be dispensable for me, in a way that the pursuit of good human living in general can’t be. So, of course, the latter is bound to be (1) more demanding, as well as being, by definition, the demand that (2) overrides all other demands. For the same reason, (3) it is normally possible for the questions to arise, of any technê in the hierarchy, whether or not I want or choose to pursue it, and whether or not pursuing it serves my wider and more fundamental ends; and this is its hypotheticality. One nice feature of this neo-Aristotelian picture of the relation of ethics to aesthetics is its restoration of the notion of aesthetic agency, not passivity, to a central place in our thinking. A second is that it makes room for the possibility that the normativity of the overall hierarchy of technai—the normativity that takes the living of my whole life as its end—might not be moral normativity. That is, in Bernard Williams’ words at various points in Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy, it might not be the normativity of (anything like) the familiar “peculiar institution” that he calls the “morality system”, but rather of something that Williams regards as deeper and less adventitious, and sometimes dubs “simple importance”, and sometimes, in contradistinction to the moral, “the ethical”. 5 Relatedly, a third nice feature is that, within this neo-Aristotelian system, we can make sense of the idea of degrees of hypotheticality (or categoricality). The closer we get to the top of the hierarchy, the closer we get to ends that we necessarily have, and can’t avoid acting on, or responding to, or being motivated by; the closer we get to the bottom of it, the closer we get to particular outworkings of human agency in practice that are so particular that they mostly turn out to be very optional indeed. (Mostly. I am not denying that for some agent at some time, a particular human practice might be hugely exigent, and not optional at all. Art can be or feel like that, especially for the aesthetic agent, the artist. But such cases are not the norm. And they are rarer than cases of moral demandingness.) A fourth nice feature of this Aristotelian picture of the relation of the moral to the aesthetic is simply that it isn’t the Kantian picture, which has always struck at least one reader of the Critique of Judgement as both hopelessly mysterious, and also as just plain hopeless. Kant is the villain of the piece, too, or one of the major villains along with Hume, in the history of how the passivity of judgement came so to predominate in modern aesthetics over the activity of making. As between Aristotle, Hume, and Kant on aesthetics, their titles say it all: Περὶ ποιητικῆς versus “On the standard of taste” versus Kritik der Urteilskraft. 6 (To this day, a poet is a makar in the Scots tongue: the parallel with the classical Greek ποιητής is exact.) The Aristotelian picture is able, too, to do better than Kant’s dichotomy between Inclination and Duty. Instead of having to contrast the mysterious

Duty, beauty, and booty  107 motivating power of an essentially Humean hydraulic conception of desire with what is, in a different way, the equally mysterious motivating power of Kant’s own conception of “pure practical reason”, the picture allows for all sorts of levels and complexities of motivational structure. But none of these is essentially puzzling in its nature—because all of them set motivation and action in the only context in which either can be properly understood, the context of our society’s shared narratives and shared practices. As MacIntyre nicely puts it in After Virtue (p. 243): the concept of an intelligible action is a more fundamental concept than the concept of an action.

II Section I of this paper shows how the ethical can, so to speak, keep the aesthetic at arm’s length. The ethical is about what’s simply important, in Williams’ phrase: it is about the overall living of our lives, and that, as we’ve seen, is apt to make the ethical uniquely categorical, uniquely overriding, and uniquely stringent. Few people apart from Oscar Wilde and Friedrich Nietzsche have thought or said that the ethical in this sense just is the aesthetic. By contrast, while the moral is not necessarily exactly coincident with the ethical, it is natural to think that the moral is a lot closer to coincidence with the ethical than the aesthetic is; especially if, like Aristotle, you locate aesthetic normativity primarily in aesthetic agency, and aesthetic agency primarily within the technê or practice of the arts. This conception of aesthetic normativity is likely to evoke the following protest. Aesthetics, it may be said, runs wider than the philosophy of art. For aesthetics is not just about art. It is about the beautiful. (It is not just about the beautiful either; but let this pass for the moment.) Now for Aquinas explicitly, and Aristotle implicitly, the beautiful is a syncategorematic term, set over an autonomous and foundational dimension of assessment, just as much as the good is. Therefore, it can’t be right to banish the aesthetic, and aesthetic normativity, to an outlying limb of the hierarchy of practices—even if it is right to treat art, and artistic normativity, that way. Whatever the standing of art, the beautiful must have a central place within our thinking about normativity: no less central a place, in fact, than the good itself has. The rest of this paper is a response to this protest. My response won’t involve giving the beautiful an equal normative standing with the good; in that sense, it is not a concessive response. The effect of my response is, formally, to subordinate the beautiful to the good, even if it is, substantively, to increase the role of the beautiful in our thinking, especially our moral or rather ethical thinking. There may be other places in conceptual space where, conversely, the good is formally subordinated to the beautiful; if so, exploration of them might bring us closer to a response that genuinely is concessive to the protest. But such explorations go beyond what I want to say here.

108  Sophie Grace Chappell What I want to say is in the spirit of a famous remark of Bernard Williams’ (1985: 117), that Theory typically uses the assumption that we probably have too many ethical ideas, some of which may well turn out to be mere prejudices. Our major problem now is actually that we have not too many but too few, and we need to cherish as many as we can. My project is to reappropriate the ethical idea that beauty as a reason for action. I claim that our moral, and so our ethical, concepts, and the moral and ethical normativity that goes with them, are deeply aesthetically coloured. The beautiful does indeed have a central place within our thinking about normativity because it has a central place within our thinking about moral, practical, normativity. And the central place it has is this (or this is one of them): very often, it is a good answer to the question “Why should I do x?” to reply “Because x is the beautiful thing to do”. A good answer; I don’t claim that this is an idiomatic or colloquially natural thing to say. On the contrary, I concede at once that there is something off, and obviously off, about any such explanation. If you do something and I congratulate you on it, afterwards, by saying “Well done; that was a beautiful thing to do”, you may well just conclude that I am by genus, what Anscombe calls a dull babbling loon, and by species, what everybody calls a weird old hippie. Even at best you are likely to be at best intrigued and slightly puzzled by my remark. Clearly complimentary, you might say to yourself, but what exactly is the compliment? Well, I want to say, it’s what it says on the tin; the compliment means just what it appears to mean. If you ask me to elucidate my compliment, or to change it from an “off” explanation to, as it were, an “on” one, then there are plenty of further things that I can tell you that may well help. For example, I might say, depending of course on circumstances, that I think your action was noble, or fine, or admirable, or excellent, or gracious, or heroic, or wise, or humane, or merciful, or sublimely tactful, or compassionate, or kind, or funny. In a more colloquial register, I might describe it—depending again on circumstances—as awesome, or cool, or neat. I might also say, of course—and here moral philosophers’ ears are likely to prick up—that I think your action was virtuous. Most of these further descriptions of your deed give us a more precise idea of what I mean by describing it as beautiful: thus gracious, heroic, wise, humane, merciful, sublimely tactful, compassionate, kind, funny. Some of them establish connections and/or overlaps between the conceptual space in which I want to locate “beautiful” as said of actions, and other and more familiar conceptual spaces: thus noble, fine, admirable, excellent, and—perhaps most importantly of all—virtuous. And some of them do both these things. Let’s take a closer look at what’s in this list. Focus first on “virtuous”. It is, I want to suggest, a crucial part of what we mean by calling actions

Duty, beauty, and booty  109 virtuous that we are typically not saying merely that those actions, or the dispositions from which they arise, tend to produce good outcomes, or flourishing/eudaimonia/happiness, or benefit in general. We might mean that too, of course, but I doubt it is the main thing that we mean. The main point of calling an action virtuous is to say, not that the action in question is beneficial, but that it is admirable. (Cp. Linda Zagzebski in “Admiration”, p. 1: “We do not call a trait a virtue because of its desirability, but because of its admirability”.) This brings us to “admirable”. “Admirable”, I believe, is a word with a lot of conceptual archaeology packed into it. In at least two ways, there is a curious back-to-front-ness about “admirable”. First way, if someone enjoins us to do what is admirable, it is all too easy to hear this as the injunction to do what will actually get us admired. But that, of course, is not the point at all; no more than it is the point about what is desirable that it is actually desired, rather than such-as-to-be-desired. The idea is to do what deserves admiration (or honour: compare “honourable”, another thick concept in a similar plight), not what actually gets it. Admirable actions, then, are actions such-as-to-be-admired. But on its own, that still gives us no help about which actions these are. Similarly, excellent actions are actions that rise above the rest, and noble actions are actions that deserve to be known;7 but which actions are those? Here (this is the second back-to-frontness), it is as if we had in our language a number of pointers towards a central concept—and yet there is a vacancy in our language at the place that they point towards. Well, the Greeks have a word for it; and their word is to kalon.8 This is what I am getting at when I propose that the beauty of an action can be a reason to do it, and that the beauty of a disposition can be a reason to admire it in someone else, and seek to develop it in myself: my proposal is an attempt to appropriate, or rather reappropriate, the Greek notion of to kalon. Now when I propose that the beauty of an action can be a reason to do it, I mean exactly that: the beauty of an action can be a reason in itself for me to do the action. So, for example, it’s not a reason simply because, and only insofar as, others will admire me for the beauty of my deed. (See above on admiration.) Nor is the beauty of the deed a reason for me to do it because doing beautiful deeds is an advantage for me, a benefit, a rise in my utility or well-being level, or anything like that. Someone might make this proposal, obviously; but it’s not the proposal that I’m making here. My idea is not that the beauty of some actions is a reason to do them because beauty is a form of something else, and that something else gives us reason to act, as it were transmitting it via beauty. My idea is that the beauty of some actions itself gives us a reason to do them: a reason no less basic, and no less irreducible to other kinds of reasons, than (for instance) utilitarians take utility-based reasons to be. And in particular, I want to suggest, it is like this with most of the virtue words that we use. When we praise actions as brave or wise or restrained or just or kind or loving or friendly or

110  Sophie Grace Chappell great-souled or magnificent or loyal or reverent (…), we are picking those actions out not as especially advantageous actions, but as especially excellent, noble, or beautiful ones. To put the point in a way which is both schematic and a little gimmicky, but is at least, I hope, memorable: ever since Glaucon’s challenge in Plato’s Republic the normal rule in ethics has been to try to reduce duty to booty—to show how doing the moral thing serves our advantage in some way. What I want to suggest is that on many occasions, duty (to deon) has nothing at all to do with booty (to wphelimon); instead, it arises from beauty (to kalon). So perhaps there is after all at least some truth in the idea found in some 20-century ethicists who worked in Kant’s shadow, and the shadow of high-minded Victorian Christianity, that virtue is its own justification, that the right act is worth doing for its own sake and no other reason. (Prichard in “Does Moral Philosophy Rest On A Mistake?” is one obvious example.) Perhaps this is one of the places where we may find the seeding truth that is the root of that often rather moralistic and (in Michael Smith’s sense) fetishistic view: in the fact that there really are some acts that are worth doing simply because they are beautiful. More soberly, and without the gimmicks: on many occasions, we have reasons to act—overall reasons to act, ethical reasons to act, reasons to act that arise from simple importance—that do not arise from any benefit consequential on or constituted by the action, but from the beauty, admirability, excellence, nobility, honourableness, handsomeness, or fineness of the action in itself. “Beauty”, “admirability”, “excellence”, “nobility”, “honour”, “handsomeness”, “fineness”, etc. is an English vocabulary-cloud that spells out some of the content of the classical Greek term kalos. Since, as Aristotle taught us, opposites are instructive, it may help to look at the converse English vocabulary-cloud. So consider these words: Stinking, squalid, shoddy, shabby, shameful, seedy, seamy, sleazy, scurvy, slimy, scummy, scumbag, shitty, crappy, coarse, corrupt, contemptible, churlish, cheap, mean, vile, villainous, brutish, beastly, base, bastard, rancid, rotten, dreggy, dirty, debased, putrid, foul, gross, ugly, low, lousy, tainted…. What the beauty/ admirability/ etc. vocabulary-cloud is to the classical Greek kalos, this vocabulary-cloud is to the classical Greek opposite of kalos: which is aiskhros. What the words in this list have in common is that they stand for things that deserve not admiration, but contempt (nuanced, of course, in a variety of ways); and “contemptible” is as good a translation as any of aiskhros. And the point that I want to make about ta aiskhra, things that are aiskhros, is just the converse of my point about ta kala. In classical Greek, to say that some action is aiskhros is itself to give a reason

Duty, beauty, and booty  111 not to do it, quite apart from any benefits or consequences it may have. And in modern English too, to say that some action is a stinking, squalid, shoddy, shabby, shitty (…) thing to do is itself to give a reason not to do it, quite apart from its benefits or consequences. Perhaps, indeed, we find the negative case a clearer one than the positive. Perhaps it is easier for us to see why an action’s being ugly, aiskhron, in one or more of the various ways listed in the second vocabulary-cloud, is a reason not to do it, than to see why an action’s being beautiful, kalon, as described in the first, is a reason to do it. At any rate in my own experience, it is certainly easier to get people to accept that you’ve given them a reason not to do something when you say “But that would be a shabby/ dirty/ contemptible (etc.) thing to do”, than it is to get them to accept that you’ve given them a reason to act when you say “Yes, that would be a fine/ noble/ admirable (etc.) thing to do”.9 Still, my thesis is that, in the right circumstances, both kinds of remarks are reason-stating. Kalon and aiskhron and their English equivalents are generic names for families of intrinsically reason-giving properties. Families of reason-giving properties; not single reason-giving properties. After all, one very obvious thought about what I’ve been saying is that to kalon, as applied to actions, can’t be the name for the beautiful or the admirable just as such; it must be the name for the morally beautiful or morally admirable. But that thought might look like a threat to my thesis: once we distinguish moral beauty from aesthetic beauty, it might seem that it is the moral half of the phrase “moral beauty” that does the work, and not the “beauty” half. By this route, we seem to get quickly back to the original all-out distinction between the moral and aesthetic that I’ve spent most of this paper so far trying to move away from. Actually the main thing I want to say, if someone wants to divide beauty into aesthetic beauty and moral beauty, is simply: don’t stop there. It is indeed possible to make such a division of beauty into these two kinds; but there many sub-kinds of both kinds. Musical beauty and natural beauty and the beauty of Middlemarch and the beauty of Lucky Jim are already so diverse that we might be closer to wondering what keeps them all together under the description beauty than to wondering how they can possibly be thought of as different. On the moral side, the beauty of a kind action and the beauty of a courageous action are very different things; but both instances of beauty or admirability. In fact, it is a suggestion I would like to develop further that the virtue names are names of types of moral admirability. One evidence in favour of this suggestion comes from what happens when a putative virtue is criticised. One way to deny that something is really a virtue at all is to say that it serves no earthly purpose—as Hume does of what he calls “the monkish virtues” (though in fact his list is not a list of virtues at all). Another way is to say that it is not an admirable but a contemptible character trait; which is exactly what Nietzsche says about the Christian virtue of humility, and exactly what Polus says about the

112  Sophie Grace Chappell classical Greek virtues of justice and temperance. And this brings us back to the characterisation of the good as either advantageous or admirable that I suggested before.

III I need to say something here about a problem about ethics and its history that Williams glances at (no more, unfortunately) in the first chapter of Shame and Necessity, and which I suspect has not been addressed often enough or clearly enough in the literature on Williams’ work. (It has been more addressed in the literature on Alasdair MacIntyre’s work in the history of ethics: by me among other people10 though I now think that what I myself said about the problem as it arises for MacIntyre was too quick and too glib.) This is the problem of what my subtitle calls “reappropriation”: about what it is, about what it could possibly be, for us to take over an ethical concept from the Greeks. And the worries awaiting us here are not only with the idea of appropriation, but more particularly with the idea of reappropriation: with the idea that we can—just like that, after the small matter of an interval of twenty-three centuries—take up again, as it were by an explicit act of choice, the very same concept as the classical pagan Greeks had. These worries divide, I think, into three main sets. First, there are first-order moral worries about what we might call revivalism or, as Catherine Wilson calls it,11 “moral primitivism”: if we are to revive any set of old ethical concepts, why the ancient Greeks’ particularly? My answer to that is not very interesting. It is, “Wherever you find something useful, something that fits your needs, feel free to appropriate it; and of course, wherever you find something that it would be inauthentic, unhelpful, or simply bizarre to adopt, feel free not to appropriate it”. Second, there are epistemological worries about the apparently epistemicvoluntarist idea of reviving any set of ethical concepts: if ethical concepts are to be truly ours they have to be deeply ours, and if they are deeply ours then they most certainly will not simply be chosen by us, as we might choose a new hat. My answer to this is not especially interesting either: it’s that there’s no question of just choosing a shiny new concept or set of concepts out of the blue; it’s rather about recognising, in the process of offline reflection, that somebody else’s ethical ideas can help us understand and enrich and make more explicit the concepts we already have. While picking up new ethical concepts like new hats is obviously not something we do, learning from others’ conceptual vocabularies by exploring them, imaginatively extending them into our own lives, and otherwise generally trying them on for size clearly is something we do. (It is simply one case of the general human propensity for ethical learning by imitation, by picking up what we might call “practical scripts” from those around us.) Here as elsewhere it is all too easy to make something in our phenomenology look odd simply by giving it an unsympathetic description.

Duty, beauty, and booty  113 And third, there are problems about the conditions of identity for ethical concepts. And here perhaps I do have an interesting answer, or at any rate I can gesture towards an interesting research programme, about the nature of conceptual change or difference in ethics. Just as with any other concepts, there are all sorts of ways of answering the question whether, across time or space or both, any two societies’ ethical concepts C1 and C2 are in fact the same concept. There are at least five kinds of possible answer that are significantly philosophically interesting. 1 Ship-of-Theseus change: over time, by the accumulation of small adjustments and bigger changes perhaps deriving from social or religious transformations, a concept can morph into something quite different so that it can become true, after some point, to say that we no longer have the same concept. This happens, for example, with the thick concepts: consider the way REVERENCE or HUMILITY or HONOUR (or LEWDNESS, an example that Simon Blackburn likes to use) have been reconfigured over time. 2 Phenomenological identity: we say that C1 and C2 are the very same concept if what it’s like to deploy or fall under C1 is the same, either exactly or significantly the same, as what it’s like to deploy or fall under C2. C1 and C2 are the same concept because they stand at the same place in two different forms of life, two different experiences of the ethical. (And how can we possibly tell whether “what it’s like” to deploy or live in the light of kalon concepts is exactly or even remotely the same for Sophocles and for us? I think we can tell. I think this is the kind of knowledge that literature can give us. But that’s another argument.12) 3 Ethical concepts can be (as it were) evolutionary analogues of each other. There is a need, an ecological niche, for a concept functionally like (e.g.) justice in many, perhaps all, sorts of different societies. So (we may be bold to say; on the most plausible reading of Hume, this is just what Hume says) something at least functionally like justice is almost bound to be found in all of those societies because all humans need something to play the functional role that justice plays for us. (So, of course, we also need an account of identity of functional role, and this, given the differences between societies, is going to be an exceedingly slippery matter. The slipperiness is in the world not in my account.) 4 It may be said that C1 and C2 have to be counted as the same concept for hermeneutical reasons. In older and bolder forms of this sort of view, some philosophers—such as Richard Hare—seem to have thought that a society that did not have concepts such as duty was simply an unintelligible one. Like Bernard Williams, and Richard Robinson and Robin Collingwood before him, I think this is flatly false, and that the hunt for foreshadowings of the categorical imperative in the breasts of Homeric heroes to which it committed, for instance, Arthur Adkins was and was obviously a wild-goose chase.13 Less ambitiously and more plausibly,

114  Sophie Grace Chappell but somewhat in the same line, there are those among us today, such as Roger Crisp and (perhaps) Terry Irwin, who see it as an application of the principle of charity to at least start with the assumption that other societies have the same moral concepts as we do. It is also possible to think, as I’m more inclined to myself, that our default assumption about other societies’ moral concepts should be guided more by caution than by charity. The world is a big and various place, and variety and diversity in people’s ethical thought is what we should expect to find. 5 Finally, there are translation equivalences. The point about this sort of relation is not so much that it is conceptual identity, as that it isn’t. Translating Plato’s Meno (as I did for an OU course in 2014–2015), we need to make decisions about how to put, for example, arete into English. The problems here are immensely familiar and have been long rehearsed. As most philosophers know, “virtue” is probably the best word to go for, but “excellence” and even “being good” have often been tried. My point is not to run through the problems again, but just to stress this: that the relation of translation equivalence is, and is obviously, a far weaker one than the relation of conceptual identity. The point of spelling out these five different senses in which it can be true that ethical concepts C1 and C2 are or are not the very same concept is, of course, to usefully complicate the picture. I’m suggesting that instead of saying blankly that C1 and C2 are the same concept, or are not, we should consider finer-grained possibilities such as (for instance) that C1 and C2 might occupy the same functional role, or something like the same functional role, in two different societies while having no phenomenology or genealogy at all in common; or that C1 and C2 might be genealogically the very same ethical concept, but C2 has come to play a quite different functional role, with a quite different phenomenology, from C1 (Alasdair MacIntyre’s 1980s trilogy is a study in extenso of this sort of possibility); or that C1 might be something that we want to see as playing the same functional role as C2 to make best sense of the society where C1 is deployed, with or without the additions that C1 and C2 are genealogically connected and phenomenologically similar; and so on. And where exactly in this space of possibilities do I locate my own proposal that we reappropriate the concept of to kalon? I want to be agnostic about the genealogical form of identity; I don’t mind whether we say that the concept I want us to use more is, relative to Sophocles’ and Aristotle’s concept, the very same concept by descent; I don’t insist on anything about that. What I do want to insist on is the hermeneutical and functional notions of identity—and above all, the phenomenological notion. I think we do already make use of kalon concepts that they play a role in our ethical interactions and experience already, and that there are at the very least striking analogies between the phenomenology of our experience of to kalon and the kind of experience that is found in Sophocles and Aristotle and Pindar.

Duty, beauty, and booty  115

IV So, I do believe that something like the Greeks’ distinction between to kalon and to wphelimon, as just stated, is a deep and central part of our ethical form of life too. But while these things are part of what we think, I suspect they are very often not what we think we think. As I said before, there is evidence of confusion and gappiness in our thinking about the ethical significance of “the admirable”: it is as if there is a hole in our web of concepts in about the place where the classical Greeks had the concepts of kalon and aiskhron. One phenomenon that suggests this is the enormously culturally significant and important place of sport in our society. What reasons have sportsmen and sportswomen to do the often extraordinary things they do? I think the answer to that is something that ordinary people in our society, including sports players themselves of course, have a pretty good intuitive grip on; but, it is interesting how hard we are likely to find it to articulate these reasons. Sportspeople, I suggest, don’t typically play for money, for fame, for recognition, for applause—or if they do, we are likely to criticise them for it. They see achieving excellence in their sport as an end in itself. And we the spectators see things the same way. What is it that we cheer, when we cheer Bradley Wiggins or Jessica Ennis for setting a new world record, or Chris Robshaw for scoring a World-Cup-Final-winning try against the All Blacks? Particularities apart, and at the general level, I suggest that much of the time what we admire in what they do is, quite simply, their spectacular achievements. We all know this, I think—and yet we lack a good vocabulary to say what we know. My suggestion is that the reason why we struggle here is because our explicit and articulate ethical thinking is normally dominated by advantage/benefit notions—by to wphelimon— and makes little or no room for the notion of the beautiful, or the fine, or the glorious—for to kalon. In our thinking about sport, I believe these are notions on which we rely all the time, even if we don’t have a full reflective grip on that reliance. To put it another way, our ordinary-life thinking about sporting achievements gives a key place to the concept of glory; and yet, in the present state of things, we don’t have anything like an adequate philosophical understanding of that ordinary-life concept.14 Other phenomena too point in the same direction. One is the strange persistence and recurrence in moral thought of what seems to me the rather half-baked idea of “being able to live with myself”. Half-baked, because on the face of it this is not a satisfactory way of explaining why, for instance, one might not want to be a concentration camp guard however good the salary is, or to tell an undetectable lie. “I couldn’t live with myself if I did that” is unsatisfactory because it simply pushes us back to the question “And why couldn’t you live with yourself if you did that?” It is an explanatory dog-leg. Like Hobbes’ famous quip about his “distress”15 at the sight of a beggar, it talks about a subjective sense of moral comfort or discomfort—a

116  Sophie Grace Chappell subjective sense which after all is going to go missing in ­anyone sufficiently corrupt—when what we need to hear about is what might justify such a sense of comfort or discomfort.16 My suggestion is that it is typically thoughts about kalon and aiskhron that are needed here. The resort to the feeble-looking notion of l­iveabilitywith-myself is a rather lame attempt to get by without those deeper and more plausible thoughts—which we still intermittently use, consciously or half-­ consciously, but have lost our general reflective access to, because it has become harder than it should be, in our culture, to give these thoughts names. Another, similar, class of cases: “We don’t tell lies in this family”/“We don’t run away in this regiment”. Appeals to honour codes overlap and intermesh with appeals to to kalon; our notions of to kalon are typically notions that arise from, perhaps even define, some particular grouping to which we belong, and stand under particular obligations in virtue of so belonging. A cynic or reducer will say here that the conception of value is a selectively advantageous ideology that reinforces the group and its membership; a non-cynic, such as myself or perhaps Alasdair MacIntyre, will say that there are certain conceptions of value that necessarily develop within and can only be accessed via communities and traditions. And of course, actually both cynics and non-cynics could be on to something.17 We have such difficulty accessing the thoughts we need to access, to answer the questions we have such difficulty answering. Our difficulty is particularly obvious with “Glaucon’s challenge”, and with the general why-be-moral problem that Glaucon’s challenge is usually thought to introduce (to which indeed the liveability-with-myself proposal is one kind of attempted solution). To say it again, our difficulty is that, like Glaucon himself, we look for the benefit of virtue, the advantage of being virtuous to our flourishing. But sometimes, we fail to find any clear benefit or advantage in some particular case of heroic virtue, like the case of the “letter-writers” (imprisoned and condemned German opponents of Hitler) over whose case Philippa Foot wrestles for two or three convoluted and unconvincing pages at a crucial point in Natural Goodness—her main attempt to show, in line with her naturalist eudaimonism, that the virtues do indeed “benefit their possessor”.18 This paper’s thesis is that in desperate and morally exigent plights like the letter-writers’ it is not even, in Rosalind Hursthouse’s words, that “virtue is the best bet”: that our best chance of flourishing overall is if we develop dispositions including, for example, loyalty and justice, and then find that action according to those best-chance dispositions has distressingly fatal consequences when we find ourselves confronted by real misfortune or real evil. The situation is rather that the reasons for action that I most clearly and definitely have are ones that—from a prudential point of view—spell real disaster for me. But, the actions that they mandate are nonetheless clearly the ones to do; not because they are advantageous, but because they are beautiful. In short, the solution to Foot’s difficulty, and indeed to the why-be-moral problem, that I am recommending here is that there are important cases

Duty, beauty, and booty  117 in which we should stop thinking about benefit or harm at all, and think instead about the beautiful, the noble, the excellent, and the admirable and their opposites; that is, about kalon and aiskhron.

V If this is what we think, why isn’t it what we think we think? I’ve suggested that thoughts about kalon and aiskhron are a real part of our ethical repertoire; but unclearly so, confusedly and occludedly and in a way which cries out for their full reappropriation. But why the confusion and occlusion? What has happened, to make it so difficult for us to have a full and conscious grasp on these important ethical ideas? I doubt there is any one single answer to that question; the occlusion of to kalon is a complex and long-lasting cultural phenomenon, with complex and widely distributed roots. But I will talk about one cause of the occlusion. Like Nietzsche, and indeed Williams, I put (at least some of) the blame on Socrates. One crucial piece of evidence is Plato’s Gorgias 474c5–475b12, which I need to quote in full19: Socrates.  Polus,

do you think that it is a worse thing (kakion) to do injustice or to suffer it? Polus.  In my view, to suffer injustice is worse. Socrates.  Then answer me this: is it an uglier thing (aiskhion) to do injustice or to suffer injustice? Polus.  To do injustice. Socrates.  Then isn’t it a worse thing, if it is an uglier thing? Polus.  Not in the least. Socrates.  I see: evidently you don’t think that the beautiful and the good (kalon te kai agathon) are the same thing; nor the ugly and the bad (kakon kai aiskhron). Polus.  No, I don’t. Socrates.  But what about this? Consider all the things that you call beautiful (ta kala panta): bodies, colours, shapes, sounds, ways of life. Aren’t you appealing to some [standard] each time you call one of these beautiful? For a first example, perhaps you would describe bodies (swmata) as beautiful because of their usefulness (kata ten khreian) for some purpose that they serve; or perhaps because of some pleasure (kata hêdonên tina) that they cause, when people enjoy looking on them. Or do you have some other account than this of the beauty of bodies? Polus.  No, I haven’t. Socrates.  Well, won’t the same account of beauty serve for shapes and colours and so on? Don’t you refer to them as beautiful either because of some pleasure that they give (dia hêdonên tina), or because of a benefit that they give (dia wphelian), or for both reasons? Polus.  I do.

118  Sophie Grace Chappell Socrates.  Isn’t

it the same with sounds, and with everything to do with music? Polus.  Yes. Socrates.  Again, the case of laws and ways of living (epitedeumata) is not outside this generalisation either. The beautiful ones are those which either are beneficial (wphelima) or give pleasure (hêdea); or both. Polus.  I think that’s right. [475a1] Socrates.  And isn’t it the same with intellectual beauty (to twn mathematwn kallos)? Polus.  It certainly is, Socrates. Now at any rate you are doing a beautiful job of defining (kalws ge nun orizêi) the beautiful by way of pleasure (hêdonêi) and the good (agathwi). Socrates.  So couldn’t I define the ugly (to aiskhron) by the opposites, by pain (lupêi) and bad (kakwi)? Polus.  Of course you could. Socrates.  So whenever two things are beautiful but one of them is more beautiful, this will either be because it has a superiority in pleasantness (hêdonêi) over the other, or in beneficialness (wpheliai); or in both. Polus.  Certainly. Socrates.  Similarly, whenever two things are ugly, but one of them is more ugly, this will be because it has a superiority either in unpleasantness (lupêi), or in badness (kakwi); or for both reasons. Mustn’t that be true? Polus.  Yes. Socrates.  Come then—what did we say just now about doing and suffering injustice? Didn’t you say that suffering injustice was worse, but that doing injustice was uglier? Polus.  I did. Socrates.  Then if doing injustice is an uglier thing than suffering injustice, it must either be more unpleasant than suffering injustice, and so uglier by a superiority in pain; or else uglier by a superiority in the bad it does us; or else both. Doesn’t this also follow? Polus.  Yes, it must. Polus thinks that doing injustice is uglier but better than suffering injustice. Socrates gets him to agree that ugliness consists either in pain or in harm. But doing injustice is obviously not more painful than suffering injustice. So if doing injustice is uglier than suffering injustice, it must be more harmful. But, as Socrates goes on to argue, “If doing injustice exceeds in harm then it must be worse than suffering injustice” (οὐκοῦν κακῷ ὑπερβάλλον τὸ ἀδικεῖν κάκιον ἂν εἴη τοῦ ἀδικεῖσθαι, 475c13). Thus, Socrates in this passage explicitly equates benefit/harm and goodness/badness. He is helped to do this by a fact about the Greek word kakon, bad, namely that it is a natural opposite both to wphelimon, benefit

Duty, beauty, and booty  119 (alongside what in this sense of kakon are near-synonyms like blaberon, harmful), and also to agathon, good (alongside what in this sense of kakon are near-synonyms like aiskhron, shameful). 20 He also explicitly offers a reductive account of to kalon: as above, he says that things are kala only by being either pleasant or beneficial. 21 “The decisive movement in the conjuring trick has been made, and it was the very one we thought quite innocent” (Wittgenstein, P ­ hilosophical ­Investigations I, 308): Socrates argues for neither of these equations. We, like Polus, are simply invited to accept them both. Perhaps Polus is bound to accept them, or something like them, because at the start of the ­elenchus (474c6) the position that he states to defend it is that living unjustly is aiskhron but agathon, shameful but good. So, Polus is bound to focus his conception of the good upon the advantageous rather than upon the ­admirable—as Socrates also does. Here what would strike any Greek contemporary of Polus and Socrates— and Plato—is not how far apart their views are, but how close. (His accusers’ characterisation of Socrates as, like Polus, a sophist was not entirely baseless.) The culture that Polus, Socrates, and Plato all grew up in did not typically find it natural to treat to agathon are no more and no less than to wphelimon, nor to treat to kalon as reducible to the disjunction of to wphelimon and to hêdu. Rather, ethical thinkers like Sophocles see to agathon, the good, roughly as the disjunction of to kalon and to wphelimon, of the honourable and the advantageous (perhaps, like Aristotle, with to hêdu as a third disjunct); and they treat these latter ethical categories, to kalon and to wphelimon, as not reductively analysable in any other terms. To say that some thing or some deed or some person is honourable or advantageous is, for Sophocles, to make a claim about it that is meant to be understood directly, as invoking an ethical category that we know about in its own right. To say that we know about these categories in their own right does not, of course, mean that there is nothing more to be said about either category, or about how the honourable and the advantageous should be combined in a good life. To the contrary, Sophocles spent most of his career exploring their relations in his work as a dramatist. One particularly obvious example of this is Sophocles’ contrast between Odysseus and Philoctetes. Philoctetes, son of Achilles, represents the old ideal of nobility, of to kalon, of what MacIntyre in a fine discussion 22 calls “the goods of excellence”; aiskhros and kalos are Philoctetes’ key ethical concepts (see e.g. Philoctetes 108, 94). Odysseus by contrast is a talker (Philoctetes 96–99), and his key concepts are kerdos, sophos, technê— booty, cunning, and plot: his outlook is, in fact, a kind of caricature of the MacIntyrean “goods of effectiveness”. This is part of how Sophocles begins the play-length debate between their conceptions of the good that the Philoctetes stages (77–95):23

120  Sophie Grace Chappell Ὀδυσσεύς ἀλλ᾽ αὐτὸ τοῦτο δεῖ σοφισθῆναι, κλοπεὺς ὅπως γενήσει τῶν ἀνικήτων ὅπλων. ἔξοιδα, παῖ, φύσει σε μὴ πεφυκότα 80τοιαῦτα φωνεῖν μηδὲ τεχνᾶσθαι κακά: ἀλλ᾽ ἡδὺ γάρ τι κτῆμα τῆς νίκης λαβεῖν, τόλμα: δίκαιοι δ᾽ αὖθις ἐκφανούμεθα. νῦν δ᾽ εἰς ἀναιδὲς ἡμέρας μέρος βραχὺ δός μοι σεαυτόν, κᾆτα τὸν λοιπὸν χρόνον 85κέκλησο πάντων εὐσεβέστατος βροτῶν.

Odysseus No, we must plan this deed more cleverly: steal his resistless weapon like a thief! I know, my son, you were not meant by nature 80to speak, or to contrive, such evil acts; but what we gain by victory is sweet, so do it—later on we will seem just. Now, but for one day’s brief and shameless time give yourself to me—and forever after 85you shall be called most reverent of men.

Νεοπτόλεμος ἐγὼ μὲν οὓς ἂν τῶν λόγων ἀλγῶ κλύων, Λαερτίου παῖ, τούσδε καὶ πράσσειν στυγῶ: ἔφυν γὰρ οὐδὲν ἐκ τέχνης πράσσειν κακῆς, οὔτ᾽ αὐτὸς οὔθ᾽, ὥς φασιν, οὑκφύσας ἐμέ. 90ἀλλ᾽ εἴμ᾽ ἑτοῖμος πρὸς βίαν τὸν ἄνδρ᾽ ἄγειν καὶ μὴ δόλοισιν: οὐ γὰρ ἐξ ἑνὸς ποδὸς ἡμᾶς τοσούσδε πρὸς βίαν χειρώσεται. πεμφθείς γε μέντοι σοὶ ξυνεργάτης ὀκνῶ προδότης καλεῖσθαι: βούλομαι δ᾽, ἄναξ, καλῶς 95δρῶν ἐξαμαρτεῖν μᾶλλον ἢ νικᾶν κακῶς.

Neoptolemus Son of Laertes, when I hear a plan which pains me, I recoil from acting on it. I was not born to act on false contrivance, nor, so they tell me, was my father. I 90will freely lend myself to take the man by force, not guile: he has one foot: he cannot by force defeat such men as we. . . . And yet I came to help, and would not willingly be called a traitor. Prince, I would prefer 95to fail with honour than to win by evil.

When I talk about reappropriation, then, it is the possibility of an ethical outlook in this respect like Neoptolemus’ that I want us to be able to reappropriate (or get hold of fully and consciously as well as partially and inchoately): a view in which the good can be understood as the beautiful or admirable as well as the beneficial or welfare-raising. My suggestion is that it is the influence of thinkers like Socrates, and perhaps Plato when he wrote the Gorgias that has made this possibility hard for us to see. Which in its way is a surprising truth, if a truth. After all, as I have argued elsewhere,24 a view pretty much like Neoptolemus’ is also plainly in sight in Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics: Kalou dê heneka ho andreios hypomenei kai prattei ta kata tên andreian, “It is for the sake of the beautiful that the courageous man stays at his post in battle, and does the things that are in accordance with courage” (1115b23, cp. 1120a23–4).25 But when we read Aristotle through the spectacles of a tradition that, ever since Socrates, has very often26 sidelined and neglected the good-as-admirable in favour of the good-as-­beneficial, it is not hard for what is plainly in sight to be hidden in plain sight.

Duty, beauty, and booty  121

VI My thesis that we can and should understand the good as the beautiful as well as the beneficial, to kalon as well as to wphelimon, the honourable as well as the advantageous, promises to explain or cast light upon a number of interesting issues. One, as just observed, is the exposition of Aristotle. Another, connected with that, is the question in what sense if any eudaimonism should be attributed to him or to Plato or Socrates, or adopted by ourselves as our own first-order view. Thirdly, there is the familiar why-be-moral problem. I’ve suggested that in many cases, if we approach it equipped only with a conception of the good as the advantageous, that problem is insoluble; in many other cases, even if we get an answer to the problem, it will be the wrong kind of answer. (As when we are told that the reason not to engage in undetectable lying is that, well, we can’t be sure it will be undetected, etc. Even if true, this rather misses (what I think is) the real point, one that can be nicely captured by a conception of the good as the admirable: which is roughly that usually undetectable lying is wrong, when it is wrong, because it’s a shabby thing to do.) Fourth, I think the contrast that I’ve been developing between good-as-­ admirable and good-as-advantageous casts revealing light on the familiar contrast between deontologists and consequentialists. Like Philoctetes, deontologists tend to be high-minded; like Odysseus, consequentialists tend to be hard-nosed. Deontologists look for loyalty, ideals, and moral heroism; consequentialists look for the pay-off. Quite a lot of the contrast between deontologists and consequentialists is clearly a matter of temperament and tone. But humans are always going to have contrasting temperaments; and in line with those temperaments, there is always going to be a chance that one side find the other side’s tone contemptibly philistine and reductive, whereas the other side find the first side’s tone insufferably pompous and obscurantist. In philosophy as in any other part of human life, there is a good deal more to explaining the persistence of disagreement than simply looking at the arguments. In any case, it is not only consequentialists who are likely to have some serious questions about the good as the admirable or the beautiful. In this last section of the paper, I look at some of these questions. One first objection is just the complaint that my talk of the beautiful as a reason for action is not explanatory. “If we ask ‘Why did you do that?’ and someone says ‘Because it was the beautiful thing to do’, are we just supposed to accept this as an explanation?” To which I can simply reply with the Retort Direct: if we ask ‘Why did you do that?’ and someone says ‘Because it was the advantageous thing to do’, are we just supposed to accept that as an explanation? Well, no, of course not; in any normal case there will be more to say, to explain why the action was advantageous, why we wanted that sort of advantage here, why this was a case where

122  Sophie Grace Chappell advantage was the thing to think about, and so on. Pari passu, then, with the beautiful as a reason for action. The fact that in this paper I have only introduced the notion, and so haven’t had time or space to present it in the kind of exhaustive detail that philosophers—and economists, and political theorists, and sociologists, and evolutionary psychologists—have already given to the notion of benefit, should not be held against the notion. (Though I might point out that my discussion already contains a fair amount of detail about what kind of things might go into this “more to say”: consider, for instance, the vocabulary-cloud of pejorative terms offered above on p. 6.) It is easy shooting to attack “action for the sake of to kalon” on the grounds that it is obsessive and monocular, just as it is easy shooting to attack “action for the sake of duty” on the same grounds. But first, the same kind of barrage can be mounted against “action for the sake of utility”. And second, in all three cases, there need be no obsessiveness at all. “Action for the sake of to kalon” can be merely a philosopher’s shorthand, a formula standing for a whole genus of more detailed and stereoscopic, and more plausible, explanations. And the same is true for the other two formulae. Second and connectedly, it might be objected that acting for the sake of the beautiful involves reflexive deformation, or something like it— perhaps smugness or self-regard. There might seem to be something unduly self-absorbed about an agent who typically deliberates by asking which action that she could now do is the one that expresses her justice or other virtue. It might seem no less self-absorbed—or perhaps airyfairy, or dilettantish, or prissy, or smug, or something—to ask which action that I can now do is the beautiful one. This is, quite possibly, a fair criticism of someone who typically has this very thought; I have already conceded that saying “I did this for the sake of the beautiful” has something decidedly idiomatically off about it. What the criticism misses is that the thought is a rather strange and psychologically unlikely one, and that being motivated by the beautiful, just like being motivated by the virtues (or, again, duty or utility), is not necessarily a strange or unlikely process. In ordinary life, when someone acts under the pattern of motivation that I call “acting for the sake of the beautiful” and is asked “Why did you do that?”, the colloquial answer that we are likeliest to get is probably “Because it was the thing to do”, “Because that’s what really matters”, “Because I care about them”, “Because he’s human too”, “Because that’s what friends do”—or something like that. I doubt that goodness even ever, never mind always, has to be stupid. 27 But I wouldn’t deny that it’s very often inarticulate; nor that, when it is articulate, it usually does not speak explicitly in the terms of Aristotle’s or Sophocles’ ethical thought. Third, I may get ticked off by scientistically minded philosophical progressivists. “We have a research programme” (they may

Duty, beauty, and booty  123 admonish me) “which unifies us humans’ ethics with our underlying evolutionary history; within that the idea of acting for the sake of ­advantage fits entirely naturally, whereas the idea of acting for the sake of the beautiful does not fit at all—except perhaps as a selectively ­advantageous mirage”. But this objection, it seems to me, rests on foreshortened thinking even in its own terms. Evolution, to state the obvious, takes a long time; there is time for the process that led to us to take in all sorts of things, and so for all sorts of things to “fit” within that story, if we only have the patience to see how. It is therefore too quick and crude to dismiss acting for the sake of the beautiful from consideration simply because it makes the developmental story more complicated; so, after all, does the existence of The Well-Tempered Clavier. The point is especially applicable when the pattern that progressivists urge us to glide over, ignore, minimise, or otherwise theoretically sideline is a recognisable and important phenomenon in the actual psychology of the very humans that evolutionary psychology would like to explain. (On the issue of moral realism, by the way, the best stance for the evolutionary theorist to adopt, at least while in her work clothes, has always seemed to me to be a suitably chaste and cautious agnosticism. The fact that evolutionary developments led humans to have this or that conceptual tool, vocabulary, or framework of thinking does nothing to prove it either veridical or illusory. Evolution—in the broadest sense of the word—led humans to develop both mathematics and ethics. On its own, 28 that no more implies that ethics is systematically false than it implies that mathematics is. And it is the genetic fallacy, naked, and unashamed, to make either inference.) Fourth, here is an objection from Beyond The Fringe:29 Co.  Perkins. Sorry to drag you away from the fun, old boy. Pe.  That’s all right, sir. Co.  War’s not going very well, you know. Pe.  Oh my God! Co.  We’re two down, and the ball’s in the enemy court. Pe.  Sir. Co.  War is a psychological thing, Perkins, rather like a game of football. Pe.  Yes, sir. Co.  You know how, in a game of football, ten men often play better than

eleven. Pe.  Yes, sir. Co.  Perkins—we’re Pe.  Sir. Co.  Perkins… Pe.  Sir.

asking you to be that one man.

124  Sophie Grace Chappell Co.  …I want Pe.  Yes, sir. Co.  We need

you to lay down your life.

a futile gesture at this stage. It’ll raise the whole tone of the war. Pe.  Yes, sir. Co.  Get up in a crate, Perkins— Pe.  Sir. Co.  –Pop over to Bremen— Pe.  Yes, sir. Co.  –Take a shuftie— Pe.  Yes, sir. Co.  –Don’t come back. Pe.  Right you are, sir. They shake hands and look nobly into the distance. Variations on Vera Lynn’s “We’ll meet again” from Dudley’s unseen piano. Co.  Goodbye, Perkins. God, I wish I was going too. Pe.  Goodbye, sir… Or is it—au revoir? Co.  gazes at him stonily. Co.  No, Perkins. This objection to beauty as a reason for action is one that I could also have brought out by quoting Wilfred Owen’s Dulce et decorum (but that would have been less fun, and to most of us, perhaps, over-familiar too). At first pass, the objection is that beauty as a reason for action leads us to do things that are no better than futile gestures. Putting it that way, of course, can be no better than a first pass, for an obvious reason. To talk of futility is, normally, 30 to deploy the language of usefulness, benefit, advantage, and their opposites. And the whole point about beauty as a reason for action, as I have developed the idea, is that it involves responsiveness to a kind of goodness that is precisely not about usefulness or advantage. So to object, of some action motivated by a reason deriving from to kalon, “What’s the use of it?” is no better than objecting, of some action motivated by a reason deriving from to wphelimon, “What’s the beauty of it?” A second pass might be to say something like this: talk about to kalon— or about dulce et decorum—is an ideology. It is a way of thinking that dupes and traps people, sometimes to their utter destruction, as Perkins is duped, trapped, and destroyed by the CO in the sketch I’ve just quoted. Like justice on Thrasymachus’ view of it, to kalon is neither a virtue nor a vice, but a device.31 More fully—as the characterisation of the CO and indeed of Perkins so clearly brings out—the ideology in question is the imposition upon the young and naïve of an archaic aristocratic honour-code. And if we haven’t learned by now how good our reasons are to avoid that, then we haven’t learned anything.

Duty, beauty, and booty  125 To this, I reply that certainly appeals to to kalon can be ideologically motivated. But then, as the practice of plenty of actual utilitarians has brought out, so can appeals to benefit and usefulness. Certainly, it would be naïve to deny that, as a matter of historical fact, there is such a thing as the ideology of nobility. It would be even more naïve to think that utility has not generated a counterpoising ideology of its own; consider Thomas Gradgrind. We might add too that both nobility and utility can be something other, and something more positive, than ideologies: they can also be ideals. That a choice under the values of to kalon can be a futile gesture is undisputed. But it should not be disputed either that such a choice can also be such as to put in question the very notion of a futile gesture, the very idea that we should never make choices that do not show up well under a cost-benefit analysis. I know that I shall meet my fate Somewhere among the clouds above; Those that I fight I do not hate, Those that I guard I do not love; My country is Kiltartan Cross, My countrymen Kiltartan’s poor, No likely end could bring them loss Or leave them happier than before. Nor law, nor duty bade me fight, Nor public man, nor cheering crowds, A lonely impulse of delight Drove to this tumult in the clouds; I balanced all, brought all to mind, The years to come seemed waste of breath, A waste of breath the years behind In balance with this life, this death.

5

10

15

As ways of thinking about the good, and about our reasons to pursue the good, thoughts about the beneficial and thoughts about the admirable are equally indispensable to us. How to find the right trade-off in practice between these two kinds of ethical concept, and what to do when they pull us or point us in different directions, is bound to be a complex and unoperationisable problem for practical reason, with multiple different solutions in multiple different particular situations. No doubt one part of how we should think about this problem is given by saying that the admirable must act as a side-constraint—perhaps, sometimes, a pretty lax one—to our thoughts about the beneficial (a point that Sophocles’ Odysseus certainly fails to see), and that the beneficial must act as a side-constraint—perhaps equally lax—to our thoughts about the

126  Sophie Grace Chappell admirable (a point that Sophocles’ Philoctetes possibly fails to see). But overall the truth has got to be that finding the just balance is essentially a task for phronêsis.

Notes 1 My thanks to Edward Skidelsky, and to audiences in Kent and Oxford in summer 2015 for their questions, in particular to Maria Alvarez, Carla Bagnoli, Andrew Huddleston, María José Alcaraz León, Michael Smith, R. Jay Wallace, and Catherine Wilson. Thanks too to Linda Zagzebski for numerous helpful discussions, and also for writing “The admirable life and the desirable life” for my 2007 OUP anthology Values and Virtues. Few single philosophy papers have taught me more. 2 A practice is any coherent and complex form of socially established cooperative human activity through which goods internal to that form of activity are realised in the course of trying to achieve those standards of excellence which are appropriate to, and partially definitive of that form of activity, with the result that human powers to achieve excellence, and human conceptions of the ends and goods involved, are systematically extended. (MacIntyre, After Virtue, p.187) 3 See Daniel Russell, Happiness for Humans (OUP 2012). I reviewed it in Ethics 2011. 4 Which in fact I have serious doubts about—but I won’t raise them here. See my paper “Eudaimonia, happiness, and the redemption of unhappiness”, Philosophical Topics special issue, edd. Edoardo Zamuner and Timothy O’Leary, 41.1 (2013), pp.27–42, and “How encounters with values generate demandingness”, pp.84–99 in Michael Kuehler and Marcel van Ackeren, The Limits of Obligation, Routledge. 5 There are echoes here of another philosopher who thinks that the moral must sometimes simply be put aside, or as he says “suspended”, in face of a higher and categorically different kind of demand on us: namely Kierkegaard. Kierkegaard’s word, or rather Kierkegaard’s translators’ word, for “the moral” in this sense is, of course, “the ethical”. The infelicity is terminological only. 6 One major exception to the modern tendency to sideline or marginalise aesthetic agency is Robin Collingwood’s Principles of Art: one of the most notable virtues of Collingwood’s theory of art as expression is that it is radically artist-centred. The tendency is not, of course, exclusively modern. The tendency arises wherever artists are conceived either as servants or menials (as musicians very often have been and certainly were in classical Greece), or as the ­employees of aristocrats (as Haydn and Mozart and Bach, for instance, all literally were). 7 Or possibly, actions characteristic of aristocrats. An objection lurks here. We’ll come to it in Section V. 8 LSJ is cagey about the etymology of kalon, conjecturing a connection with the root found in kaiw, “I set on fire”, so that to kalon is, perhaps, what shines or flames out, what is splendid. (Gerard Manley Hopkins: “Honour is flashed off exploit, so we say”.) It seems to me equally possible that the kalroot here may be the same as the cel- root in “excellent”, meaning to rise or stand high. 9 To quote John Skorupski, in a talk given in Oxford on 4.7.15:

Duty, beauty, and booty  127 If I find that someone is siphoning off public money to his own account my reaction is not resentment nor, exactly, blame. It is ‘Oh. I didn’t think you were that kind of person.’ It is more like the ‘yuck!’ factor. I do not wish to claim that “yuck” responses are all there is to aiskhron ­responses—that a reductive theory of the aiskhron might reduce it evolutionarily say, to “yuck”. No doubt “yuck” is there in the aetiology of aiskhron responses. That does not make them the very same thing. 10 Timothy Chappell, “Utopias and the art of the possible”, Analyse und Kritik 2008 (Alasdair MacIntyre special issue). 11 In her “Internal and external reasons: a problem from Williams”, delivered in Oxford 4.7.15. (This is not her paper in this collection.) 12 See Knowing What To Do Chapter 11. 13 See Robinson’s wonderfully excoriating review of Merit and Responsibility: Philosophy (37.141), July 1962, pp.277–9. 14 For more on glory see Knowing What To Do Chapter 7. 15 “That man’s distress distressed me, and in easing him I eased myself.” (In John Evelyn’s diaries, I think, though right now I can’t find the ref.) But, Hobbes is both a deliberately provocative stylist and a maximally reductive theorist. So, it is of course entirely possible that his remark is not a joke at all, but seriously intended. 16 Another pairing of cant words that has had a huge vogue in our society, and rather tends in this same direction, is the acceptable/unacceptable pairing. When this is deployed, we may well want to retort (or at any rate I usually do): “Don’t bother telling me that you find this unacceptable. Cut to the chase, and tell me why you find it unacceptable. Is it because it’s bad? If so then why not stop this prissy pretence of über-liberal moral neutrality, and just say so?” 17 I am drawing here on thoughts that John Skorupski presented in his talk “Blame and shame”, Oxford, 4.7.15. 18 Foot 2001, pp.95–6, discussed further by me in Knowing What To Do Ch.8. 19 The translation is my own, following T. Chappell, The Plato Reader (EUP 1994), pp.108–9. 20 The ancient Greeks would naturally hear agathos as a word closely connected with admiration: “I admire” in classical Greek is agamai. Whether this apparent link is real, the scholars are unsure. 21 Socrates makes similar moves in the Meno. When Meno proposes that the virtuous person is the one who, desiring kala, is able also to get hold of them, Socrates at once asks ara legeis ton twn kalwn epithumounta agathwn epithumeten einai? (77b); when reducing virtue to knowledge, he is able to introduce it as a quite uncontroversial step that panta gar agatha wphelima (87e1); thus agathoi andres are, and are obviously, wphelimoi (96e8). 22 Alasdair MacIntyre, Whose Justice? Which Rationality? (Duckworth 1988), pp.30–46. 23 Text and translation, by Robert Torrance, retrieved from Perseus: www.perseus. tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0219%3Acard% 3D54 24 In Knowing What To Do Ch.8, to which Aristotle 1115b23 is the epigraph. 25 Aristotle’s stress on the notion of to kalon is noted by John Cooper, Reason and Human Good in Aristotle, p.?, though Cooper does not want to make the exegetical use of the notion that I do. 26 But not consistently. Plato himself later rejects the Gorgias’ claims in favour of more than one alternative account of the relations of to agathon, to wphelimon, and to kalon. In the Symposium, for example, he prefers to say that “All things that are ἀγαθά are also καλά” (201c2).

128  Sophie Grace Chappell 27 See Garrett Cullity, “Stupid goodness”, Presidential Address of the Australasian Association for Philosophy, July 2013. To date, this is unpublished, which is unfortunate, because it’s an excellent paper. 28 Of course, sophisticated advocates of evolutionary doubts about ethics like Sharon Street and Richard Joyce do not usually offer this fallacious inference all on its own. But unsophisticated ones do, and they unfortunately are the majority. 29 www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y5YW4qKOAVM 30 But not always. Wilfred Owen entitled one of his finest poems “Futility”, and the futility that poem talks about is, it seems to me, quite consistent with the pursuit of the good as to kalon, admirability, rather than as to wphelimon, benefit. The point of the poem, or part of it, is that the pursuit of glory too can be frustrated, and so futile. This point is presented many times in The Iliad as well. 31 T. Chappell, “The virtues of Thrasymachus”, Phronesis 1993.

8 Gauguin’s lucky escape Moral luck and the morality system Gerald Lang

Few things under the philosophical sun are entirely new. The problem of moral luck, in something like its modern form, was anticipated by Adam Smith (1759/1976, II.iii.2).1 It is beyond reasonable doubt, however, that the specific impetus behind the extensive contemporary discussion of moral luck was a symposium on moral luck by Bernard Williams and Thomas Nagel, published in 1976 (Nagel 1976; Williams 1976). 2 The phrase ‘moral luck’ is also owed to Williams. What is less obvious, but still strongly arguable, is that the ‘moral luck’ debate that has flourished since then is largely inspired by Nagel, not Williams. Though bits and pieces of Williams’ article are routinely referred to, and sometimes receive substantive discussion—aspects of the Gauguin case, or the ‘agent-regret’ experienced by the lorry-driver—there is something elusive about Williams’ treatment of moral luck, which has obstructed its comfortable incorporation into the moral luck literature. Part of the problem consists in the obliqueness of Williams’ argumentative strategy. Most of the essay, by his own admission, is concerned with a more general phenomenon, namely, the rationality or otherwise of retrospective justification for the decisions one makes. It is only towards the end of the essay, in fact, that Williams addresses the specific lessons for morality, and this part of his argument is strangely compressed. Both the connections between the more general phenomenon of retrospective justification and morality, and the nature of the damage which is supposedly inflicted upon morality, remain imperfectly understood. Or so I contend. This essay has two principal aims. First and foremost, I take a fresh look at Williams’ argument in ‘Moral Luck’, to assess its defensibility. Second, I investigate how Williams’ treatment of moral luck shapes and informs the wider assault on the ‘morality system’ which reached its fullest expression a few years later, in Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy. I think we can learn something about both of Williams’ projects—his defense of moral luck and his attack on the morality system—by seeing how each of these projects contributes to the other. The argument will be structured as follows. The ‘Moral luck and the morality system’ section will provide some basic background to Williams’ argument.

130  Gerald Lang ‘The Gauguin case’ section will outline his central case, the Gauguin case, and note some of its important features. Across the ‘The non-moral value interpretation’, ‘The self-realization interpretation’, ‘Justification and regret’, and ‘­Regret, transformation, and the means and ends of justification’ sections, I will outline six interpretations of Williams’ position. I quarrel with all of them, though some of these are admittedly more promising than others. The ‘Moral luck and the morality system’ section relates these reflections to ­Williams’ broader project in Ethics and the ­Limits of Philosophy. The ‘Conclusion’ section states a brief conclusion.

Moral luck and the morality system Both Williams and Nagel wish to question the claim that ‘moral evaluations, properly understood, do not apply to those aspects of a situation that are matters of luck’ (Williams 1993, 252). But they proceed differently. In the cases, Nagel is centrally concerned with, it is the degree of agents’ blameworthiness which appears to differ, depending on luck. One wellknown example is the Assassins case: two assassins make a (wrongful) attempt on someone’s life, but only one of them is successful. Another popular example is the Drivers case: two drunken drivers drive home, but one of them unluckily kills a pedestrian who happens to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Since these differences between the outcomes of the attempts to kill, on the one hand, and the drunken journeys home, on the other hand, lie beyond the control of these agents, the question arises why the individuals within these pairs of agents collect different degrees of blameworthiness. ‘Anti-luckists’, as I shall refer to them, deny that luck can make any difference to these agents’ degree of blameworthiness. Those who oppose anti-luckism— ‘anti-anti-luckists’—are by contrast prepared to uphold a difference in blameworthiness between the agents in these cases. Anti-anti-luckists say that the assassin whose attempt results in murder and the assassin whose attempt results in only a near miss are relevantly different: the involvement of luck does not dislodge the verdict that the successful assassin is more blameworthy than the unsuccessful assassin. Similarly, it may have been beyond the control of the unlucky drunk driver who kills a pedestrian that he was confronted by a pedestrian, when the lucky drunken driver encountered only empty roads. Nonetheless, anti-anti-luckists will say that the bad luck of the unlucky driver does not prevent us from attaching more blame to him than to the lucky driver. This driver is responsible for a death, after all, while the other driver is not. Anti-anti-luckists owe us a fuller story, of course, about why they can afford to remain untroubled by the fact that merely lucky differences between agents can sustain such serious differences in ascriptions of blameworthiness, but that story cannot be told here.3 Williams is not obviously engaged with these familiar debates. His principal aim in ‘Moral Luck’ is to show, inter alia, that it may be a matter of luck whether moral evaluation applies in the usual way to an agent. Nagel, by

Gauguin’s lucky escape  131 contrast, is not fundamentally concerned with cases involving agents who stand any serious chance of standing outside moral evaluation altogether. The lucky drunken driver and the unsuccessful assassin are still blameworthy, only not as blameworthy as their deadlier counterparts. Nagel’s concerns might therefore be described as being roughly internal to morality, whereas Williams’ concerns are concerned roughly with the limits of morality, on a certain construal of what morality is. Williams’ leading contention is that certain outcomes, arrived at in certain circumstances, may help to protect agents from the sort of unadulterated moral assessment to which they would otherwise be exposed. Having sketched a case in which an agent can somehow escape morality’s orbit—we turn to the details of this case shortly—Williams’ main business is then to reevaluate the strength of the moral forces that were supposed to prevent that from happening. I will now try to fill in the picture of Williams’ critical target (cf. Williams 1981a, 20–2). If it is morality which lies in his critical sights, what does he take morality to be? Williams’ particular critical target in ‘Moral Luck’ is the Kantian conception of morality. Williams dispenses with much detailed description of that project: what matters, for his purposes, is that Kantian morality has universal scope, and issues categorical obligations. Moral requirements apply to agents regardless of their preferences or personal aims. Kantian morality does not offer any sort of inducement to agents; moral requirements apply categorically. Since Kant takes moral requirements to be categorical, and also adheres to a strong form of the ‘ought’ implies ‘can’ principle, it follows that these requirements must be such that they can be perfectly followed by the agents to whom they apply. But moral requirements cannot be perfectly followed if successful compliance with them depends upon the cooperation of factors which lie beyond agents’ control. As a corollary of these other propositions, morality must be entirely resistant to luck. Williams argues that the appeal of the Kantian vision goes beyond the claim that it refuses to fudge or distort what we intuitively perceive to be the categorical nature of morality. For Williams, Kantian morality is not just inescapable, but seductive, since it offers us a way of understanding ourselves, and of arranging our relations with others, that is immune to luck. The appeal of that thought requires more than an acknowledgment of the inescapability of morality; it involves an awareness of morality’s fundamental importance. For its advocates, Kantian morality does not only refuse to sell morality short but also refuses to sell us short. We can be vindicated in ways that bypass the disturbing vicissitudes of fortune that infect our non-moral practical lives. That offers us consolation for the unfairness and randomness of the world (Williams 1981a, 21). In Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy, we are given a fuller exposition of the morality system which is presented more embryonically in the earlier essay. But, the essentials are more or less intact in the earlier version. Though the morality system in the later work has an ostensibly larger scope, and includes utilitarianism as well as Kantianism, Williams

132  Gerald Lang still describes utilitarianism as a ‘marginal member of the morality system’ (Williams 1985, 178). As before, the core of the morality system is Kantian. The ‘Moral luck and the morality system’ section enlarges on this picture, and says something more about the relationship between Williams’ strategy in ‘Moral Luck’ and his strategy in the later work. But we have enough to go on for the time being.

The Gauguin case Most of Williams’ discussion, and of the subsequent discussion of Williams’ article, is focused on the Gauguin case. In Williams’ simplified version of the story, a budding painter, Gauguin, abandons his family to pursue his artistic dreams in Tahiti. At the time the decision is made, Gauguin does not know whether he will be a successful artist. If he is successful, however, then he will be in a significant sense immune to the moral complaints to which he would otherwise be exposed. Moreover, Gauguin’s non-moral justification for what he does is then supposed to put pressure on the Kantian picture. This is Williams’ argument in outline. However, there are five additional significant details about this case, which we need to bear in mind. First, Williams does not make the straightforward claim that Gauguin will be justified by his future artistic success, but, rather, and more subtly, that he has a basis for the thought that what he did was justified. If, by contrast, he fails, then he lacks any basis for that thought (Williams 1981a, 23). Second, Williams tells us that Gauguin might experience two types of failure (1981a, 25–6, 36). There will be extrinsic failure if Gauguin’s talent is not put to the test through accident or misfortune: if he suffers a shipwreck on his way to Tahiti, for example. By contrast, he will experience intrinsic failure if his talent is put to the test but then proves insufficient to sustain his original aim. The contrast between these two types of failure is accompanied by a distinction concerning the nature of Gauguin’s relationship to the missing justification. If the failure is extrinsic, then Gauguin will lack a justification, but the failure will not unjustify him. If the failure is intrinsic, then the failure will run deeper; he will be unjustified, not just someone who lacks a justification. As Williams puts the point: ‘what would prove him wrong in his project would not just be that it failed, but that he failed’ (1981a, 25). Third, Gauguin is not depicted as simply an amoral agent who cares about nothing except his art, and who is prepared to go any lengths to pursue it. Gauguin is, rather, someone who ‘shares the same world of moral concerns’ as the rest of us (1981a, 38). The risk Gauguin runs, Williams tells us, ‘is a risk within morality, a risk which amoral versions of these agents would not run at all’ (1981a, 38). This more refined characterization of Gauguin is important, for it may be able to sidestep the possibility that Gauguin’s partial exit from the moral world will say much more about him than it does about morality (Nagel 1976, 137, 142, 1979, 28, n. 3). The challenge for Williams is complex: Gauguin needs to be sufficiently removed from morality’s orbit

Gauguin’s lucky escape  133 if his actions are going to teach us something about the limits of morality, but he needs to be sufficiently aligned with morality if his actions are going to teach us something about the limits of morality. Fourth, the Gauguin case does not attack only the morality system, which is largely concerned with impartial morality, but also implicates wider notions of the ethical, which will ‘include … a concern for people directly affected by one’s action, especially those to whom one owes special care’ (Williams 1993, 255). Gauguin’s decision is, after all, to abandon his family, not to neglect his duties of beneficence towards strangers. Fifth, there are other cases of moral luck to which Williams alludes. One of them concerns Tolstoy’s character Anna Karenina (Williams 1981a, 36– 7). In Tolstoy’s novel, Anna’s elopement with Vronsky, and her consequent estrangement from her family, fails to lead to happiness with him. Anna’s life ends, and ends in failure. Had the relationship with Vronsky worked out,4 however, Williams implies that Anna would have been in a prima facie position to collect, just like Gauguin, a justification for her decision. Most of the following discussion will be concerned with the Gauguin case, but Anna’s case needs to be accommodated as well. Over the next four sections, I will outline six different interpretations of what Gauguin’s justification consists in. I take myself to be answerable to two types of constraint. First, I want to identify what, according to Williams, Gauguin’s justification amounts to, in the light of his commentary and other textual evidence available to us. Call this the ‘internal constraint’. Second, I am interested in how plausible the interpretation is in its own right, or whether defenders of the morality system targeted by Williams should be troubled by it. Call this the ‘external constraint’. It is difficult to advance an interpretation which perfectly satisfies the internal constraint, though some interpretations fare better than others. As we shall see, even when we have managed to do that, the questions for Williams are far from over.

The non-moral value interpretation Williams’ Gauguin ends up producing great art, which retrospectively justifies him for abandoning his family. This relatively simple line of thought yields a first interpretation: Non-Moral Value Interpretation: Gauguin’s decision to abandon his family is justified by the non-moral value of what he goes on to achieve. The Non-Moral Value Interpretation boasts two significant advantages. First, it clearly accommodates the importance of what Williams refers to as the ‘determination by the actual’ (1981a, 30). Moreover, to be justified, Gauguin must actually produce great art; good intentions are not enough.

134  Gerald Lang This interpretation has a secondary advantage as well: it serves as an example of the gratitude we should feel that morality does not always get its way (1981a, 23, 37). On this view, Williams implicitly expects us to agree that perfect conformity to morality will have the effect of inhibiting the generation of significant non-moral goods, such as great art. In short, the Non-Moral Value Interpretation has quite a bit going for it. Even so, it faces severe interpretive problems. First, it fails to explain why Williams decides to place such heavy emphasis on the distinction between intrinsic and extrinsic failure. If Gauguin does not produce great art, then it should not matter to proponents of the Non-Moral Value Interpretation how and why that failure occurred. If it is only the product that matters, when all is said and done, then it should not matter to the Non-Moral Value Interpretation whether Gauguin’s failure is intrinsic or extrinsic. The second problem is that Williams explicitly denies that the value of Gauguin’s art is, in fact, doing the justificatory work; he denies, that is, that the Gauguin case exemplifies the view ‘that moral values have been treated as one value among others, not as unquestionably supreme’ (1981a, 37). This denial is explained by Williams’ determination to depict Gauguin as a moral agent who is running a moral risk (1981a, 37–8). A third problem is that the Non-Moral Value Interpretation does not obviously accommodate the Anna Karenina case. Anna’s luck, if she had experienced it, was only ever going to be the luck of self-fulfillment.

The self-realization interpretation The Non-Moral Value Interpretation cannot be the full story, though it might continue to be part of it. Taking our cue from Anna’s case in particular, here is a second interpretation: Self-Realization Interpretation: Gauguin’s decision to abandon his family is justified by self-realization in his projects, and perhaps, in turn, by the integrity upheld by such a life. The Self-Realization Interpretation gets a number of things importantly right. First, it obviously accommodates Anna’s case as well as the Gauguin case. Second, it neatly dovetails with other prominent strands of argument we associate with Williams, concerning integrity and his protests against the various confinements imposed on us by the morality system (Williams 1973, 93–118, 1981b). Third, the Self-Realization Interpretation is nicely equipped to deal with the ethical breadth of Williams’ target. If Gauguin is retrospectively justified by his self-realization, then he will be exempted from the demands of the broadly ethical life, not just the narrower obligations envisaged by the morality system.

Gauguin’s lucky escape  135 The Self-Realization Interpretation is not without problems, however. There are three main issues. First, the Self-Realization Interpretation is not deeply invested in the success condition which is so central to the Gauguin case. Other implications immediately ensue from that failure: the Self-Realization Interpretation will struggle to find gainful employment for the role of luck and the importance of retrospective justification, and it will not explain the significance of the distinction between intrinsic and extrinsic failures of luck. Imagine a further fictional character loosely based on Gauguin, whom we may call Gauguin 2. Gauguin 2 wishes to spend his life painting, rather than producing valuable paintings as a result. If Gauguin 2 is left free to paint, then he expects to achieve self-realization. Most people might find it frustrating to spend their days painting, but without distinction. This is not true of Gauguin 2. He merely has eccentric standards for self-realization. Being a bad painter, even if it is painting that one is pursuing, does not necessarily prevent an agent from achieving self-realization. Second, the Self-Realization Interpretation does not easily uphold Williams’ avowed interest in agents who are running moral risks. Gauguin 2 has the choice between moral duty and creative effort, however mediocre the results of the latter are likely to be. But agents who ignore their moral obligations to do something which would achieve their self-realization will often be agents who have already negotiated their exit from morality. This is particularly the case if there is not any substantial provision for luck. Gauguin 2 does not have to wait to see what happens: he is ready to leave the moral fold now. But the ‘wait and see’ element is important to Williams’ calculations since it gives him greater leverage to insist that these agents, at the time their initial decisions are taken, are still firmly in the moral fold, and are committed to remaining within it unless their actions have certain hard-to-predict consequences. Third, the Self-Realization Interpretation does not have much to say about the connections of these issues to another important constituent in Williams’ argument, concerning regret. I turn to this issue next. Its introduction is already overdue.

Justification and regret We need to take a closer look at the phenomenology, or how things are supposed to stand on the ground, when Gauguin has achieved success, and when, as a result, he acquires a justification for his decision. We already know that, on Williams’ view, Gauguin’s success has somehow catapulted him beyond the orbit of ordinary moral criticism. Gauguin is now no longer vulnerable to the unadulterated forms of moral criticism to which he would have otherwise been exposed. But we have done little up to now to examine what the value of this justification can be to Gauguin.

136  Gerald Lang What, in acquiring justification, is Gauguin supposed to gain? Is he envisaged as no longer caring about abandoning his family? Or is he someone who is no longer afflicted by the heavily moralized emotion of guilt, though not necessarily drained of concern? Alternatively, does his success mean that he now possesses the right to no longer care about abandoning them, or the right not to feel guilt for abandoning them, even if in fact he does continue to experience these feelings? Or are most of the implications in fact relevant to his family, rather than to him? Do they no longer have the right to complain about his abandonment of them? Perhaps, even though his family were initially wronged, they fail to take into consideration the fact that Gauguin is justified in what he has done. But Williams is emphatic that Gauguin’s success does not exempt him from his family’s unhappiness: they can go on complaining (1981a, 23–4, 36–7). So what is the point of the justification he has gone to such lengths to secure if it gives them no reason to retire their complaints about him? These questions are actually sharpened by Williams’ remarks in his later ‘Postscript’, in which he revisits the argument presented in ‘Moral Luck’: [W]hat is the point of insisting that a certain reaction or attitude or judgment is or is not a moral one? What is it that this category is supposed to deliver? … [I]nvoking this category achieves absolutely nothing, unless one has some account of the singular importance of morality in this restricted sense. I … cannot see what comfort it is supposed to give to me, or what instruction it offers to other people, if I am shunned, hated, unloved, and despised, not least by myself, but am told that these reactions are … not moral. (1993, 254) In the present context, we should be puzzled by Williams’ remarks. There are two relevant points. First, if the content of the complaints coming Gauguin’s way is all-­ important, rather than the fact that they exemplify specifically moral criticism, we face additional pressure to explain how and why Gauguin is benefited by his acquisition of a justification that reduces his vulnerability to moral criticism. Second, if we can show that Gauguin’s justification has somehow defeated the full undiluted moral force of his family’s complaints, then it does indeed seem to follow, contrary to Williams’ argument, that there is something special about morality. There must be something special about morality if there is something special about having a defense against undiluted moral criticism—which is precisely what Gauguin gains if he succeeds. Williams’ discussion of regret, and agent-regret in particular, might help us to pick a path out of this maze. The general, constitutive thought which lies behind expressions of regret is something like ‘How much better if it had been otherwise’ (1981a, 27). Williams is especially interested in a

Gauguin’s lucky escape  137 more specific form of regret: ‘agent-regret’. Agent-regret has an ineluctably first-person character, concerning what the agent has done, though perhaps not voluntarily. Agent-regret is further distinguished by certain attitudes and emotional inflexions. Williams’ central example of someone who experiences agent-regret is the lorry-driver who accidentally, and through no fault of his own, runs over and kills a child (1981a, 28). The lorry-driver is not to blame, but is anguished by what he has done. He experiences acute regret for being at the wheel when the child crossed his path. He has a psychological and emotional involvement with the fatality in ways from which he cannot easily detach himself, and which goes beyond the more impersonal sort of anguish we might associate with a bystander. An important lesson provided by the lorry-driver case, as Williams sees it, is that it exposes the realm of strictly voluntary agency, so cherished by the Kantian morality system, as relatively superficial (1981a, 29, 1995a). Our various involvements with the world cannot be so primly contained. But the role which agent-regret plays in our attempts to make sense of Gauguin actually places Gauguin in a striking contrast with the lorry-driver: unlike the lorry-driver, Gauguin does not regret what he did because his project turned out successfully. It is the absence of this sort of regret, then, which is meant both to justify him in what he did and to explain why this justification will presumably provide him with some sort of psychological protection against his awareness of the costs he imposed on his family. There is a further feature of Williams’ discussion which fills out Gauguin’s moral-cum-psychological profile in a promising way. Gauguin’s profile must somehow combine his moral sensitivity with the intelligibility of his departure, in certain circumstances, from the grip of morality. The added feature concerns the conditional nature of Gauguin’s agent-regret: we are told that Gauguin will experience agent-regret, unless his project turns out successfully (1981a, 30). As a result, there need be no denial that Gauguin is still involved in the moral world. The fact that he will be left with acute regrets if his project is unsuccessful, with nothing to place alongside those regrets, confirms that he is still a member of that world. Yet, the fact that he will be unable to regret what he did if his artistic project turns out successfully is also evidence that, despite his engagement with moral concerns, he may yet be able to escape from the morality system. These reflections suggest a third interpretation: Absence of Regret Interpretation: Gauguin’s justification of his decision to abandon his family is constituted by two facts about that decision: first, his decision being such that he knows that he will not regret making it if he is successful; and second, the decision being such that he knows that he will regret making it if he is unsuccessful.5

138  Gerald Lang The Absence of Regret Interpretation provides a better account of the composition of Gauguin’s moral personality; it is sensitive to the roles of luck and retrospective justification; and it also fills in some much needed further psychological details about the benefits of the justification which Gauguin hopes to acquire. However, one immediate problem with the Absence of ­Regret Interpretation should persuade us to seek a more refined version of it. The problem is that Williams’ confident claim that Gauguin’s agent-regret is conditional does not explain why Gauguin’s regrets do not spill beyond this conditional structure. The very neatness of this conditional structure is at odds with Williams’ usual insistence on psychological complexity and emotional loose ends. How does Gauguin know that he will not experience such regret? Perhaps he is banking on both things: on being both artistically successful and also on the cauterization of his regrets as a result of being successful. But he is not in a position to know that artistic accomplishment will lead to the cauterization of his regret. Upon closer examination, these things look like independent variables, not distinct elements in a single structure that contains them both. Correlatively, if Gauguin thinks he is in a position to vouch for this conditional structure, it is natural to suspect that he has already washed his hands of his family. He has already disinvested in them. His behavior will say more about him than it does about the limited authority of morality, thus confirming Nagel’s original worry about him. These are serious worries. So let us imagine that Gauguin, buoyed up by the success of his project, does not in fact experience regret over the decision he made, and that this lack of regret is in fact explained by his success. Gauguin will not in fact be in a position to know this at the time he makes his initial decision, but he will know it after he has achieved success. If we assume these facts, we now have a fourth interpretation: Modified Absence of Regret Interpretation: Gauguin’s justification of his decision to abandon his family is constituted by the fact that he does not regret that decision, if he is successful, in a way which is due to this success. If his decision does not lead to artistic success, then he will be left with only regrets and guilt for the decision he made. The Modified Absence of Regret Interpretation does not pretend that Gauguin’s decision already embeds this conditional structure. The proof is in the pudding, not in the recipe which he concocts in advance. Nonetheless, the Modified Absence of Regret Interpretation is still open to other worries, which emerge when we pursue a more extensive comparison between Gauguin and the lorry-driver. The fact that the lorry-driver does not lack justification for what he did does not spare him from agent-regret for what has happened. The driver may be blameless, but that fact alone will not render him immune to feelings

Gauguin’s lucky escape  139 which are phenomenologically akin to guilt or moral anguish; he will still feel responsibility for the outcomes he helps to cause. But if this is so, we suddenly have the makings of a pairwise comparison between him and Gauguin which is not the one Williams had in mind. For Gauguin, Williams tells us, does not lack justification for what he does, if he is successful. If he has such a justification, then he is not blameworthy in the normal way. But he might still be vulnerable to a form of agent-regret. After all, he was the one who abandoned his family, even if, as things have turned out, he did not lack a justification for doing so. Similarly, the lorry-driver kills the child, even if, as things stood, he was not to blame, and did not lack a justification for being at the wheel at the time. So why doesn’t Gauguin, like the lorry-driver, also ­experience agent-regret? Williams invites us to look at the lorry-driver through the lens of voluntary agency. But why not look at both the lorry-driver and Gauguin through the lens of justification instead? If the lorry-driver’s possession of a justification does not spare him agent-regret, then what prevents us from reaching exactly the same conclusion about Gauguin? One asymmetry between Gauguin and the lorry-driver is that, while it would be clearly inappropriate to pin any blame on the lorry-driver, ­Gauguin can still be blamed by his family. But this particular asymmetry between Gauguin and the lorry-driver does not imperil the deeper ­symmetry; if anything, it makes it more tempting to affirm it. If we expect the ­lorry-driver to feel agent-regret, despite his blamelessness, then we would, if anything, appear to have more rather than less reason to expect Gauguin to feel agent-regret as well, especially in light of the fact that he can still be blamed by his family. Presumably Williams’ answer would be that these agents stand in different relations to justification. The lorry-driver was blameless, and he was justified in driving at the time. Given what the lorry-driver has caused to happen, however, he understandably wishes things had turned out differently. He wishes that he had not been at the wheel that day. He would, as it were, willingly trade in his justification for a state of affairs in which he did not have to appeal to it. By contrast, Gauguin does not seek to trade in his justification. His justification, after all, is constituted by his absence of regret. He thinks he has been justified in the decision he initially made, which is just another way of saying that he does not regret making it. This response does not disperse all the relevant worries. Gauguin’s decision imposes costs on his family, which they can complain about. Gauguin might not regret his decision all things considered. But what about the means he employed to his ends? Does he regret them? On the one hand, his ends had to be secured by the means he employed. They were not going to be realized just by themselves, without taking deliberate steps to achieve them. Perhaps, given this relationship between means and ends, Gauguin regrets neither the ends nor the means. On the other hand, the means he took are distinct from the ends for the sake of which he acted, and may qualify for attitudes that differ from the attitudes Gauguin takes toward his

140  Gerald Lang ends. While Gauguin does not regret his decision all things considered, or experience all-in regret, that still leaves room for him to regret the means he took to achieve his ends.6 Which resolution of this question does the Modified Absence of Regret Interpretation favor? There is a problem either way. Imagine that Gauguin does not regret his decision to abandon his family since he has achieved what he set out to do, but he does regret the means he took to achieve his ends. The combination of non-regret over ends and regret over means exposes this Gauguin to the risk of psychological incoherence. The mere fact that Gauguin experiences conflict and ambivalence is not problematic. But if Gauguin thinks that there are strong moral reasons not to abandon his family such that he regrets taking these means to his ends, then it is difficult to square these thoughts with the further thought that he was, after all, justified in abandoning them. Imagine instead that the means and ends are more tightly stationed together within a single justificatory structure: because Gauguin does not regret the ends, he also fails to regret the means. But now it is difficult to avoid the thought that, at the time when the decision has supposedly been retrospectively justified, Gauguin has simply withdrawn his original concern for them. On this showing, Gauguin is not as firmly stationed in the moral fold as Williams wishes us to suppose. There is another problem with the Modified Absence of Regret Interpretation, concerning the external constraint rather than the internal constraint. The failure to experience regret may be simply a poor guide to whether a decision has been justified. How can these agents’ beliefs that they have acquired such a justification often fail to say more about them than it does about morality? The appeal in the first instance is to a psychological fact: when certain outcomes are secured, Gauguin no longer regrets what he did. So he is off the hook. But why is that? He may think he is off the hook. But the morality system does not depend on the actual acknowledgment of its authority. The fault may lie in agents, rather than in the demands that morality makes of them. Now while there is plenty of evidence that Williams is prepared to challenge the categorical nature of moral requirements (Williams 1981c, 1995b), he can hardly fail to agree that, at least in some circumstances, not caring about morality says more about the agents who do not care about it than it does about the limited authority of morality. What Williams needs to do is to convince us that Gauguin stands on the right side of this line.7

Regret, transformation, and the means and ends of justification One problem with the Modified Absence of Regret Interpretation is that it implicitly assumes a static moral psychology: it is difficult to make sense of the description of Gauguin as someone who is morally attuned to morality, while also arranging, though conditionally, his departure from it. A further element in Williams’ argument may help.

Gauguin’s lucky escape  141 This further element concerns the transformation of Gauguin’s perspective as a result of the success of his project. Gauguin may lack access to a perspective that can justify, or even fully make sense of, his abandonment of his family at the time of his original decision. That perspective is acquired only if and when his artistic project bears fruit. Though Gauguin can only deliberate from here, he can still anticipate, if he is successful, an alteration in his ‘stand-point of assessment, [which] will be from a life which then derives an important part of its significance for him from that very fact’ (1981a, 35). Yet, the materials for the justification that he collects further down the line will not be in place until this transformation in his perspective actually occurs. It is also a matter of luck whether he will end up with this transformation of perspective. This is not something he can know at the time he makes his original decision. This additional ingredient in Williams’ argument yields a fifth inter­­pretation: Transformation Interpretation: Gauguin’s decision to abandon his family is justified by his evaluative transformation, which secures for him a new perspective which releases him from all-in regret about what he did.8 In respect of the internal constraint, the Transformation Interpretation turns in a good performance. It clearly provides for luck, since the transformation in Gauguin’s perspective is a matter of luck. This interpretation also provides to some extent for the significance of the distinction between intrinsic and extrinsic failure. If Gauguin suffers bad extrinsic luck, the thought that he might have been right to attempt his project is still available to him, since this thought can be accompanied by the thought that there is some justifying perspective that he might have successfully occupied. If he does not occupy this perspective, then he will lack a justification, but he will not be straightforwardly unjustified. If he suffers bad intrinsic luck, by contrast, then he will know that he was simply wrong to think that there was any such perspective that he might have occupied, such that he was justified in what he did, consistently with him having these projects and being the sort of person he was in the first place. How about the relationship between means and ends? Again, the Transformation Interpretation sheds further light on these issues. Here, we need to distinguish between the roles and possibilities associated with each perspective. Gauguin’s original perspective is one which reflects a genuine concern for the moral costs of what he does. That perspective can endure, since there is no reason to deny that Gauguin still enjoys some sort of imaginative and emotional access to it, even after his evaluative transformation. From this original perspective, Gauguin regrets the means he employed to his end. From the new, transformed perspective, however, Gauguin is in a position to affirm both the justifiability of the end he pursued, and the means he took to attain it.

142  Gerald Lang Thus, the Transformation Interpretation avoids psychological incoherence because the ends are connected to the means in the right way under each perspective. The earlier perspective finds both the means and the end problematic, whereas the later perspective vindicates them both. The Transformation Interpretation also allows Gauguin to be depicted as a full member of the moral community, at least at first. Moreover, it makes sense of what his justification achieves for him, given the arrival of his new perspective. At this later point, he endorses both the end, and the means he took. He may continue to be concerned for his family—the Transformation Interpretation does not imply that Gauguin can simply ‘switch off’—but these concerns should not get him to think that, after all, he was wrong to take these means to his end. Gauguin is still likely to experience some psychological ambivalence, as he shuttles between the two perspectives which are available to him, but this is not a refutation of the Transformation Interpretation. It simply confirms the emotional complexity of the case. It also allows us to make sense of the subtlety of Williams’ formulation of what Gauguin’s success will achieve for him: it will give Gauguin a basis for justification, rather than, more simply, a justification. Having a basis for justification is consistent with his ability to grasp, and to regret, the costs which his decision has imposed on his family. The Transformation Interpretation can be restated to make these features more explicit, providing us with a sixth and final interpretation: Improved Transformation Interpretation: Gauguin’s decision to abandon his family is justified by his evaluative transformation, which (a) secures for him a new perspective vindicating his end, releasing him from all-in regret about what he did, as well as directing him not to have all-in regret for the means he took to his end, and (b) supplants his original perspective, according to which the end for the sake of which he acts is not yet vindicated, and which renders the means he takes to that end morally problematic. The Improved Transformation Interpretation is probably the most refined interpretation we can recover from Williams’ argument, and indeed the interpretive trail will stop here. It remains vulnerable to certain problems. One problem with it arises out of another possible trajectory for Gauguin. Let us call this version of our central character Gauguin 3. Gauguin 3 devotes his life to artistic efforts which come to very little. At first, he is disappointed with his returns, and experiences regret. But then he comes to the view that the journey was still worthwhile, even though the destination was not what he thought it would be. As a result, his ultimate regrets evaporate. The perspective of Gauguin 3 has been transformed: his original thought that his decision would be justified only by the results now yields to the thought that it is the quest for results which really matters. Gauguin 3 seems justified by the Improved Transformation Interpretation. Is this the

Gauguin’s lucky escape  143 right result? It offers little scope for Williams’ emphasis on the ‘determination of the actual’, and it does little to accommodate the thought, conveyed by the original Gauguin case, that cases of moral luck are cases in which moral commitments can be defeated only by non-trivial achievements. Gauguin 3 will have sidestepped these challenges by simply revising his thoughts about what does the justificatory work. Now it need not be conceded that a mere effort of will can produce this transformation in the perspective of Gauguin 3. That would indeed look cheap, an instant recipe for backsliding and ex post facto rationalization. But even if Gauguin 3 can boast the luck of having his perspective transformed in a non-voluntary way, his case still does not appear to provide a strong challenge to the morality system. The lesson readily generalizes. Not every transformation of perspective can expect to be taken equally seriously by the morality system. We can have deteriorations of perspective that morality should dismiss, as well as alterations of perspective that might issue it with a sturdier challenge. ­Williams simply does not give us enough to work with here. A second problem with the Improved Transformation Interpretation is that we are forced to settle for a hazy account of Gauguin’s grounds for undertaking the project in the first place. According to the Improved Transformation Interpretation, at an earlier point Gauguin can count as a full-blooded moral agent. His art-pursuing end is not yet vindicated. It is unclear without additional commentary why Gauguin’s concerns for the costs he imposes on his family do not stop him from making the decision to abandon them, or why, for that matter, and from his earlier perspective, the non-vindicated end stands any chance of being vindicated. If the means he takes to his end are not yet justified, how can he take them while retaining the understanding of himself as a moral agent, answerable to moral concerns? A third problem is that, even though Gauguin may to some degree be able to shuttle back and forth between the earlier perspective and the later perspective, it is nonetheless the later perspective, not the earlier ­perspective, with which he comes to be ultimately identified. According to this later perspective, Gauguin can affirm the end for the sake of which he acted, and also the means he took to those ends. The fact that Gauguin embarked on this biographical journey from a perspective that was firmly stationed within morality does not change the fact that this journey brings him to a place where those concerns no longer register with him in the same way. Of course, this is the very point Williams wishes us to accept. But the challenge for him is to persuade us of the aptness of his preferred description of the case. Williams thinks that Gauguin is originally stationed within morality, but, due to moral luck, finds himself beyond morality. The ­morality system holds instead that Gauguin is not someone who has escaped morality, but who has simply left morality. Gauguin had moral concerns but no longer has them in the same way. The Improved ­Transformation Interpretation does not obviously subvert the morality system’s preferred description of events.

144  Gerald Lang

Moral luck and the morality system In Ethics and the Limits, the primary feature of the morality system, around which everything else turns, is the category of moral obligation. Williams’ task is to investigate, and then discredit, ‘the intimidating structure that morality has made out of the idea of moral obligation’ (1985, 182). An immediate accompaniment to the primacy of obligation—its partner in crime, perhaps—is the primacy of the central response to the non-satisfaction of obligations: this is moral blame. Another accompaniment to the primacy of obligation is the claim that obligations claim the highest deliberative priority (1985, 183). If obligations enjoy this priority, then it can be no casual matter if a moral obligation ceases to apply to us. Any explanation of why a moral obligation is thus defeated can only be explained by the application to us of another demand claiming at least as high a deliberative priority as the original, defeated demand. But then we may seem forced to conclude that only an obligation can beat an obligation, and, more generally, that the items competing hardest for our attention in deliberation are all carved out of the same obligation-focused structure: thus, the morality system reflects the ­‘obligation-out, obligation-in’ principle (1985, 174–81). Williams tells us that moral obligation is the category that connects deliberative priority to a further category in the morality system that he describes as importance (1985, 182). In the morality system, importance is settled, first and foremost, by the satisfaction of moral obligation. It need not be denied that agents can continue to value their projects, but these can only be pursued on terms which are consistent with moral obligation. Williams argues that the morality system over-reaches itself. There are three main strands to his argument.9 The first strand is recognizably Humean: we need morality, and the predictability afforded by a reasonably high level of compliance with morality, to protect our vital interests. These interests generate immediate obligations against violence and assault, and against lying in certain circumstances (1985, 185–6). The morality system’s particular way of guaranteeing this predictability is to get us to internalize these demands of a minimally decent social life as deliberative priorities; as Williams puts the point, the morality system ‘tries to produce an expectation that through an expectation of’ (1985, 187). But we do not need the obligation-out, obligation-in principle in order for that system to be satisfyingly robust. There can be intelligible and non-threatening departures from moral obligations, even if these moral obligations are not supplanted by yet other moral obligations. Williams’ second and third points are connected. His second point is that the category of importance enjoys a life that is independent of the morality system. We can find things important without having to relate this importance to the morality system for validation (1985, 182–3). The third point is that our practical lives do sometimes contain cases of practical necessity, where certain courses of action appear to us as making an unconditional

Gauguin’s lucky escape  145 claim upon us (1985, 188). Cases of practical necessity do not entirely coincide with cases of moral obligation. This is true even of some actions undertaken for moral reasons: think of heroic and supererogatory acts of bravery (1985, 188). But cases of practical necessity will take non-moral forms as well. Williams is encouraged in the thought that practical necessity can come apart from moral obligation by the fact that, in the Kantian picture, the feeling of practical necessity can count only as a misleading representation of morality’s normative force. Feelings of practical necessity mislead because moral necessity is not something that can be represented by any particular feeling or experience (1985, 189–91). So, if we are not simply going to dismiss practical necessity cases as fraudulent, we should accept that they may not invariably have a moral source. Within this collection of arguments, the Gauguin case seems to represent a case of practical necessity. We should be able to relate to Gauguin, and to find him non-monstrous, and we may think that any account of morality that cannot accommodate such cases is too austere or anemic to be satisfactory. But I think some additional ambition is built into Williams’ argument. The central interest of ‘Moral Luck’, from the perspective of Williams’ later argument, is that it depicts a transition from justifiable concerns which are firmly moral to justifiable concerns which go beyond morality. The Gauguin case therefore functions as a sort of Trojan horse. Williams takes a feature which the morality system regards as central—deliberative ­priority—and, in a bold and ingenious piece of table-turning, uses it to displace the morality system itself. On his view, agents’ deliberations may satisfy the test of practical necessity without its being the case that this test can only be satisfied by moral necessity. Gauguin’s case shows us both that practical necessity can take a non-moral form, and that cases of non-moral practical necessity can be instantiated by agents who cannot be excluded from the realm of morality, on any sensible conception of what morality can be. I have pointed to various problems with this argument. But the strategy it embodies is not the only strategy available to Williams. Williams does not have to displace the primacy of obligations by showing how deliberative priority can take non-moral forms. He can instead attempt to establish some distance between the category of importance and the category of deliberative priority, with its associated cluster of features such as the primacy of obligations and blame and the obligation-out, obligation-in principle. On this view, it will be, at bottom, the Humean argument which is calling the shots. We can agree that morality is important, but not that it should impose a permanent curfew on our lives and concerns.

Conclusion The Kantian system represents the apotheosis of the morality system, and anti-luckism takes places its place among the constituent permanent members of the morality system, when that system is described in full (1985, 195).

146  Gerald Lang But just as the appeal and role of anti-luckism can only be explained by taking a look at the appeal of the wider system in which it is embedded, the weaknesses of anti-luckism can only be diagnosed by a wider structural survey of the weaknesses of the system to which it belongs. As I see matters, it was always unlikely that the existence of moral luck—an expression which Williams himself describes as suggesting an oxymoron (1993, 251)—could be the antidote to these wider concerns, or that anti-luckism itself was destined to be the uniquely exposed Achilles heel of the morality system. While Williams’ strategy in Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy is consistent with his strategy in ‘Moral Luck’, it does not depend on it. Perhaps that should be counted as his good luck.10

Notes 1 Nagel (1979, 31–2) acknowledges Smith’s work in this area. 2 The literature on moral luck usually deals with the later revised versions, so I will be mostly referring to Williams (1981a) and Nagel (1979). 3 I discuss these cases at length in my monograph Strokes of Luck, in progress. 4 I ignore here complications about the truth of counterfactuals about fictional characters. 5 If the failure is extrinsic, though, then it may be regret, rather than agent-regret, which Gauguin experiences. The same qualification should attach to subsequent interpretations. Thanks to Jake Wojtowicz for this point. 6 Here, I am indebted to Wallace (2012). I also borrow the phrase ‘all-in regret’ from Wallace. 7 Wallace (2012) provides a powerful argument that the absence of regret may be an unreliable guide to justification. The case Wallace pursues at length is the non-identity problem associated with Parfit (1984), ch. 16: specifically, the case of the fourteen-year-old girl who gives birth to a child who is raised in adverse circumstances, due to the mother’s extreme youth. Wallace notes that this case has little to do with luck, since even at the earlier point it is perfectly foreseeable, if she enjoys a healthy relationship with him, that the fourteen-year-old girl will be unable, when she is older, to regret her original decision. That fact alone does not show that it was the right decision to make at the time. 8 See Paul (2014) for a more recent exploration of the significance of transformative experience. 9 The whole book, of course, is committed to this endeavor. I focus on Chapter 10 because this is the climax of Williams’ argument, and because it is here where the particular concerns explored in ‘Moral Luck’ have a basic affinity with the concerns of the later work. 10 An early version of this essay was presented at the Thirty Years of Bernard Williams’ Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy Conference in Oxford, July 2015. Many thanks to Sophie-Grace Chappell for organizing this enjoyable and stimulating conference, and for the invitation to it. A revised version was presented at a Centre for Ethics and Metaethics seminar in Leeds. I’m very grateful indeed for all the helpful and insightful objections and suggestions I received on those two occasions. For further exchanges, I thank Victor Durà-Vilà, Brian McElwee, and Jake Wojtowicz. Thanks as well to several anonymous readers for their comments.

Gauguin’s lucky escape  147

References Nagel, T. (1979) Moral Luck. In his Mortal Questions. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Nagel, T. (1976) Moral Luck. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Supp. Vol. 50: 137–51. Parfit, D. (1984) Reasons and Persons. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Paul, L. A. (2014) Transformative Experience. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Smith, A. (1759/1976) The Theory of Moral Sentiments, eds. D. D. Raphael and A. L. Macfie. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Wallace, R. J. (2012) Justification, Regret, and Moral Complaint: Looking Forward and Looking Backward on (and in) Human Life. In Luck, Value, and Commitment: Themes from the Ethics of Bernard Williams, eds. U. Heuer and G. Lang. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Williams, B. (1995a) Voluntary Acts and Responsible Agents. In his Making Sense of Humanity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Williams, B. (1995b) Internal Reasons and the Obscurity of Blame. In his Making Sense of Humanity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Williams, B. (1993) Postscript. In Moral Luck, ed. D. Statman. Albany: SUNY Press. Williams, B. (1985) Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy. London: Fontana Press/ Collins. Williams, B. (1981a) Moral Luck. In his Moral Luck. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Williams, B. (1981b) Persons, Character, and Morality. In his Moral Luck. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Williams, B. (1976) Moral Luck. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Supp. Vol. 50: 115–35. Williams, B. (1973) A Critique of Utilitarianism. In Utilitarianism: For and Against, eds. J. J. C. Smart and Bernard Williams. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

9 The irrelativism of distance Geraldine Ng

Introduction Bernard Williams is a sceptic about the objectivity of moral judgements. Instead, he argues that a distinctive kind of relativistic view, what he calls the relativism of distance, is the sensible attitude to take.1 Williams believes it captures an important relativistic truth about moral appraisal. Many commentators, however, reject the relativism of distance. Many find it unconvincing, and indeed, according to Miranda Fricker ‘less than fully coherent’ (Fricker 2010, p. 152). By her lights, it should be abandoned because it is merely ‘an optional, under-motivated commitment from the point of view of the rest of Williams’ philosophy’ (Ibid.). I want to resist Fricker’s conclusion because I believe that, from the point of view of the rest of Williams’ philosophy, it is not optional but vital. Abandoning his relativism would leave a disagreeable blank in Williams’ overall ethical outlook. Commonly understood, Williams is putting forward a form of relativism by drawing a distinction between what he calls ‘real’ and ‘notional’ confrontations. 2 A historical-cultural outlook S may be so unlike ours that it could not be, as Williams puts it, a ‘real option’ for us (Williams 1981, pp. 132–43). If this is so, then we stand in merely notional confrontation with that outlook and, it follows, moral appraisal is inappropriate. Moral appraisal is only appropriate, according to Williams, in real confrontations. Assuming the common reading of Williams’ view as a metaethical relativist thesis, the verdict of critics is hard to deny – the relativism of distance is unpersuasive. As I understand her, Fricker moves from the claim that the relativism of distance is under-motivated to the claim that it is optional in terms of the rest of Williams’ philosophy. This inference seems to me mistaken. Williams’ formulation of his key premise, the ‘real option’ condition, admits of more than one interpretation. What is underappreciated is that Williams offers two different definitions of the ‘real option’ condition, what I will call a common and an uncommon interpretation. Very roughly, I will disavow the common interpretation and defend the uncommon interpretation of the ‘real option’ condition. Two things follow from adopting this strategy. By defending the uncommon interpretation, the ‘real option’

The irrelativism of distance  149 condition will evade the main criticisms. By disavowing the common interpretation, it will mean giving up any relativistic ambitions. I go on to argue, next, for what I will call the irrelativism of distance. The argument is irrelativistic because it applies exclusively to the appraiser’s moral-psychological standing, and entails that the appropriateness of moral appraisal is contingent on A’s connection to that historical-cultural outlook up for appraisal. The irrelativism of distance generates a moral-psychological constraint on A. In cases where that historical-cultural distance is too great, it points to a structural lack in moral-psychological standing on the part of A. I see one main obstacle to my interpretation. A significant bar to the irrelativist view is that it falls short of Williams’ sceptical position with regard to the objectivity of moral values. It might be objected that irrelativism misses out much of what Williams wants to do by his relativist thesis in that direction. Discussion of moral relativism typically focuses on the culpability or lack of culpability of an outlook, the appropriateness or inappropriateness of blame, by focussing on the structural capacity or incapacity of ethical outlooks. Irrelativism, by contrast, focuses on the appraiser’s particular relation to that outlook and says little about outlooks themselves. In response, I will urge that we must keep in our sights Williams’ credentials in the other direction. His sympathies in that direction can be heard when he insists: ‘Social practices could never come forward with a certificate saying that they belong to a genuinely different culture, so that they were guaranteed immunity to alien judgments and reaction’ (Williams 1985, p. 158). Williams’ non-objectivist position is not straightforwardly sceptical. I will suggest that he sets no great store by his relativistic tendencies.

Williams’ scepticism Williams, as we know, is a sceptic about the objectivity of moral judgements. Let us understand moral objectivism as the following. Moral objectivism maintains that moral judgements are ordinarily true or false, absolutely or universally understood. Moreover, some are indeed true, and some false. And on the basis of evidence, we are sometimes justified in accepting true judgements and rejecting false ones. Williams allows, it should be noted, that there is one way that ethical thought could have an objective foundation. We could say that ethical thought is objective, he remarks, if an Archimedean point could be found where human interests or practical reason could be shown to have a determinate ethical outlook. But, thinks Williams, the chances of finding some such determinate outlook is very unlikely. 3 Discussions of objectivity in ethical thought originate from many different starting points. Our discussion starts from considerations about disagreement between distant cultures. Williams wants to understand and explain a certain kind of disagreement. He supposes that a better understanding might modify both our attitude to those with whom we disagree

150  Geraldine Ng and our conception of our own point of view. Start by considering two outlooks that conflict and seem exclusive, the Aztec and ours. It is obvious that the Aztec culture is a profoundly different culture or form of life from ours. We are in conflict, for one thing, because child sacrifice is a central part of the Aztec form of life. It will be helpful to more precisely situate Williams’ sceptical position in the debate between the two prominent approaches to such conflicts – relativism and objectivity about moral values. Relativism would ‘explain away’ a conflict between our societies – it would tell us both why there is no conflict between the Aztec and ourselves, and why it appears like there is. On objectivism, simply speaking, there is a truth of the matter: ‘Child sacrifice is always wrong’. It is generally assumed that there are two sides to this ancient dispute, relativism and moral objectivity. More recently, the so-called mixed views have come into prominence.4 There are proponents from both sides of the debate who advance mixed views. The relativists in question accept some form of objective constraint, and the objectivists try to make room for some relativist concerns. Williams’ view falls into this loose group. He criticises most forms of moral objectivity but he also has in his sights many non-objectivist alternatives to objectivism. Williams defends scepticism about moral objectivity against the idea that it straightforwardly implies relativism. Toeing the line between relativism and objectivity about moral judgements, what might such a non-objectivist position look like? The non-objectivist might, on a first pass, blurt out, ‘We are right, and they were wrong’. This blank thought is plainly not what Williams has in mind. But its apparent thoughtlessness makes evident the burden of explanation for the non-objectivist. To be relevantly interesting, non-objectivism wants to avoid, on the one hand, breath-taking lack of reflection and on the other hand, collapsing into relativism. The task, ­Williams thinks, is to find ‘for each belief or outlook something that will be its own place’ (Williams 1985, p. 156). To that end, he begins by trying to support two propositions about ethical outlooks: 1 Two beliefs or outlooks can conflict. 2 Two beliefs or outlooks can be genuinely exclusive (Ibid., p. 157). The proposition that two beliefs can conflict is contrary to relativism. Relativism denies that beliefs or outlooks can conflict. The idea that two beliefs are genuinely exclusive is contrary to objectivism. Objectivism denies that they are genuinely exclusive. Consider the first proposition. We have two views that conflict. For the Aztec, child sacrifice is central to their ethical view of the world. We today think that it is morally wrong. The two cultures seem irreconcilable. Our culture does not admit child sacrifice, whereas the Aztec culture has a special place for it. Relational relativism maintains that the apparent irreconcilability can be explained away. 5 On relational relativism, ethical concepts

The irrelativism of distance  151 of right and wrong have a logically inherent relativity to a given society. Thus, relational relativism finds in the statement of each belief or culture a logical form that makes them straightforwardly compatible. Williams objects that relational relativism is inadequate as an explanation of ethical conflict. He argues that ‘it is implausible to suppose that ethical conceptions of right and wrong have a logically inherent relativity to a given society’ (Ibid., p. 158). On the one hand, it seems true that, as a member of my culture, I have certain dispositions and expectations that are necessarily culturally determined. As Jonathan Lear puts it, ‘Humans are by nature cultural animals: we necessarily inhabit a way of life that is expressed in a culture’ (Lear 2006, p. 6). Williams would agree with Lear. But, on the other hand, he would also insist that my ethical hostility when presented with the practices of another culture is not rendered inappropriate by the mere fact that it is a different culture. On relational relativism, my ethical hostility towards that other culture is necessarily inappropriate, illogical in a sense. Williams denies this. That cannot be right, he argues, at least not straightforwardly right. Why should we think that a social practice is ‘guaranteed immunity to alien judgments and reactions’ (Williams 1985, p. 158)? Human cultures and segments of cultures, observes Williams, are constantly in encounter and exchange. This tells against relational relativism. Given the fact that human cultures are constantly in exchange, the idea of a distinctly circumscribed human culture is only notional. If talk of two clearly defined cultures is artificial, then it is not illogical to assume that my ethical responses, even directed at a very different culture, might be in some way appropriate. How might relational relativism escape Williams’ objection? To justify a society’s immunity to judgements, to say that my appraisal is illogical, it would have to be the case that the other society or culture was actually an alien culture, like that of, say, extra-terrestrials. On relational relativism, it could be true that to claim that the Vogons (in Douglas Adams’s The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy) act immorally when they destroy the planet Earth is meaningless. What makes it true is the fact that the Vogons are actually aliens. The need to posit the idea of distinct cultures constitutes a problem for relational relativism. Relational relativism assumes distinct societies, but if speaking about distinct societies is artificial, then the relational relativist has insufficient grounds for the claim that ethical concepts of right and wrong have a logically inherent relativity to a distinct society. Suppose the proposition that two outlooks can conflict is plausible. The problem is that the arguments that support this first proposition appear to contradict the second proposition. The second proposition is that two outlooks can be mutually exclusive. But Williams argues above that it is because two human cultures are only notionally and not actually exclusive that we can say that two cultures are in conflict. Williams’ non-objectivist metaethical thesis, the relativism of distance, tries to reconcile this apparent inconsistency.

152  Geraldine Ng

The relativism of distance When we react to other cultures, we naturally do so by applying our ethical concepts and system of beliefs S. For instance, my disapproval of how a certain contemporary foreign culture or society mistreats women is in terms of my S. The aspiration of an ethical outlook S is to make ‘claims it intends to apply to the whole world’ (Williams 1985, p. 159). On the one hand, ­Williams is keen to honour this aim insofar as we can. On the other hand, we might reasonably question whether or not our ethical outlook ranges over even historically distant and very different systems of belief. Reflection of this kind may destabilise our ethical beliefs (Ibid.). To address the tension between the aspiration of moral thought and the destabilising effect of reflection, Williams defends the truth of two propositions about ethical thought: 1 ‘We must have a form of ethical thought not relativised to our own existing S for thinking about other Ss which may be of concern to us’. 2 ‘We can recognise that there can be many Ss which are related to our concerns too distantly for our judgments to have any grip on them’ (Williams 1981, p. 142). Let’s see how these propositions might be true. Williams asks us to consider two groups A and B (cultures or societies), which hold two sets of beliefs SA and S B . What kind of relation might there be between groups A and B? The most basic relation is no relation at all, that is, simply mutual ignorance of each other. Then, we have cases where at least one encounters the other. Persons from A who hold SA can directly encounter others who hold S B , or indirectly, persons who hold SA can learn about the others who hold S B .6 These encounters, Williams proposes, can be characterised as either ‘real’ or ‘notional’ confrontations. A ‘real’ confrontation manifests the first proposition. In ‘real’ confrontation, ethical thought is not relativised to our own existing S. Moral appraisal of Ss other than ours, in cases of real confrontation, is appropriate. Where a confrontation is not ‘real’, then it is ‘notional’. If a confrontation is ‘notional’, then the second proposition obtains. We must acknowledge that another S is too distant for our judgements to have any grip on it. In cases where confrontation is not real but notional, moral appraisal of another S is inappropriate in virtue of the distance between the two Ss. ‘Real’ confrontation: Commonly understood, confrontations are ‘real’ for a person A if SA and S B can be a real option for A at that time. If a person A holds SA , then the thought to ‘go over’ to S B , as Williams puts it, has to be a real option.7 For Ss other than SA to be real options for A Williams means that there is some, whether imagined or actual, ‘way of living them’ for A (Williams 1985, p. 161). Take, for example, my disapproval of how a certain contemporary foreign culture or society mistreats women. My disapproval

The irrelativism of distance  153 is in terms of my SA. But, I can imagine that I could go over to S B and live (unhappily) in such a society. Hence, I am in real confrontation with that society S B that mistreats women, and my moral appraisal is appropriate. In contrast, the life of a medieval samurai or of a Bronze Age chief is not a real option. There is no actual way for me to ‘go over’ to the medieval Orient or the Bronze Age and, given the simplistic knowledge I have of these cultures, I could not realistically imagine going over to them. Hence, according to the relativism of distance, I am not in real confrontation with either samurai culture or the Bronze Age. We will return to the concept of a ‘real option’ below, and also in ‘The “real option” condition’ section. ‘Notional’ confrontation: ‘Notional confrontation resembles real confrontation in that there are persons who are aware of [SA and S B], and aware of their differences; notional confrontation differs from real confrontation if at least one of [SA or S B] do not present a real option to them.’ (Ibid., p. 222) What Williams means is not clear. It would be helpful here to keep in mind that he thinks of the distinction between real and notional confrontation as basically, he emphasises, a ‘social notion’ (Williams 1985, p. 160). In general, our outlook assumes moral appraisal ‘applies to the whole world’. It is important to point out that Williams is attempting to support this outlook insofar as he sees possible. An ascription of ‘notional’ indicates a morally relevant distance between two social worlds SA and S B . What is notable about Williams’ view is that otherwise, apart from ‘notional’ confrontations, moral appraisal of other Ss remains entirely appropriate.8 The term ‘confrontation’ is slightly misleading.9 We commonly use the term only in its negative sense, but Williams takes confrontation to be positive as well as negative. It is used to indicate a meeting of two different outlooks. Appropriate appraisal refers to the appropriateness of praise as well as criticism. Say, for example, I extoll the virtues of samurai culture. Assuming I am only in notional confrontation with that culture then, according to this view, such esteem is facile and not genuine. Commendation as well as condemnation of other Ss with which I am only in notional confrontation is deemed inappropriate and unauthentic. By the Relativism of Distance, Williams means: ‘A relativist view of a given type of outlook can be understood as saying that for such outlooks it is only in real confrontations that the language of appraisal – good, bad, right, wrong, and so on – can be applied to them; in notional confrontations, this kind of appraisal is seen as inappropriate, and no judgments are made.’ (Ibid., p. 161)

154  Geraldine Ng Williams supposes that this metaethical framework can be useful for reconsidering the phenomenon of inter-social or inter-cultural encounters. This framework, he emphasises, applies not to particular practices but to ethical outlooks. Ethical outlooks are distinguished by being large-scale systems and attitudes. The framework helps us to determine if and when ‘suspension of judgement’ for societies as a whole is appropriate (Ibid., p. 162). Three points need to be clarified. First, we want to know more precisely what it is for another S to be a real option. Suspension of judgement depends on whether an S is a real option or not. A real option for me, Williams explains, is one where, if my group presently hold SA , it is possible for us to ‘go over’ to S B. The possibility of any of my group going over to S B involves both accepting S B and ‘holding on to reality’ at once. If someone holding SA is under a kind of self-deception, or deluded, or is being manipulated, she might accept S B. Williams denies that S B is a real option in such cases. Accepting S B under such circumstances, Williams argues, would be at the unacceptable cost of one’s grip on reality. For S B to be a real option for a group SA or someone in SA , Williams insists that they must be able to ‘live inside it in their actual historical circumstances and retain their hold on reality, not engage in extensive self-deception, and so on’.10 The possibility of any of my group going over to S B thus involves a rational acknowledgement of opting into S B. To recap: first, ‘real option’ is a social notion, and second, this notion is rooted ‘in as much rationality as available’ (Williams 1981, p. 139). This is a strategy for preserving the plausibility of the notion. Consider for a moment how it might be if ‘real option’ is not rooted in rationality. If we thought of real option simply as a social notion, then someone accepting or going over to S B might just as well be irrational, swayed perhaps by pressures of her peer group. There would be nothing to prevent or distinguish going over by radical conversion. Williams is wary of the notion of conversion because of its lamentable associations. The condition of rational acknowledgement safeguards the notion of ‘real’ option against radical conversion. Finally, what does Williams mean by ‘a grip on reality’? My group SA or person A that hypothetically accepts S B must meet the reality condition. My group SA or person A has to remain recognisable by some features of our SA that ‘are held constant’ (Ibid., p. 139). Presumably, without a grip on reality, my group would be unrecognisable. SA or person A remains recognisable after conversion when the group SA or person A, as Fricker puts it, keeps ‘the ability to make retrospective sense of their decision to convert’ (Fricker 2010, p. 154). The two conditions, in terms of reality and rationality, safeguard against radical conversion.

Problems for the relativism of distance Philippa Foot asks: Why does Williams think that to stand in a relationship of real confrontation is ‘either necessary or sufficient to give

The irrelativism of distance  155 substance… to the vocabulary of appraisal’ (Foot 2002, p. 32)? And, in another way of making the same objection, Miranda Fricker wants to know: ‘Why would anyone suppose that the impossibility of conversion makes moral appraisal inappropriate’ (Fricker 2010, p. 156)? The question they put to Williams concerns the weight he places on either the presence or absence of the relationship of a real confrontation. I begin with Foot’s objection. Williams assumes that when we commonly deploy the vocabulary of appraisal to the system of beliefs of other societies or cultures, we mean to say something substantive. While that might be our intention, Williams argues that it is not always a realistic aim. If I remark of another society’s outlook S B that it is ‘wrong’, then that remark only has the weight I intend if either I or my society’s outlook SA stands in ‘real’ confrontation with S B . If my relation to S B is not one of ‘real’ standing then, according to Williams, my use of ‘wrong’ is not appropriate. Recall how Williams describes what it would be for me to stand in a real confrontation with S B: the requirement is that I must be able to imagine myself coming to hold those beliefs, and that I do so without losing a grip on reality and without irrationality. It requires that I make some kind of evaluation about just how alien or familiar S B is to me. Foot challenges the idea that this should be a consideration at all. Foot offers an argument by analogy to judgements of taste (Foot 2002, chapter 1). Very roughly, Foot argues that where judgements of taste are concerned, exactly how an agent comes to hold her tastes is hardly significant. We can imagine that almost anything might be a real option for an agent, claims Foot, by a process of acculturation (Ibid., pp. 32–3). If I acknowledge, for example, that my culture or society’s outlook SA has played a large part in shaping my opinions about food and tastes in music, I should admit that my opinions might be utterly different under a different society. That is, I can quite easily see that another outlook S B might be a real option for me. The ease of taking on another outlook speaks of the insignificance of this distinction, argues Foot. Whether I can or cannot imagine some other outlook S B as a real option for me has no bearing on the appropriateness or otherwise of my criticism of S B . This disagreement reflects the deep differences between Foot’s metaethical commitments and those of Williams. Foot holds that if I critically judge something as ‘wrong’, for instance, ‘Aztec child sacrifice was wrong’, my judgement is substantiated in virtue of referring either to some ‘objective criteria’ or, at the least, to ‘methods of some kind for settling disputes’ (Ibid., p. 33). On Foot’s view, if I critically judge some aspect of S B ‘wrong’, I am referring to some universal, objective criteria. If moral appraisal is based on some objective criteria, then all confrontations are real. Foot’s objectivist view leaves no room for the concept of notional moral options. Williams must explain why, to support his non-objectivist view, some moral confrontations only appear to be real options.

156  Geraldine Ng On Williams’ non-objectivist view, moral appraisal is reflexive and reflective. In judging some aspect of S B ‘wrong’, I take up an appropriately reflective viewpoint. It is because reflection is fundamentally self-referential that, in judging some aspect of S B ‘wrong’, I am also implicitly saying something about my society SA. Appraisal of another society also says something about the appraiser’s society SA and the appraiser A. In judging some aspect of S B ‘wrong’, on Williams’ view, I am also implying that I can imagine S B as a real option for me. Foot’s challenge makes evident the deep divide between objectivist and non-objectivist views about moral judgements. Fricker’s objection, unlike Foot’s, is not grounded in moral objectivism. More practically, Fricker finds it hard to make sense of the idea that the appropriateness of an agent’s moral appraisal is determined by ‘the possibility of reconstructing and actually living by a given alternative moral outlook’, given one’s actual life situation (Fricker 2010, p. 158). Many past social worlds are not in this strongly practical sense real options for us today. Fricker rejects the real-notional distinction as too demanding. If adhered to, we would be driven to accept that we stand in only notional relation with many past societies or cultures. Fricker points to the recent past to make her point. Practically speaking, she questions the very possibility today, for example, of choosing ‘to live as the Victorians did, internalizing their values’ (Ibid.). Just consider, suggests Fricker, the moral norms of Victorian society, not just the matter of women barred from the vote, but such Victorian social mores of class, gender and sexual orientation. She doubts her own ability to ‘go over’ to Victorian society. Moreover, Fricker doubts that we could realistically ‘go over’ to any other society. If real confrontation is the condition of the appropriateness of moral appraisal, could we legitimately judge any other past outlook, even those less distant and exotic? Fricker insists that ‘real confrontation is far too strong a condition for deciding the appropriateness of moral appraisal’ (Ibid., p. 159). The two objections, in one sense, could not be more different. Foot argues from an objectivist standpoint. Fricker initially accepts the non-objectivist invitation to internalise another S, only to find it implausibly demanding. In another sense, the two objections are similar. Both challenge the relativism of distance thesis in terms of its metaethical commitments. The strategy I propose escapes these objections: the relativism of distance can be re-purposed by giving up its metaethical commitments.

The ‘real option’ condition According to Williams, if S B is a ‘real option’ for an appraiser A, then appraisal of that society or culture is appropriate. On closer examination, we see that Williams offers two ways of realising the ‘real option’ condition. Commentators have all understood the ‘real option’ condition on what I call the common interpretation or definition. We should agree with commentators that, insofar as the ‘real option’ condition is commonly understood,

The irrelativism of distance  157 it is unconvincing. But, commentators have failed to notice that an uncommon definition is both available and more interesting. Adopting the uncommon interpretation of the ‘real option’ condition, we can salvage Williams’ real-notional distinction. The uncommon definition of the ‘real option’ condition is both defensible and worth holding onto. The two definitions of the ‘real option’ condition are as follows: 1 The common definition in terms of ‘going over’: ‘An outlook is a real option for a group either if it already is their outlook or if they could go over to it’ (Williams 1985, p. 160). Thus, ‘The life of a Greek Bronze Age chief, or a medieval samurai, and the outlooks that go with those, are not real options for us: there is no way of living them’.11 2 The uncommon definition in terms of ‘relating to our concerns’: ‘In the case of [historical] Ss, to stand in merely notional confrontation is to lack the relation to our concerns that alone gives any point or substance to appraisal’ (Williams 1981, pp. 141–42). Now, earlier I drew attention to Williams’ claim that the idea of a ‘real option’ is largely ‘a social notion’. For the task of distinguishing between the two ways of understanding the ‘real option’ condition, this feature of a ‘real option’ is encouraging. I suggest that only one of these definitions captures the social aspect that Williams calls to our attention. The uncommon view, that moral appraisal of another S is appropriate when it ‘relates to our concerns’, can be naturally heard as socially focussed. If I hold that another S relates to my concerns, I am implying that I have an informed understanding of and genuinely care about the historically distant society in question. Alternatively, it is not obvious what is particularly social about the ‘real option’ condition on the common interpretation. For my moral appraisal to be appropriate, I must suppose that I could imagine going over to that historically distant society and living authentically. The thought of ‘going over’ to, say, Victorian society is a practical matter for the appraiser, whereas the idea that Victorian society ‘relates to my concerns’ is more evidently a social matter. This clarification lends support to privileging the uncommon interpretation of the ‘real option’ condition. The uncommon interpretation is more consistent with Williams’ emphasis on the social nature of the ‘real option’ condition. The two definitions of the ‘real option’ condition come apart. A society can relate to our concerns without the further thought that we might go over to it.12 I will now go on to substantiate and defend the uncommon definition of the ‘real option’ condition. A belief system can bear a relation to one’s concerns even though that belief system is not a real option for oneself in the sense of imagining ‘going over’ to it. This is a vital point. There are cases where, as Jack Meiland notes, it appears that ‘the condition which talks about relation to our concerns is fulfilled while that of the possibility of “going over” to the form of life being evaluated is not fulfilled’ (Meiland 1979, p. 261). Imagine,

158  Geraldine Ng suggests Meiland, someone in the present day taking a keen interest and thereby developing a deep understanding and admiration for the samurai’s ethical code of duty, loyalty and honour, over other beliefs. Meiland asks, while this person obviously cannot completely live the samurai life, ‘what is ‘non-genuine’ about his appraisal of that life?’ (Ibid.). To explore these ideas, let’s take advantage of an acclaimed indie film by Jim Jarmusch. Meiland’s point resonates with the main character in Jarmusch’s movie Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai.13 The film opens with a flashback of a violent scene in a dark alley. The main character, a young boy, is overwhelmed and brutally attacked by a gang of youths. At the moment where it looks like the murder of the young victim is inevitable, an authoritative adult intervenes and sends the attackers fleeing. The boy’s saviour is a small time mobster named Louie. In virtue of Louie having saved his life, and in the spirit of the samurai, the boy pledges his loyalty to the mobster. Back to real time in the movie, we are invited to imagine that the man the boy has become, Ghost Dog, is not only a professional assassin under the employ of Louie but also a kind of modern day samurai. Outwardly, Ghost Dog’s appearance is unexceptional as modern-day assassins go. It is because we are persuaded that Ghost Dog has authentically internalised the samurai code in a day-to-day way that the film manages to grip us and challenge our moral intuitions. What interests us is what constitutes the character Ghost Dog’s apparent authenticity. If a real option is understood as the condition of the possibility of ‘going over’ to samurai culture, then Ghost Dog cannot meet the condition. He may identify as a samurai, but medieval samurai culture is, in the sense of going over to it, not a real option for him. On the common definition of the ‘real option’ condition, we must appraise Ghost Dog’s life as ‘non-genuine’. But this seems too quick and also runs against the grain of the film. Paraphrasing Williams, we should ask: does Ghost Dog live inside the samurai culture in his actual historical circumstances and retain his hold on reality, not engage in extensive self-deception, and so on? (Williams 1985, pp. 160–1). The film’s success depends on the plausibility of the idea that Ghost Dog is living the life of a modern-day samurai. That it is plausible lends support to an affirmative answer. The verdict that the samurai culture is a real option for Ghost Dog is available on the uncommon definition of the ‘real option’ condition. Given Ghost Dog’s peculiar and unique circumstances, the movie leads us to sympathise with, insofar as we can sympathise with an assassin, a contemporary character who has adopted the samurai ethical code as his own. The samurai culture is deeply related to his concerns. He makes it his own as matter of moral psychology; it is his life’s project. On the uncommon definition of the ‘real option’ condition, we could argue that samurai culture is a real option for Ghost Dog. Given that all his dispositions and concerns are consistent with the way of the samurai, this seems right. On

The irrelativism of distance  159 this interpretation, there is a powerful sense in which we the audience and Ghost Dog can appraise his life as authentic. The uncommon definition of the ‘real option’ condition better reflects our intuitions and better captures the social nature that Williams emphasises. It does so in both directions, so to speak. Just as we allow that, in Ghost Dog’s case, it is plausible that the samurai culture is a real option, we would also think that, in most normal cases, one’s confrontation with samurai culture is only notional. A compelling reason for accepting the uncommon interpretation of the ‘real option’ condition is that it can explain two different kinds of relation with S B held by two different agents who both hold SA. There are strong reasons to think that, given our generally limited understanding, most confrontations with samurai culture are indeed only notional. But, this is a generalisation and there might be exceptions. Ghost Dog’s case is an exception. Construing the ‘real option’ condition on the uncommon interpretation as ‘relating to our concerns’, we are able to explain why these verdicts differ. In contrast, if someone adopted the samurai code on a whim, after seeing the film Ghost Dog on Netflix for instance, we could accuse that agent of being ‘non-genuine’ and inauthentic. The Netflix enthusiast cannot claim that she authentically internalises the samurai code in a day-to-day way. Rather, we might suggest that she is playing out a piece of extended theatre or reality TV. The Netflix enthusiast, unlike Ghost Dog, is in merely notional confrontation with samurai culture. The reader may not be convinced: Why suppose that Ghost Dog retains his hold on reality? It is no small task to live inside the samurai culture in one’s actual historical circumstances and maintain that it is a real project in alternative living. Why not think that Ghost Dog is, similar to the Netflix enthusiast, engaged in extensive self-deception? Exploring this very possibility of self-deception is a key device of the filmmaker. The plot involves a series of life-endangering situations that challenge Ghost Dog’s ethical code. We are privy to Ghost Dog’s awareness that, given Louie’s weak and wicked ways, abandoning his samurai code would be in his best interests. We are led to infer that Ghost Dog is rational and clearheaded in favouring his life’s ground project over and above even his own life. By interpreting the ‘real option’ condition in terms of ‘relating to our concerns’, we make room for exceptional, genuine agents. It is plausible to suppose that Ghost Dog is genuine and that samurai culture, for him, is a real option. That does not of course justify Ghost Dog’s acts of violence. While the ‘real option’ condition allows us a way of sorting out authentic from inauthentic agents, and while samurai culture may be a real option for Ghost Dog, his assassination assignments are no less subject to moral condemnation as that of any other modern-day assassin. I have argued that we can partly retain Williams’ thesis by discriminating between two ways that Williams defines a ‘real option’. What we give up is the disreputable, common interpretation of the ‘real option’ condition. In reply to Fricker, we agree that the idea of ‘going over’ to say, Victorian

160  Geraldine Ng times, is implausible. However, the uncommon interpretation of a ‘real option’ permits us a way of evading Fricker’s worry. We could, moreover, point out that Fricker herself might appropriately appraise Victorian values, supposing that Victorian values relate to her concerns. My strategy offers Fricker a way of satisfying the ‘real option’ condition. The real-notional distinction, to be clear, applies to cases of social or cultural condemnation as well as social admiration, as in Ghost Dog’s case. There is a sense in which I might genuinely criticise Aztec customs of child sacrifice if I am able to affirm that their customs are ‘related to my concerns’. Hence, on the uncommon interpretation, the ‘real option’ condition offers a route for the possibility of real confrontation with remotely distant Ss. Importantly, it implies that the possibility of appropriate criticism of even distant Ss is not foreclosed.14

The relativism of distance? Williams holds that normal moral appraisal is appropriate in cases of real confrontation or where that outlook under appraisal is a ‘real option’. In one of the earliest, most perceptive responses to the relativism of distance thesis, Jack Meiland observes rightly that Williams is stating ‘a doctrine about the conditions under which appraisal can or should take place’.15 What exactly are these conditions of? To compare, Harman’s relational relativism is concerned with the structure of judgements and Ss in general. It is a metaethical thesis about the necessary internal relation of the judgement of an appraiser A to SA. Williams’ ‘real option’ condition is focussed on the appraiser A and A’s contingent relation to another S. As Meiland notes, ‘to say that genuine questions of appraisal arise only in cases of real options is to talk about the conditions of appraisal of an S but not to appraise that S in any way’ (Meiland 1979, p. 259). Meiland’s point merits closer attention. When Williams talks about the conditions of appraisal for the appraiser A of another S, S B , the focus of concern is not S B . Primarily, the focus is on the appraiser, A, and on determining the appraiser’s evaluative status, given SA. I suggest that this is the central issue. The important question is one that Meiland first raised: ‘In what way is [Williams’s thesis] a form of relativism?’16 To press Meiland’s question harder, let’s consider two related questions. Does Williams’ view say something relativistic about Ss in general? No. He is not appraising Ss as such, but instead, as Meiland notes, Williams ‘appraises appraisals’. Williams’ requirement is that appraisals be ‘genuine’, but genuine appraisal of another S B depends not on S B but on the particular circumstances of one’s standing given one’s own S, that is, SA (Ibid.). This includes, according to Meiland, ‘the nature of one’s own S, the social and economic conditions of the time, and so on’ (Ibid.). Does Williams argue that the truth of a moral judgement is relative to the traditions, practices or convictions of a particular society or culture? No. Williams thinks that under certain circumstances another S can be beyond

The irrelativism of distance  161 the bounds of appropriate criticism. On Harman’s relational relativism, criticism of another S is logically bound by one’s own S. For Williams, there is an element of contingency. One’s appraisal of another S is delimited by one’s distance from that particular S. So, in response to Meiland’s question, if Williams’ thesis is relativistic, it is not relativistic in any straightforward sense. The move I propose will settle this question. But, acknowledging the uncommon interpretation of the ‘real option’ condition and denying the common interpretation comes at a cost. What obtains is not a metaethical relativist thesis. In the remainder of this paper, I will pursue the idea that Williams’ thesis affords us insights that are only superficially relativistic. More modestly, I think the real-notional distinction helps illuminate our moral psychology. The distinction between real and notional confrontations, understood not metaphysically but psychologically, helps us resolve the tension between the aspiration of our ethical concepts and the limits given by the fact of diverse social worlds and our social situatedness. Now, the modified view I am prepared to defend is a view about our moral psychology. So, what should we call it? To give it a name, I will call it the irrelativism of distance: Only where another S bears ‘the relation to our concerns which alone gives point or substance to appraisal’ are we in real confrontation with that S. An irrelativist view of another S can be understood as saying that for such Ss the language of appraisal – good, bad, right, wrong, and so on – can be applied to them. In notional confrontations, where that S does not genuinely relate to our concerns, this kind of appraisal is seen as inappropriate, and no judgments are made. 17 How does the irrelativism of distance contribute to our self-understanding, insofar as our moral psychology goes? First, self-understanding is not always comfortable and is often unsatisfactory. As Williams notes, the acceptance of notional confrontation may be potentially ‘destabilising’. It will sometimes be immensely frustrating to accept that a certain confrontation is only notional. Accepting this condition on our psychological and epistemic status entails that, when our moral appraisal is deemed inappropriate, we are faced with the limits of our ethical thought. I find Aztec sacrificial practices abhorrent but, if I cannot say that the Aztec culture is genuinely related to my concerns, it is appropriate that I stop short of outright moral condemnation. Yet, on the flip side, if we satisfy the condition, the assurance of real confrontation not only confirms that one’s moral appraisal is appropriate but may also be vindicatory of one’s S. Next, let’s address Fricker’s asymmetry objection to the relativism of distance. Fricker’s objection is a serious problem for Williams’ original relativist thesis, but the irrelativism of distance rebuts the worry. Indeed, I will argue that the asymmetry objection vindicates the irrelativism of distance.

162  Geraldine Ng Fricker questions the rationale for drawing the line, as Williams does, between synchronic and diachronic confrontations. We have synchronic confrontations with contemporary cultures and diachronic ones with historically distant cultures. Williams insists that there are almost no synchronic notional confrontations. He maintains that, with the exception of a very few societies, all confrontations between contemporary cultures are real.18 Fricker objects that there are many contemporary cultures that she cannot envisage as authentically living out: ‘Might a cohort of Western liberals reconstruct the moral outlook of a Yemeni village?’ (Fricker 2010, p. 156). It will be true that many contemporary societies and cultures might fail the ‘real option’ condition on the common definition. Realistically, one might be unable to imagine ‘going over’ to many modern societies. This would imply that such societies would be deemed inappropriate to appraise. That verdict is intuitively implausible as well as highly objectionable. If a certain contemporary culture permits selling wives, I like to think that my moral condemnation is not inappropriate. And this, given that all synchronic confrontations are real, is what Williams thinks. On the common definition, the ‘real option’ condition is self-defeating. Many readers will see where this is leading. Fricker’s asymmetry objection only bears on the common interpretation of the ‘real option’ condition. On the uncommon view, there is no suggestion that we need ‘reconstruct the moral outlook’ of other cultures. I take it that it is non-controversial that all contemporary cultures ‘relate to our concerns’. It is not non-­controversial but at least arguable that not all distant ­cultures ‘relate to our concerns’. Williams’ view about synchronic confrontations discloses his ambition. Many thinkers hold that Williams’ scepticism about normative ethical theorising leads to a defective and even corrupting way of thinking about human life and ethical questions. But here we have Williams insisting that all contemporary Ss are related to our concerns. This corresponds with our aspiration for moral appraisal and discourse across contemporary cultures. Finally, what do notional confrontations tell us? The real-notional distinction is a moral-psychological framework that helps us decide on the nature of our confrontations with other societies. Some diachronic confrontations will be notional. We can argue that some confrontations with distant cultures are real, but there will no doubt be situations in which it is difficult, if not impossible, to confirm that a distant culture or society is of real concern. In such cases, we cannot appraise it as well as we might hope to. As I understand it, we cannot genuinely appraise distant societies not because we are relativist about moral values. Nor is it because, on the common ‘real option’ condition, we cannot ‘go over’ to them. The irrelativism of distance claims that our moral-psychological status with regard to distant societies is such that we are related to some Ss too tenuously for moral appraisal to be appropriate. Moral appraisal is deemed inappropriate if we cannot genuinely claim that society is ‘of real concern’ to us.

The irrelativism of distance  163 On the irrelativism of distance, all synchronic societies are deemed appropriate objects of our moral appraisal. All diachronic societies may qualify as appropriate objects of moral appraisal, so long as we can show that the society in question is genuinely ‘related to our concerns’. In effect, no society is disqualified tout court as blameworthy in virtue of distance alone. The irrelativism of distance is not relativistic. Instead, the irrelativism of distance is silent with regard to the question of moral objectivity.

A certain kind of non-objectivism I have defended a modified interpretation of Williams’ relativist thesis. I have discarded as incoherent in itself and failing in its purpose the common interpretation of the ‘real option’ condition. Still, it might be said, there is a problem here. Given the fact that the irrelativism of distance is silent with regard to the question of moral objectivity, it might be objected that I have strayed too far from Williams’ project. I do not think so. Rather, I see a connection that a closer look at W ­ illiams’ scepticism about moral objectivity will make plain. The objectivist view that sees ethical reflection as a means to ethical knowledge is one Williams rejects. But, Williams contends, ‘this does not rule out all forms of objectivism’ (Williams 1985, p. 152). Williams’ scepticism is more attenuated than generally assumed. It seems to me that to be faithful to Williams’ wider view, it is enough that the irrelativism of distance is silent in relation to moral objectivity. Williams challenges the general assumption that there is one basic ­distinction between relativism and moral objectivity. The non-objectivist is not committed to moral objectivity, by definition. But neither is the non-objectivist committed to moral relativism, by implication. Williams’ non-objectivism, that rejects standard relativism, is grounded in the belief that we cannot s­ imply draw a line between ourselves and others. Instead, we should see our relationships as on a spectrum of varying distances. Even while resisting relativism, the non-objectivist does not want to deny some of its concerns. The non-objectivist move to accommodate relativism is based on the acknowledgement that our reactions to other groups can only be in terms of the practices and sentiments of our own group. When I condemn the Aztec and insist that child sacrifice is wrong, it is not my intention that the claim applies just to ‘my’ world. On some objectivist account, I would have an explanation for why child sacrifice is categorically wrong. On Williams’ non-objectivism, I have the problem of explaining the applicability and extent of my claim which is consistent with a denial of moral objectivism and which does not collapse into relativism. What is the prime motivation for Williams’ non-objectivism? We can turn the question around and ask: what is possible after denying objectivism? Reflecting on the conflict between the Aztec and our own culture, it does

164  Geraldine Ng seem that there is little prospect of our vastly divergent ethical beliefs finding convergence by rational argument. Williams insists that denying objectivity does not push the non-objectivist to relativism. Rather, reflection on such profound ethical variation raises the simple question: ‘What else is possible?’ (Ibid., p. 160) Assuming she is disposed to non-objectivity, an appraiser will be disposed to reflection and will be sensitive to ethical variation. It can be assumed that a person with non-objectivist sensibilities will experience challenges to her ethical beliefs. A non-objectivist appraiser, given her sensibilities, should not expect that things remain where they were. Reflection opens up a gap. The relativism of distance is a metaethical thesis that tries to fill that explanatory gap. I have argued that, where it has failed, its reconstructed form as a psychological thesis, the irrelativism of distance, succeeds. If, on reflection, another S bears a relation to our concerns (which alone gives point or substance to appraisal), then we are in real confrontation with that S and the language of appraisal – good, bad, right, wrong – can be applied.

Conclusions: the nature of ethical thought The challenge for moral philosophers, Williams thought, is to address the fundamental problem ‘about the nature of ethical thought, the way in which it can understand its own nature and the extent to which it can consistently appear to be what it really is’ (Ibid., p. 155). Williams addresses this by putting forward a set of ideas, one of which is the thesis for the relativism of distance. Thinking about what is appropriate when moral appraisal concerns distant societies can illuminate the nature of ethical thought. It can also show the limits of ethical thinking. It was Socrates who first gave expression to the project of trying to give an objective grounding or foundation to ethical life. I think Williams cleaves closer to Socrates than he recognises because, however unlikely he thought the project’s prospects, Williams does not refute it.19 Ethical reflection, we might think, is underpinned by the project of trying to find an objective grounding. Williams thinks reflection will lead us, ­correctly, to a social self-consciousness. In light of this social self-consciousness, people may, among other things, realise the psychological and epistemic variations of their own situation and degree of concern: The way in which we understand a given kind of disagreement, and explain it, has important practical effects. It can modify our attitude to others and our understanding of our own outlook. In relation to other people, we need a view of what is to be opposed, rejected, and so forth, and in what spirit; for ourselves, disagreement can raise a warning that we may be wrong, and if truth and correctness is what we are after, we may need to reform our strategies. (Ibid., p. 133)

The irrelativism of distance  165 If we gave up entirely the project of trying to find an objective grounding, we would have no reason to reconsider our own outlooks in the face of disagreement. Yet, the project of trying to give an objective grounding or foundation to ethical life sits uneasily with other concerns. Equally important is recognising that ‘we have reason to stand back from judging the past’ (Ibid., p. 173). The real-notional distinction helps by furnishing the reason to stand back. Like Donald Davidson, who defends a principle of charity or humanity (Davidson 2004), we can hear Williams as trying to interpret others as saying something true. But Williams struggles to square the circle. Where thinkers such as Davidson and J. L. Mackie focus on the importance of understanding ‘people’s adherence to and participation in different ways of life’ (Mackie 1977, p. 36), Williams never loses sight of that Socratic compulsion to give an objective grounding or foundation to ethical life. The real-notional distinction is a nod in that direction. Being guided by our own sense of what is morally right and wrong, and what distant societies could reasonably believe, we should see that some situations do not call for our appraisal. When it comes to confrontation with other historical-cultural outlooks, the irrelativism of distance helps us to distinguish between occasions where there will be ‘judgments which [we] need not make’ (Williams 2005, p. 68) and those where our judgements are called for, where something is deeply related to our concerns. 20

Notes 1 Williams first discusses relativism in Morality 1971. This paper focuses on his developed thoughts, specifically ‘The Truth in Relativism’ in Moral Luck 1981, chapter 9 in Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy 1985, and ‘Human Rights and Relativism’ in In the Beginning Was the Deed: Realism and Moralism in Political Argument 2005. 2 In a footnote Williams (1981, p. 138) credits Newman’s Grammar of Assent for the terminology ‘real’ and ‘notional’. This is Newman’s seminal work on faith. He was concerned with defending faith as a rational human activity against the British Empiricists. 3 Williams discusses this in some depth in early chapters of Ethics and Limits of Philosophy, and returns to it in chapter eight. For example, he remarks that ‘… at least, as things are, no such body of ethical knowledge exists’ (1985, p. 148). 4 See Stanford Encyclopedia ‘Moral relativism’, https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/ moral-relativism/ (Retrieved 6 September 2016). 5 ‘Relational relativism’ is the term Williams uses to describe Gilbert Harman’s thesis. Harman’s argument is the interpretation of metaethical relativism that will be implied in our discussion. It was a prominent view when Williams was writing, it is one that Williams singles out for critical comment, and it remains a very influential view. Harman emphasises moral disagreement. He supposes that relevant motivating reasons are not universal. Rather, these reasons come about from an agreement made by some group of persons. His thesis is about the logical form of internal judgements, judgements that bear a relation to a certain society. 6 See Williams’ discussion in his 1981.

166  Geraldine Ng 7 This is the common reading of Williams’ notion of real confrontation. Williams also offers an alternative what I call uncommon interpretation of real confrontation, which will be important to my argument later on. I shall discuss both interpretations at length below. 8 Fricker is also careful to stress this point: ‘What really distinguishes the relativism of distance is that normal moral appraisal remains entirely appropriate and properly applicable, except in cases where a certain sort of distance separates the two moral systems’, Fricker 2010, p. 154. 9 I thank Jonathan Dancy for calling this to my attention in a discussion of an earlier draft. 10 See Williams 1985, pp. 160–1. This brings to mind contemporary psychiatric cases of young ‘gamers’ who become delusional when they get caught up in other ‘virtual’ worlds online, with tragic, violent, real-world consequences. 11 He makes this point in more than one place. Here in Williams 1985, p. 161 he repeats what he wrote in Williams 1981, p. 140. 12 I am indebted to Tasioulas here. For further discussion, see Tasioulas 1998. 13 Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai, directed by Jim Jarmusch, starring Forest Whitaker, 1999. 14 Recall Williams’ internal reasons thesis. Structurally, it can serve as a model for my amended view of the relativism of distance thesis. An internal reason statement says something distinct about distinctly A, that particular agent. Likewise, on my amended interpretation of the relativism of distance thesis, moral appraisal of another society, in real confrontation, confirms something distinct about distinctly A, the appraiser. It confirms that other S as genuinely related to A’s concerns. 15 My italics, Meiland 1979, p. 259. I am indebted to Meiland for planting the seed for many of the ideas in this section. 16 Meiland poses this question but does not pursue it. 17 Following Williams 1981, p. 142. 18 This is a point that Williams makes explicit in his developed thoughts about relativism in Williams 1985. He mentions briefly a few ‘surviving traditional societies’ that are truly exotic. Although he does not quite allow that confrontation with these exotic societies are notional and that we could not go over to them, he does recognise them as ‘endangered species’. Just as in the case with endangered species, in confronting such societies, we must decide if we should protect them, or not. See Williams 1985, chapter 9. 19 See his discussion in Williams 1985, pp. 151–3. 20 This paper, substantially in its present form, is a chapter in my PhD thesis Bernard Williams: The Materials of Internalism (2017). I am very grateful to Regina Rini, Philip Stratton-Lake, Maximilian De Gaynesford, Adrian Moore, Lorenzo Greco, Patricia Williams, and especially Brad Hooker for their advice and encouragement.

References Davidson, D. (2004) ‘The Objectivity of Values’, in Problems of Rationality. ­Oxford: Clarendon Press, pp. 39–57. Foot, P. (2002) Moral Dilemmas and Other Topics in Moral Philosophy. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Fricker, M. (2010) ‘The Relativism of Blame and Williams’ Relativism of Distance’, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Supp. Vol. LXXXIV, pp. 151–77. Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai (1999) Directed by Jim Jarmusch [Film]. Santa Monica: Artisan Entertainment.

The irrelativism of distance  167 Gowans, C. (2004, substantive revision 2015) ‘Moral Relativism’, Stanford ­Encyclopedia [Online]. Available at: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/moral-relativism/ (Accessed 6 September 2016). Harman, G. (1975) ‘Moral Relativism Defended’, The Philosophical Review, Vol. 84 (1), pp. 3–22. Lear, J. (2006) Radical Hope: Ethics in the Face of Cultural Devastation. Harvard: Harvard University Press. Mackie, J.L. (1977) Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong. London: Pelican Books. Meiland, J.W. (1979) ‘Bernard Williams’ Relativism’, Mind, New Series, Vol. 88 (350), pp. 258–62. Newman, J.H. (1874) An Essay in the Grammar of Assent. The Project Gutenberg EBook Library [Online]. Available at: www.gutenberg.org/files/34022/34022pdf.pdf Ng, G. (2017) Bernard Williams: The Materials of Internalism. Thesis (PhD), ­University of Reading. Tasioulas, J. (1998) “Relativism, Realism, and Reflection”, Inquiry, Vol. 41, pp. 377–406. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (1978) Created by Douglas Adams [Radio series]. London: BBC Radio 4. Williams, B. (1981) Moral Luck. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Williams, B. (1985) Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy, 2nd edition. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Williams, B. (2005) In the Beginning Was the Deed: Realism and Moralism in Political Argument, Hawthorne, G. (ed.). Princeton and Oxford: Princeton ­University Press. Williams, B. (2005) ‘Human Rights and Relativism’ in In the Beginning Was the Deed: Realism and Moralism in Political Argument, Hawthorne, G. (ed.). Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, pp. 62–74.

10 Epoch relativism and our moral hopelessness Regina Rini

Timely moral evaluation We often regard residents of the historical past as moral monsters. Enslavers, gleeful besiegers, royal torturers – all were engaged in behavior perfectly normal for their time, yet now clearly exposed as morally atrocious. Despite the familiarity of this thought, we rarely consider how we will appear once our own practices become encased in finitude and brought under history’s moral microscope. The aim of this paper is to dwell on such disconcerting thoughts. I will argue that our distant descendants will likely look back on us as morally hopeless, blundering unwittingly through lives structured by normal practices that are in fact just as reprehensible as those of the cruel ancients. And this thought, I will claim, provides us with strong reason to endorse a form of time-linked moral relativism. If we are forced to choose (as I will argue) between accepting the utter condemnation of the future and relinquishing belief in moral objectivity, then we must choose the latter. The spirit of my argument borrows much from Bernard Williams. ­Williams wrote the following about “queasy liberals” who are universalists (objectivists) about morality, yet find their substantive moral commitments challenged by reflection on the past: [I]f liberalism is correct, it must apply to all those past people who were not liberals: they ought to have been liberals, and since they were not, they were bad, or stupid, or something on those lines. But – the queasy liberal feels, and to this extent he is right – these are foolish things to think about all those past people. So, he concludes, liberalism cannot be correct. That is the wrong conclusion; what he should do is give up the universalist belief.1 But where Williams’ argument against moral objectivity looks backward, mine looks forward. Or, more precisely, my argument looks obliquely inward: at our own time, as reflected in the likely sentiments of our distant descendants. Just as the queasy liberal ought to abandon moral objectivity rather than liberalism, so ought we abandon objectivity rather than accept the condemnatory judgment of future people.

Epoch relativism and our moral hopelessness  169 Formally, my argumentative strategy is as a reductio. I will construct an argument – The Argument for Our Utter Moral Failure – conjoining belief in moral objectivity with two difficult-to-deny premises, leading to an unacceptable conclusion about our modern moral hopelessness. I will argue that we must reject this conclusion, yet can do so only by rejecting the moral objectivity premise. Here is an overview of the absurdity-entailing argument: The Argument for Our Utter Moral Failure Objectivity: There are objective moral truths that hold across all time. Progress: People in the distant future will make much better moral judgments than we do now. Retrospection: People in the distant future will look back on our behavior as utterly morally atrocious and ourselves as morally hopeless. The Shameful Conclusion: It is almost certainly true that our present-­ day behavior is utterly morally atrocious and we are hopeless about how to improve it. The rest of this chapter executes the reductio strategy. In the next section I justify the formal validity of the Argument for Our Utter Moral Failure. The following two sections consider attempts to reject Progress and/or Retrospection; I argue that rejecting either premise is implausible. I then consider whether we ought to simply accept the Shameful Conclusion. I will argue that we should not. So, if the argument is valid, yet the conclusion unacceptable, and if we cannot plausibly reject Progress or Retrospection, then we ought to reject Objectivity. The final section explores what this means, drawing on Williams’ famous idea of the “relativism of distance” to support a view I call Epoch Relativism.

The Argument for Our Utter Moral Failure is valid Suppose there are objective moral truths; it is true that some actions are objectively wrong, and others are objectively right. Some things are objectively permissible and others objectively obligatory. This is to say that rightness, wrongness, etc. are not relative to any particular moment in human history. An action that is objectively wrong is wrong now and was wrong 2,000 years ago, and will be wrong 4,000 years from now (if there are still any moral agents left). Furthermore, it is wrong across historical cultures. What is objectively morally wrong is wrong for contemporary ­Koreans, ­12th-century Aztecs, and 32nd-century English (if there are still any ­English left). Basically, Objectivity is a way of denying moral relativism. 2 The idea of Objectivity is familiar enough, but what about the other premises? Progress says that people in the distant future will make much better moral judgments than we do now. They will think some things morally

170  Regina Rini prohibited that we think normal or even morally required, and they will think other things morally required that we think optional or even prohibited. Nearly always, when they disagree with us, they are right and we are wrong. Retrospection says that people in the future will look back on our ­present-day behavior as utterly morally atrocious and see us as morally hopeless. What do I mean by “utterly morally atrocious”? Think about chattel slavery. Think about the routine sale of 11-year-old girls as unwilling brides. Think about the genocidal removal of indigenous peoples from North ­America and Australia.3 That’s what I mean by utterly morally atrocious. What do I mean by “morally hopeless”? I mean: extremely ignorant about what morality requires, with no clear idea of how to improve our knowledge. So, if there are objective moral truths that hold across time and place, and if the people in the future who believe that we are utterly morally atrocious and hopeless will make much better moral judgments than we do, then it follows that we are indeed very likely to be utterly morally atrocious and hopeless. The logic here is pedestrian: if two people are disagreeing about a truth-apt matter, and there’s no way in which the truth can be relative to each, and one is a much better judge in the relevant domain, then it is very likely that the better judge’s belief is correct. Note that the argument does not insist, as a matter of deductive certainty, that we must be atrocious and hopeless. That sort of claim would not follow logically. After all, Progress says only that future people will make much better moral judgments than we do. It doesn’t say that they will make infallible moral judgments. Even if future people will make much better moral judgments than we do, and even if they will think we are utterly morally atrocious, their judgment about us might be a mistake. After all, Maryam Mirzakhani was surely much better with maths than I am, but even she probably made some arithmetical mistakes sometimes. So, it is possible that future people will be mistaken about us. But something’s being possible does not make it likely. It is possible that I get some maths challenge right while Maryam Mirzakhani gets it wrong. Possible, just not very likely. If I am now looking at my answer to a maths challenge, and I see Mirzakhani’s answer, and they are not the same, then I should conclude that it is extremely unlikely that I’m the one with the right answer. Hence, the Shameful Conclusion is probabilistic rather than certain – but that makes it barely any more comforting. It is vanishingly unlikely that our present-day moral behavior is not utterly morally atrocious. Believing that you are not utterly morally atrocious is at least as unreasonable as believing that you are better with maths than Maryam Mirzakhani.

Rejecting Progress Progress: People in the distant future will make much better moral judgments than we do now.

Epoch relativism and our moral hopelessness  171 If the Argument for Our Utter Moral Failure is hard to fault logically, perhaps we can invalidate one of its premises. First, I will show why it is implausible to reject Progress. One way to reject Progress is to assume that, after a certain nearenough point, there will be no future people. We will blow ourselves up, or be consumed by a novel plague, or deal our environment an irretrievably fatal wound. If there are no future people, then there will be no future people to have better moral judgments than we do (or, for that matter, to look back upon us as morally hopeless). So, technically, both Progress and Retrospection ought to be understood as conditional claims: if there are future people, then…I leave this conditionality implicit in the official argument, rather than lard it with clauses that are not crucial to the main point. I think that the Shameful Conclusion follows just as readily from conditionalized versions of these premises. We do not escape the implications of predictable condemnation by our future moral superiors merely by ensuring that they are obliterated before they have the chance to pass judgment.4 Assuming, then, that there are future people, denying Progress would require taking a particular view about the quality of their moral judgments. Specifically, it would require denying that they are likely to benefit from the same historical process that we take ourselves to have benefited from. Most of us think that our moral judgments are much better than moral judgments of people in the distant past, and we tend to think this is not a matter of luck. It seems that our improvement upon historical moral judgments reflects a cumulative process of cultural learning. What Progress asserts is only that this cumulative process will continue so that the quality of our distant descendant’s moral judgments will improve still further. Rejecting Progress, then, means claiming that something will call a halt to this historical process of gradual improvement. How could that be? One way to deny this historical route to Progress (and a natural complement for denying the Shameful Conclusion) would be to hold that our current moral judgments are already quite close to the final moral truth. We may not yet be perfect moral judges, but perhaps there is not much more room for improvement. If this is so, then Progress can’t be right because future people can be, at best, only a bit better moral judges than we are now. Michael Huemer does not make exactly these claims, but in a recent paper he argues along suggestive lines. Huemer claims that we can observe a historical convergence upon liberal moral values, those values which recognize individual equality and dignity while opposing needless ­violence.5 He claims that “the change has been proceeding in the same direction for centuries, and the changes have affected nearly all societies across the globe. This is not a random walk; this calls out for an explanation” (Huemer 2016, 1999). His explanation is moral realism and the affirmation of liberal

172  Regina Rini values as (approximating) objective moral truth. Convergence on a set of conceptually linked beliefs suggests that they are truth-tracking. And, we might now add, that gives us reason to doubt the implication of Progress that we are still far from the truth.6 But there are two problems with Huemer’s argument. The first is his claim that we have no other explanation for the apparent convergence on liberal values. Though he gives convincing reasons to set aside biological explanations, he almost entirely ignores technological and economic explanations. He brushes aside the suggestion that the 19th century move away from an agrarian economy played much of a role in the abolition of slavery because this requires that we accept a great coincidence. For it is not just that slavery was abolished. It is that liberalism triumphed on many different issues over the past few centuries. Are we to believe it is coincidence that, at the same time that slavery was becoming economically inefficient, some other trend was leading women’s suffrage to become more popular (perhaps women’s suffrage also becomes more economically advantageous in industrial societies?), another trend was causing democracy to spread across the world, another was causing war to seem less glorious, another made torture seem less beneficial, and so on? (Huemer 2016, 1999) Yet, Huemer does not even consider whether all these developments might have a joint economic explanation. Here is a plausible historical hypothesis: the Industrial Revolution redistributed economic power from violence-­ wielding agrarian barons to a large middle class. Educating workers for the skills of manufacturing incidentally gave them intellectual independence while the railroad and telegraph enabled new mass mobility and labor organization. If this is right, then we needn’t assume any truth-tracking moral zeitgeist to account for the coordinated shift toward liberalism – we need only to hypothesize that the economic consequences of 19th-century technology empowered the emerging middle class to demand greater equality and less political violence. The industrially strengthened democracies were then able to impose their values on much of the world following the Second World War, through Chapter VII of the United Nations Charter and the Bretton Woods financial system. The late 20th-century “convergence” then represents more an exercise of economic power than a logical consensus. This is, admittedly, a speculative explanation, but it has the explanatory advantage of carrying much less ontological baggage than Huemer’s metaethical speculation. There is no need to invoke Hegel when we have Marx ready to hand. The second problem with Huemer’s argument is that it’s not at all clear things are still moving in the direction he suggests. In Turkey and Russia, social-political attitudes have become steadily less liberal over the last 20 years.7 The growth of machine-learned surveillance has begun to enable

Epoch relativism and our moral hopelessness  173 new forms of authoritarian control in China. A wave of xenophobic, hateful populism has rolled through the politics of Poland, Hungary, Myanmar, and the United States. Huemer might claim that such things are a temporary switchback that we’ll soon return to the liberal path. Maybe. But our uncertainty points to a strange contingency in Huemer’s argument. Suppose that the anti-liberal strands of the last decade are not a temporary divergence. Suppose that 200 years from now much of the world has been brought under the sway of soft authoritarianism, where a privileged few use technological dominance and cruel minority-baiting to addle the masses. They might then insist that history has been leading up to their values that convergence on soft authoritarianism shows it to be the recommendation of moral reality. The fact that Huemer’s argument works just as well, no matter what ideology becomes dominant, suggests that it is not pointing toward anything Objective. For the same reason, it seems premature to take our liberal moment as approaching anything like the end of moral history. These last few points may seem overly pessimistic; I appear to be suggesting that our modern liberal values are a contingent expression of economic power, with all the intellectual durability of a feather on the historical breeze. That is not how we prefer to think about such things. Indeed, it not normally how I think of such things, nor would I expect you to. Rather, in ordinary moral practice, we tend to treat a faith in our own growing righteousness as a practical necessity (as opposed to a theoretical discovery). Reflecting on this fact, I’ll now claim, gives us strong reason to insist on upholding Progress. I think that we are already practically committed to the following principle: If ours is at least a basically decent society, then there is reason to hope that we will impart at least a marginal improvement to the moral sensitivity of our children.

The Principle of Hope:

Acceptance of the Principle of Hope is implicit in virtually all our personal and political practice. We nurture in our children the empathic rudiments of moral concern and construct for them the scaffolding of autonomous deliberation, then we step aside and hope that they will make better use of it than we have done. Even those of us who do not personally raise children are invested in the provision of civic education. We care, and we hope, that we are contributing to a project of improving humanity’s future by improving the next generation’s moral sensitivity. It is not an accident that Martin Luther King Jr’s celebrated Dream looks to the concrete future, not to a parallel world, in expressing the hope that his own children would “one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character”. Few social reformers expect to complete their ambitions within a single generation; their sacrifices make sense only with the hopeful assumption that they will have helped to improve the moral understanding of those who come after.8

174  Regina Rini I cannot prove that the next generation will make better moral judgments than we do. But I hope that they will. And many of the things I now do would not make sense if I rejected the Principle of Hope. I assume that the same is true for you. Yet, if we hope that our children will be at least a little better than we are, and if we assume that this will make them able to improve their own children just a bit more, and if we then fix our sights to still more distant consequences, we will see that what we are really hoping for is that the line of moral sensitivity curves ever upward. The hope implicit in our moral practice is hope for Progress. You might wonder how what I’ve said here is supposed to be consistent with where I’m going – if we are going to reject Objectivity, then how can we hope for Progress? Can we be relativists and still aim for moral improvement over time? But only the most ridiculous sort of moral relativism would deny that we can share moral norms with the generation immediately after ours – that is, with our own children. Relative moral truth, whatever that is, will consist of social practices that cross generational lines. So, it is fully intelligible for relativists to see their own morality as the same thing as the morality of their children, and to hope that their children improve upon it by its own internal standards. What is not intelligible for relativists is to insist that they share a morality with the people of a far distant future. Yet, Progress remains intelligible for relativists because it makes use of small, iterative changes. Each generation shares a moral system with its immediate predecessor and successor even as it brings about small positive changes by the lights of that system. It is the accumulation of those small changes that causes it to be true that distant-enough generations can no longer be evaluated by the same moral standards. Similarly: though it is a conceptual mistake to say that a chimpanzee is just a more effective mudfish, the two are connected by a long evolutionary chain in which stepwise comparative claims make perfect sense.9 I claim now that accepting Progress is the only option that makes sense of our own social practices. Rejecting it only seems plausible if we imagine ourselves as detached cosmic observers, holding back our bets on chancy prospects. But the lesson of the Principle of Hope is that we are not detached in this way – because we cannot hold back our bets. The intelligibility of our social practices assumes that we have already bet the house on Progress.

Rejecting Retrospection Retrospection: People in the distant future will look back on our present-­day behavior as utterly morally atrocious and ourselves as ­morally hopeless. We ought not reject Progress; we ought not reject the idea that people in the far future will make much better moral judgments than we do now. Could we instead reject Retrospection? Retrospection says that people in

Epoch relativism and our moral hopelessness  175 the future will look back on our behavior as utterly morally atrocious and ourselves as morally hopeless. If we can plausibly deny that people in the future will look back on us in this way, then of course the Shameful Conclusion does not follow. In fact, it does seem quite easy to deny Retrospection. To do so, we needn’t go so far as positively predicting that future people will look back on us with approval, indifference, or even merely mild disapproval. All we have to say is that there is inadequate evidence for the assertion that future people will look back on us as morally atrocious. The burden of proof is on anyone who would assert Retrospection, and we might doubt that such a burden could be met for untestable claims about the attitudes of distant future people. Here, then, is an attempt to meet that burden – to give a positive argument for Retrospection. The argument is a basic inductive sort. Most people, at most points in time, have looked back on others in the distant past as morally atrocious. The Book of Genesis finds the first humans guilty of the Original Sin, and deems it well deserved that early generations were deliberately drowned by God. Looking back over the ancient customs of Rome’s North African colony, Cicero wrote: Who does not know of the custom of the Egyptians? Their minds are infected with degraded superstitions and they would sooner submit to any torment than injure an ibis or asp or cat or dog or crocodile, and even if they have unwittingly done anything of the kind there is no penalty from which they would recoil.10 Enlightenment European thinkers saw themselves as finding in reason a moral truth unavailable to their benighted ancestors. Their colonialist successors then brought this idea forcibly to other parts of the world, on an ostensibly civilizing mission to peoples seen as primitive moral t­ hrowbacks – “half devil and half child”, in Kipling’s words. These attitudes were not ­ ukichi restricted to Europeans. The modernizing intellectual Fukuzawa Y wrote this about his own early life, which he saw as representative of Japan before the Meiji Restoration: I am wondering now if I was not like the “worm” in society – a kind of parasite feeding on the customs of the time – which had grown fat in the continued good season. This worm has always worshipped the lord of the clan, and had regarded him as a kind of superman. To this worm the lord’s possessions were like the resources of nature – to be exploited and made use of by all men. I suppose a revolution in society was needed to rouse me from this illusion. The fall of the Tokugawa regime of three hundred years’ standing gave me the cue, and for the first time I realized that my lord was as human as I, and that it was shameful to treat him as I had. (Fukuzawa 1899/1996, 276)

176  Regina Rini We seem to always find it important to see what came before us as less good, or even as very bad. We want to believe that we benefit from and participate in the result of moral progress. Here, I am not making a claim about what we ought to do, or what it is reasonable for us to do. I am making a psychological claim about what human beings tend to do. We tend to see our past, and especially our distant past, as a morally impoverished background against which the present day stands in comfortingly improved relief. Perhaps philosophers are particularly prone to the narration of history as moral progress, from Hobbes’ account of growth from the mythical state of nature to Peter Singer’s invocation of a historical “expanding circle” of moral concern. This is perhaps only the other side of the Principle of Hope; to see ourselves as capable of enabling a better future, we must believe we have already exceeded the past. Of course, there are exceptions to this pattern. At some times, in some places, people have seen in their contemporaries the signs of moral decadence, and rued their society’s fall from some prior golden age. Enlightenment thinkers saw themselves as working to recover the lost glory of the classical era. Some contemporary American conservatives bemoan decline from the simpler times of the Founders. It is beside the point that what these people ache for is mostly fantasy rather than historical reality. Accurately or not, they look back upon some point in the past with moral praise, not scorn. Does this fact undermine the plausibility of Retrospection? Isn’t it possible that future people will look back upon our time as a moral golden age? The trouble with such halcyon thinking is that it is fickle. The spotlight of backward approbation swings through history as from a moving platform; each era finds its own golden age and the next overturns this verdict. Enlightenment Europeans rejected their medieval forebears and sang the glory of the classical era. Their Romantic successors then threw off the classical model and praised the raw honest experience of the medievals. Charles Nodier, a French Romantic, wrote this in 1820, only one generation after the completion of the Paris Panthéon: The monuments upon which we impose with such scorn the name of Gothic and which we relegate to the construction of barbarians were neither so savage nor so barbarous… They are better than the Greek monuments in religious solemnity and in mysterious harmonies to the same degree that the noble beliefs of Christianity surpass the poetic theology of paganism.11 So perhaps some future people will see a moral golden age in our time. But this attitude will not last; a still later generation will reject their predecessors’ valorization, and we will be consigned again to the undifferentiated benighted past. It is worth emphasizing this point: distant future people will see us, early 21st-century liberals, as shadily continuous with Weimar Germans and late 21st-century holdouts against rule by corporation. What

Epoch relativism and our moral hopelessness  177 seems to us now like firm generational markers will fade into irrelevance, and the richly varied strands of ideological struggle running through this century, the last, and the next, will be flattened and curated into one or two Capitalized Signifiers of an historically imaginary zeitgeist. Much as I just did to the Enlightenment and the Romantics, future people will limit our legacy to conveniently totalizing descriptors. If we are ever perceived as a moral golden age, it will be only through the blinkered beam of hagiography, and it will not last. When the spotlight of historical imagination rotates away to another golden age, we will be small and shadowed. I am writing this way on purpose. It is important, in trying to imagine how the future will see us, that we keep in mind just how ordinarily insignificant we are. Because once we appreciate this fact, we can easily imagine how we will typically be seen from the future. The future will see us just as we see the past. From our present, we look back on millennia of genocide, slavery, sexism and racism, colonialism, and feudal oppression. We see generations of morally atrocious behavior, rolling along in waves, broken only on the shore of the very recent past when some (though not all) of these ancient evils were finally left behind. The present age is to us an historically sudden departure from the moral depths of the past – just as theirs was to the Victorians, and theirs to the Jacobins, and theirs to the Romans. From the future, we will be merely another point deep on the submerged floor leading to their emergence into light. Perhaps our line will be seen to curve upward, but it will still be far below the surface. We should not reject Retrospection because, in this respect at least, we have every reason to expect the people of the future to be just like us.

Accepting the Shameful Conclusion The Shameful Conclusion: It is almost certainly true that our present-­ day behavior is utterly morally atrocious and we are hopeless about how to improve it. The Argument for Our Utter Moral Failure is valid and we should not reject Progress or Retrospection. We have two choices left: we may reject Objectivity or accept the Shameful Conclusion. I shall now argue that we should not do the latter. This is an interesting juncture in my argument because I suspect that some readers will want to accept the Shameful Conclusion – in fact think they do accept it. They will say: just look at our world! We are indifferent to massive global poverty. We are selfishly destroying the environment. We torment and slaughter animals for our own gain. We are at best grudgingly accepting of racial and sexual equality, and we somehow still think it is a matter for debate whether queer people are fully equal citizens. If people in the future think that our present-day behavior is utterly morally atrocious, then they are right.12

178  Regina Rini It might seem that in rejecting the Shameful Conclusion, I must show these readers that they are mistaken, that our world is better than they think. But this is not what I will say. Rather, I wish to show that the implications of the Shameful Conclusion, understood in future historical context, are actually far worse than this. Not even the most fervent contemporary critic of our age should be happy with what the Shameful Conclusion really means. Indeed, I shall argue shortly, our standing for criticizing the present rests upon its rejection. Return again to how we view the past. When we look back at ordinary people living within horrible social systems, we see them not only as acting badly but also often as acting obliviously. They do not realize just how atrocious their behavior actually was. Often, it takes an outsider even to notice the possibility for moral concern. The British novelist Frances Trollope (mother of Anthony) found herself in slaveholding tidewater America in 1832. While visiting a relatively poor white family, she saved the life of an enslaved 8-year-old girl. The girl had eaten an arsenic-laced biscuit, carelessly left out as rat bait by one of the white family. Trollope quickly concocted a purging agent, and then held the girl as she shook and cried. There was a reaction from the onlookers, which she recounted as follows: I observed a general titter among the white members of the family, while the black stood aloof, and looked stupefied. The youngest of the family, a little girl about the age of the young slave, after gazing at me for a few moments in utter astonishment, exclaimed, ‘My! If Mrs Trollope has not taken her in her lap, and wiped her nasty mouth! Why I would not have touched her mouth for two hundred dollars!’13 The enslaved girl survived, but was in serious pain for some time. Hearing that she had still not recovered, Trollope returned: I immediately went myself to enquire further, when another young lady of the family, the one by whose imprudence the accident had occurred, met my anxious enquiries with ill-suppressed mirth – told me that they had sent for the doctor – and then burst into uncontrollable laughter. The idea of really sympathizing in the suffering of a slave appeared to them as absurd as weeping over a calf that had been slaughtered by the butcher.14 The failure of these Virginia slaveholders was not simply in acting atrociously. It was in being unable to appreciate that their choices were morally significant at all. They saw slaveholding not as something to be morally justified, but as a mere background condition of life. In other places, at other times, wrongdoers have gone further still. They did see their atrocious behavior as morally valenced, but they got it exactly backwards. They saw what they were doing as morally commendable, and

Epoch relativism and our moral hopelessness  179 they regarded moral criticism as foolish or destructive. This attitude was common to British imperialists, as dramatized in E.M. Forster’s character Ronny Heaslop, a young administrator in the fading decades of the Raj. Told by his own mother that the colonial authorities are treating Indians poorly, Heaslop exclaims, “Oh, how like a woman to worry over a side-­issue!” He goes on: We’re out here to do justice and keep the peace. Them’s my sentiments. India isn’t a drawing-room. … [W]hat do you and Adela want me to do? Go against my class, against all the people I respect and admire out here? Lose such power as I have for doing good in this country because my behavior isn’t pleasant? You neither of you understand what work is, or you’d never talk such eyewash. It’s morbidly sensitive to go on as Adela and you go. … I’m out here to work, mind, to hold this wretched country by force. I’m not a missionary or a Labour Member or a vague sentimental sympathetic literary man. I’m just a servant of the Government; it’s the profession you wanted me to choose myself, and that’s that. We’re not pleasant in India, and we don’t intend to be pleasant. We’ve something more important to do. (Forster 1924, 51–2) As Ronny Heaslop sees it, colonial rule is a force for justice. Complaints otherwise are the silly misunderstandings of women and sentimental literary men. Many atrocious social systems appear like this to those who live within them. Unjust arrangements are constructed (often without any agential intent) so as to obscure from their beneficiaries exactly what it is that they are really doing, to deprive the victims the ability to testify to injustice in these terms, and even to represent injustice as a commendable improvement upon earlier times.15 If this was true for the past, it must be true for the present. The full significance of the Shameful Conclusion is not that we are morally atrocious in ways we might already recognize. It is that we are atrocious in ways we do not and cannot recognize. Things we do right now that seem perfectly normal, perhaps not morally valenced at all or perhaps even morally good, are actually horrible things akin to slavery and colonialism. Or so future people will say of us. You’ll want to be given an example of this, of course. But of course I cannot give one. If I am right, then I am not in a position to know which of our current innocuous behaviors will be looked upon with horror. Even if I did somehow know, through some magical foresight, you would not accept the example I offered you. You would laugh like the young Virginian laughed at Frances Trollope’s concern for an enslaved girl. You would call me silly and sentimental and complain, like Ronny Heaslop, about my distracting you from doing justice. You would be completely sincere in your reaction. And it is not possible for you to be otherwise. The key point of the Shameful Conclusion is that we are morally hopeless. Those future people, with their better moral judgment, will look back

180  Regina Rini upon us and see what we cannot see. They will be astonished that we could live with ourselves, doing these terrible things we do. They will see that we are no better than slaveholders and colonialists. The most charitable among them will shake their heads and say, “well, what could they do? It was the time they lived in” and then move on. The rest will call us monsters. Accepting the Shameful Conclusion means accepting this verdict of the future, without even knowing the evidence for its being rendered. It means accepting that we are indeed morally hopeless – that no matter how hard we try, how self-critical and reflective we might be, even if we somehow solve the known moral problems of racism and sexism and environmental destruction and global poverty – even then we will still be morally atrocious. It is not something we could possibly avoid. So, I reject the Shameful Conclusion. I do not believe that we are morally atrocious, at least not in this way. I do not accept the horror-stricken verdict of future people. This should also be your response, so long as you care about your current moral beliefs, and about the possibility of moral improvement in our actual world. To see this, suppose you think that our world is already quite morally bad, in the ways I’ve mentioned. You cannot see any justification for the atrocious way we treat poor people, queer people, or non-human animals. You cannot tolerate our reckless destruction of the environment. You wish to see these moral atrocities undone – you want to improve our behavior. You are doing what you can, in your advocacy, in your philosophical work, in the way you talk to the people you care about. You can’t be sure you will succeed, but at least you are making things a little better. If the Shameful Conclusion is right, and if we are morally hopeless, then you should not be so sure of yourself. Why should you assume you are making things better? Ronny Heaslop, forceful imperialist, claimed to be making things better; he was bringing justice to a wretched country. The Shameful Conclusion implies that you are in no better position than Ronny Heaslop to know that you are making things better. What appears to you as justice may be nothing more than the self-perpetuation of an unjust system. This is not idle philosophers’ skepticism. The Shameful Conclusion tells us that at least some of our current behavior is atrocious in a way that we cannot recognize. The only thing we do not know is which. Which innocuous behavior or seemingly just institution will be unmasked by future better moral judges? Since we cannot know, why should you aim for moral improvement at all? Like Ronny Heaslop, you may be eroding the moral good even as you claim to be working to improve our world. I am practically unable to abandon my belief in moral improvement – my belief that things would be better if we did something about poverty or discrimination. So, I am unable to accept that we are morally hopeless, and therefore unable to accept the Shameful Conclusion. And since this is the only option left to us, now I reject Objectivity.16

Epoch relativism and our moral hopelessness  181

Rejecting Objectivity Objectivity: There are objective moral truths that hold across all time. When we take account of history, Objectivity is double-edged. It is what allows us to say that those people in the past, the slaveholders and colonialists, acted wrongly even though they lived in a different time, and according to different norms, than we do. It is what allows us to make a transhistorical criticism of moral norms. But then, on its other edge, Objectivity is what requires us to submit to the assessment of the better-­judging moral future, and so come to doubt our own moral norms. ­Following ­Objectivity, it is very likely that we are justly cataloged with the slaveholders and colonialists, and no efforts to improve ourselves are likely to change this fact. I try now to imagine those future people, looking back on my efforts to end racism or save the environment, and I imagine them shrugging at my unwitting moral atrociousness. And I imagine responding, easily and fluidly: future people, mind your own business! Your moral standards have no place here. You don’t understand this world. How can you suggest that my sincere efforts to make things better are pointless or misguided? Who are you to say? Future people: take your Objectivity and shove it.17 What is left, if we abandon Objectivity? Perhaps the worst implications leap to mind first: absent Objectivity, we seem to be committed to saying that people in the past are not appropriately condemned for keeping to norms of their time. Slaveholders who did as slaveholders do are apparently in the moral clear. We can say that it is horrible to be a slaveholder now, but we have no right to extend this judgment into the past. And so forth – these are the costs of moral relativism. I think that, with suitable amendment, we should accept these costs. Completely articulating a palatable concept of relativism is a project far greater than what can be attempted in the space remaining to me, so I shall say only a few things about how I think we ought to understand the idea. This returns us to Bernard Williams, who famously defends a “relativism of distance” in his Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy. For Williams, it is crucial that ethical reflection be focused upon genuinely possible ways that we might arrange our social world. By this, he means something far narrower than logical possibility or physical possibility; his point is that from a particular contingent starting point there are only so many ways that actual humans living in social systems can change while “retain[ing] their hold on reality, not engag[ing] in extensive self-deception, and so on”. As a result, Many outlooks that human beings have had are not real options for us now. The life of a Bronze Age chief or a medieval samurai are not real options for us: there is no way of taking on these outlooks.18

182  Regina Rini Once we appreciate that social options are limited, we can recognize that not all instances of intertemporal moral difference have the same status. Williams says: We should distinguish between real and notional confrontations. A real confrontation between two divergent outlooks occurs at a given time if there is a group of people for whom each of the outlooks is a real option. A notional confrontation, by contrast, occurs when some people know about two divergent outlooks, but at least one of those outlooks does not present a real option. (160) With that distinction to hand, we can get a grip on what it would mean to be relativists: A relativist view of a given type of outlook can be understood as saying that for such outlooks it is only in real confrontations that the language of appraisal – good, bad, right, wrong, and so on – can be applied to them; in notional confrontations, this kind of appraisal is seen as inappropriate, and no judgments are made. (160) The relativism of distance, then, is not the view that we must cast our eyes over great historical injustices and relativistically approve of each. We needn’t say, for instance, “it was perfectly fine, given the norms of their time, for the Virginia slaveholders to be as they were”. Rather, we should simply withhold judgment.19 Our confrontation with the outlook of early 19th-century slaveholders is not a real confrontation – their outlook is not a real option for us. The confrontation is notional because we are not even considering living a life like theirs. The language of appraisal does not play the role here that it would, if slaveholding were anything like a real option to us. 20 But slaveholding is not something we even admit into the set of morally possible options. Not being slaveholders is as unremarkable and unquestioned for us as being slaveholders was for them. The natural objection now is this: Appropriate or not, we want to be able to conclude that horrible people of the past were indeed horrible. It is perfectly natural for us to say that slaveholders and colonialists behaved in a morally atrocious way, and a relativism that requires us to abandon this belief as reflecting a merely notional confrontation – an “inappropriate” application of evaluative language – does not do justice to the strength of our condemnation of these past people. One answer to this objection is simply to rehearse what has already been said about Objectivity. Relativism is double-edged in a precise inversion of Objectivity. Just as affirming Objectivity allowed us to condemn the past and left us vulnerable to the condemnation of the future,

Epoch relativism and our moral hopelessness  183 affirming relativism allows us to evade future condemnation and unable to condemn the past. This is in the nature of things: if there are timeless moral truths, they are just as likely to tell against us as for us. Relativism allows us to affirm the truths of our time at the cost of being silent about others. But I think we can say something more in reply to this objection, something hopefully less frustrating. There is a way in which it makes sense for us to condemn historical wrongs, even for relativists. Williams alludes to this in the following passage: If we are to take seriously the relativistic suspension of ethical judgment, we have to conceive of the society in question as a whole. There are some ethical concepts that we can apply to people and their ­actions – virtue and vice concepts, for instance – even when the outlook of the society in which they lived is not in real confrontation with ours. This involves taking the people in abstraction from the social practices in which they lived, and so, often, we do not see them realistically. (162, emphases added) It is not entirely clear what Williams is saying here. Is he simply saying that we do sometimes try to morally evaluate historical persons out of their social context, resulting in confused and unrealistic assessment? Or is he saying that this sort of imaginative abstraction from circumstances somehow allows the language of appraisal to become appropriate once again, despite our relativism? I am not certain what Williams’ view is in the end. But here is mine: when we engage in this sort of decontextualizing evaluation, we are applying our moral judgments sensibly. But we are not applying them in the same way as when we evaluate real moral options. In imaginatively plucking a person from her historical context, we are transforming her from a real person into an abstract space of practical possibilities. We are trying to draw out of her circumstances those features that seem relevant to our own, even if they do not and could not mean entirely the same thing for us that they did in the past. When we condemn those Virginian slaveholders in Frances Trollope’s account, we are not really judging them – we are judging the features of their situation that bear resemblance to our present-day world. It is not that enslaving is an option for us. But what is an option for us is ignoring the pain of a child, or not caring for a person because others regard her as less than human, or treating another rational being with malign indifference. These choices, abstracted in this way, remain real options for us. The language of evaluation serves to commit us to how we might respond to these options, and its application to people in the past is simply an indirect and abstracted way of accomplishing this, much as we might use moral evaluation of characters in highly unreal science fiction to think through the implications of our real practices. 21

184  Regina Rini When we release past people from our imaginative abstraction and deposit them back into the full reality of their social circumstances, we lose an intelligible grasp on morally evaluating them. That is the truth of epoch relativism. But this is consistent with our using reflection on historical wrong as a vehicle for interrogating similar features of our own present. That explains why we continue to insist upon applying moral evaluation to the past. And it also explains, finally, what the people in the future will think about us. They will imaginatively lift us from our social context, just as we do to people of the past. In their minds we will be spun, individualized yet abstracted, deconstructed in pursuit of the similarities that will allow their condemnation of us to coordinate their own moral options. They will call us morally atrocious, but when they do this, it is not really us they are judging. They are judging abstractions of us, logical silhouettes seen from great distance. Their judgment does not apply to the actual us, to our real lives in present social context. Whatever they say, we are not utterly morally atrocious. We are certainly not perfect, indeed we are quite bad. But there is still hope for us. 22

Notes 1 Williams (2005, 67). I learned of this passage from Fricker (2010); in the final section, I will return to considering Williams’ own version of moral relativism, as well as Fricker’s critique thereof. 2 It’s worth keeping in mind that Objectivity is not the same as moral realism. Some people who are not moral realists nevertheless endorse something like Objectivity because they think that, for example, reflection on the nature of rational agency militates toward a certain normative view, no matter who one happens to be (Korsgaard 1996). Nor is rejecting Objectivity the same as endorsing moral antirealism. There are some naturalist realist theories that may be compatible with a form of relativism (Copp 1995; Wong 2006). 3 Here, I am deliberately using examples of things that very many people at the time took to be perfectly normal and morally permissible or even morally valuable. I am leaving to the side examples of acute breakdowns in social order, or of terrible behavior exhibited by some but not widely endorsed by all. So, I am leaving to the side Hitler and le Comité de salut public, Tuol Sleng, and the Jallianwala Bagh massacre. So, you can be reassured that the Argument for Our Utter Moral Failure doesn’t say that you are quite as morally atrocious as Hitler. You’re only as morally atrocious as a typical 18th century slaveholder. 4 An interesting side note: in a way, acknowledging the conditionality of future humans slightly increases the plausibility of Retrospection. For if there are future humans, this will likely be because they survived some nuclear war or synthetic super-pathogen or environmental collapse. They will exist, but they will have seen horrors for which we are partly responsible and might have prevented. It will not be a surprise if these people look back upon us with something other than moral approbation. 5 For related thoughts, see Pinker (2018). 6 Technically, it might be possible to uphold Huemer’s argument and accept Progress. Huemer is only claiming that we are converging upon the moral truth in modern liberalism; he might think that we still have very far to go. But this

Epoch relativism and our moral hopelessness  185 seems against the spirit of his argument since it would suggest that liberalism is only a distant precursor to the truth, rather than something to positively affirm. 7 See Gessen (2017) for a convincing and sobering argument that Russia’s liberalization in the 1990s was a brief (and by now almost fully reversed) aberration from long historical trends. 8 The meaningfulness of many of our personal decisions may depend upon the intelligibility of this project (Scheffler 2013). See also Moody-Adams (2017) for an argument that belief in ongoing moral progress is necessary for the psychological tenability of moral agency. 9 For related thoughts, see Michele Moody-Adams’ claim that “moral progress is always local” (Moody-Adams 1999, 169). See also Catherine Wilson’s (2010) argument for moral progress without moral realism. 10 Cicero, Tusculan Disputations. as translated and quoted in Isaac (2004, 357). Isaac points out that here Cicero uses the word pravitas, or “depravity, a term which Cicero uses frequently when he calls something not just mistaken, but utterly wrong”. 11 In Thorlby (1966, 157). It might be objected that this is an example of aesthetic rather than moral judgment. Yet, it is hard to think of anyone with less patience for an aesthetic/moral distinction than the Romantics. 12 Evan Williams (2015) has recently argued exactly this: we are probably already amid an “ongoing moral catastrophe”. Williams bases his conclusion not on the retrospection of future generations, but instead on induction from hopeless moral failures of the past and the combinatoric likelihood that at least one of our modern moral beliefs is disastrously flawed. He suggests that this possibility means we should focus on improving education so that we can learn to recognize and rectify our ongoing failure. But if what I say below about moral hopelessness is correct, then it is not clear why Williams should expect that to work. 13 Frances Trollope, Domestic Manners of the Americans, as excerpted in Breen (1996, 247–8). 14 Ibid. It is notable Trollope did not support abolition of slavery. Later on the same page, she writes that emancipation “cannot, I conceive, be thought of, consistently with the safety of the country”. She advocates instead legislation to reduce cruelty to slaves so that they may be “rendered more profitably obedient” and as a result, “the negro population of the Union might cease to be a terror, and their situation no longer be a subject of indignation or of pity”. Her audience for this writing was not slaveholding Americans, but Europeans. There were limitations to the moral sensitivity even of a foreign novelist. 15 See Mills (1997) and the conception of hermeneutic injustice in Fricker (2007). 16 In effect, I abandon Objectivity for the same sort of reason that Sharon Street urges us to abandon moral realism (Street 2006); I see the metaethical stance as entailing an implausible practical skepticism. According to Street, if realism is true, then we have no reason to trust our basic evaluative attitudes. According to me, if Objectivity is true, then we should doubt that we are capable of making moral improvements. Street and I agree that doubting our practical projects in this way is not coherent. We agree as well that if a grand metaethical thesis is to stand in the way of making sense of our moral lives, then it is the metaethics that must yield. 17 That I am less polite about Objectivity is one way in which I differ from ­Ronald Dworkin. Another way is that I draw completely the opposite conclusion from reflecting on how firmly I am committed to my moral beliefs. Dworkin writes, [A]ny reason we think we have for abandoning a conviction is itself just another conviction, and … we can do no better for any claim, including the

186  Regina Rini most sophisticated skeptical argument or thesis, than to see whether, after the best thought we find appropriate, we think it so. If you can’t help believing something, steadily and wholeheartedly, you’d better believe it. (Dworkin 1996, 118) I agree with all of this – and per my argument find that it tells against Objectivity. 18 Williams (1985, 160–1). Further parenthetical citations are to this text. 19 Richard Rorty makes a similar point about how best to interpret relativism though he suggests that the most plausible form is better termed pragmatism. According to Rorty, the pragmatist is not holding a positive theory that says that something is relative to something else. He is, instead, making the purely negative point that we should drop the traditional distinction between knowledge and opinion, construed as the distinction between truth as correspondence to reality and truth as a commendatory term for well-justified beliefs. (Rorty 1989, 170) 20 Miranda Fricker argues that Williams has not provided an argument showing that the practical impossibility of such “conversion” entails the inapplicability of moral evaluation (Fricker 2010). If Fricker is right, then the argument of this paper provides an independent route to the relativism of distance. Appraisal of temporally distant people is inappropriate not for the motivational reasons Williams suggests, but because that is the cost of rejecting Objectivity and escaping the Argument for Our Utter Moral Failure. 21 This idea has something in common with Allan Gibbard’s suggestion that moral judgments about others in unfamiliar circumstances express plans for our actions where we find ourselves similarly situated (Gibbard 2003). I have some difficulty with the use of the word “plan” here, but like Gibbard I do find it intelligible that our judgments of distant others are really mostly about ourselves. 22 Great thanks for feedback on this chapter to Nomy Arpaly, Sophie-Grace Chappell, Geraldine Ng, Sara Protasi, Nicholas Smyth, Amia Srinivasan, and audience members at the “30 Years of Bernard Williams’ Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy” conference held at Oxford in 2015.

References Breen, J., ed. (1996). Women Romantics 1785–1832: Writings in Prose. London: JM Dent. Copp, D. (1995). Morality, Normativity, and Society. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Dworkin, R. (1996). Objectivity and Truth: You’d Better Believe It. Philosophy and Public Affairs 25(2), pp. 87–139. Forster, E.M. (1924). A Passage to India. New York: Harcourt. Fricker, M. (2007). Epistemic Injustice: Power and the Ethics of Knowing. ­Oxford: Oxford University Press. Fricker, M. (2010). The Relativism of Blame and Williams’s Relativism of Distance. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society Supplementary Volume LXXXIV, pp. 151–77. Fukuzawa, Y. (1899/1966). The Autobiography of Yukichi Fukuzawa. Trans. Eiichi Kiyooka. New York: Shocken Books. Gessen, M. (2017). The Future is History: How Totalitarianism Reclaimed Russia. New York: Penguin.

Epoch relativism and our moral hopelessness  187 Gibbard, A. (2003). Thinking How to Live. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Huemer, M. (2016). A Liberal Realist Answer to Debunking Skeptics: The Empirical Case for Realism. Philosophical Studies 173(7), pp. 1983–2010. Isaac, B. (2004). The Invention of Racism in Classical Antiquity. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Korsgaard, C.M. (1996). The Sources of Normativity. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Mills, C.W. (1997). The Racial Contract. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Moody-Adams, M.M. (1999). The Idea of Moral Progress. Metaphilosophy 30(3), pp. 168–85. Moody-Adams, M.M. (2017). Moral Progress and Human Agency. Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 20(1), pp. 153–68. Pinker, S. (2018). Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism and Progress. New York: Viking. Rorty, R. (1989). Solidarity or Objectivity? In: M. Krausz, Relativism: Interpretation and Confrontation. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, pp. 167–83. Scheffler, S. (2013). Death and the Afterlife. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Street, S. (2006). A Darwinian Dilemma for Realist Theories of Value. Philosophical Studies 127(1), pp. 109–66. Thorlby, A.K., ed. and trans. (1966). The Romantic Movement. London: Longmans Green & Co. Williams, B. (1985). Ethics and the Limits and Philosophy. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Williams, B. (2005). In The Beginning Was the Deed: Realism and Moralism in Political Argument. Edited by G. Hawthorne. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Williams, E.G. (2015). The Possibility of an Ongoing Moral Catastrophe. Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 18(5), pp. 971–82. Wilson, C. (2010). Moral Progress Without Moral Realism. Philosophical Papers 39(1), pp. 97–116. Wong, D.B. (2006). Natural Moralities: A Defense of Pluralistic Relativism. ­Oxford: Oxford University Press.

11 The inevitability of inauthenticity Bernard Williams and practical alienation Nicholas Smyth In Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy (ELP), Bernard Williams declared that “ethical thought has no chance of being everything it seems.”1 This cryptic and provocative remark went mostly unnoticed by his reviewers. 2 Yet, as I will argue, it expresses a variety of practical skepticism which is central to Williams’ thought and which deserves more attention than it receives. In what follows, I’ll mainly discuss Williams’ position itself, though I ultimately hope to show that any organized body of ethical thought must confront his particular brand of skepticism. Moreover, there is an important twist: I argue that Williams’ own positive ethical philosophy is not exempt from this skeptical challenge, and I show that he did not clearly appreciate just how powerful the challenge is. My first aim is exegetical. I want to produce the best account of just what Williams had in mind when he offered his striking thought. There has been a temptation to see Williams as simply echoing a variety of skepticism popularized by John Mackie, but I believe that it is of the utmost importance to see that Williams could not have meant to draw on Mackie’s distinctly metaphysical brand of skepticism. Fundamentally, I will argue, Williams was telling us that any reflective, normative justification for our ethical dispositions will not match the justification that naturally comes along with such dispositions in ethical experience. The resulting post-reflective state should be described as a form of practical alienation, distinct from the metaphysical skepticism described by Mackie. My second aim is more critical. I will argue that Williams’ skepticism about ethical thought has devastating consequences for his own wellknown arguments against various moral theories. The point will take some time to draw out, but it can be stated fairly simply. Williams wanted to claim that moral theory alienates agents from their projects and relationships, but his own skepticism about ethical thought implies that this sort of alienation is inevitable for reflective beings like us. I’ll survey two possible solutions to the problem, but in the end I conclude that Williams cannot evade it. Furthermore, I’ll finish with an argument designed to show that no ethical theory can avoid a confrontation with Williams’ skeptical position.

The inevitability of inauthenticity  189 These preliminaries aside, I’ll now provide what I take to be the best interpretation of the claim in question. What does it mean to say that ethics cannot be everything it seems to be?

Practical alienation Let’s canvass a couple of possibilities, if only to dismiss them. One argument begins with an absolute distinction between factual and evaluative statements. Since, the argument goes, a complete description of the world and of our place in it will just be a list of factual statements, this description can contain no evaluative statements. Therefore, a complete factual understanding of the world and our place in it will fail to vindicate ethics. A second line of thought, attributable to Mackie, begins with the claim that moral phenomenology presupposes the existence of entities which possess an objective “to-be-doneness,” and concludes that morality suffers from massive presupposition failure since we have no reason to believe in such entities.3 It is important to distinguish these forms of skepticism about ethics from Williams’ own. As we will see, the sort of reflective inquiry that generates his troubling conclusion is not purely factual, whatever that turns out to mean. Nor is it metaphysical inquiry into the nature of the entities which compose the world. Rather, it begins within ethics, so to speak. It is systematic, empirically informed investigation into the normative standing of our ethical beliefs and practices, performed in the light of what we already value. Since it operates mainly under the shadow of Mackie’s challenge, contemporary metaethics is firmly focused on “placing” ethics in the natural world, but when Williams claims that ethics is not what it seems, he is not registering the failure of that project. Thus, Williams appears to be advocating for a distinct form of ethical skepticism, one which is not well represented in contemporary philosophy, and one which would remain pressing even if metaethicists managed to place ethical facts in the world. Perhaps, then, it deserves more attention than it has received. That said, it is not entirely clear what Williams’ skepticism amounts to, and I’ll now proceed to offer a reading of the relevant texts. We should begin with his own elaboration on the claim in question: The hope for truthfulness, next, is essentially that ethical thought should stand up to reflection, and that its institutions and practices should be capable of becoming transparent. I have tried to say why ethical thought has no chance of being everything it seems. Even if ethical thought had a foundation in determinate conceptions of well-being, the consequences of that could lie only in justifying a disposition to accept certain ethical statements, rather than in showing, directly, the truth of those statements: but this is not how it would naturally appear to those who accepted them.4

190  Nicholas Smyth Let’s tease apart and clarify the various thoughts involved in these remarks. We begin with reflective inquiry into the normative status of our ethical beliefs and practices. We move to a best-case scenario, where a true moral theory is actually discovered, or where a determinate foundation for ethical beliefs and practices is successfully defended. We discover that this reflective vindication of ethics is out of step with how it will “naturally appear” to ethical agents. This, we are told, is because this story merely vindicates the disposition to have those beliefs, and not the beliefs themselves. This is more than a little puzzling. What does it mean to say that ethical thought “naturally appears” a certain way to people? Moreover, how exactly does it “naturally appear,” and why is this appearance out of step with the justification provided by reflective inquiry? In the following sections, I will argue that Williams’ position contains three elements. First, a distinction between the “inside” and “outside” perspectives in ethics, second, a corresponding distinction between direct and indirect justification, and third, the idea of a personal project or social practice which is undermined by conflicts between the deliverances of the two perspectives. These ideas, taken together, guarantee that ethics cannot be everything that it seems to be. “Inside” and “outside” perspectives Reflective inquiry into our beliefs and practices involves adopting a perspective that Williams termed the “outside” perspective. It is important to distinguish this perspective from Sidgwick’s “point of view of the universe,” a perspective Williams consistently derided as a philosopher’s fiction. Williams’ outside perspective is not supposed to involve examining our ethical beliefs and practices sub specie aeternitatis, nor is it supposed to suspend the influence of the dispositions and values which constitute our practical identities. That said, the idea of an “inside” or an “outside” perspective is not at all clear. Like Thomas Nagel’s related distinction between subjective and objective perspectives, it can be accused of being purely metaphorical.5 However, it is clear that Williams believed the distinction to be of crucial importance, and as such, it is surprising that so little scholarly attention has been paid to it.6 In what follows, I’ll try to remedy that situation. Any philosopher who speaks of “standing back” from one’s ethical dispositions owes us a psychologically realistic account of just what is going on when an agent performs this maneuver. Indeed, it is somewhat unfortunate that the metaphor of “standing back” is far more often invoked than explained in contemporary moral philosophy. Williams’ opposition to Sidgwick’s somewhat extravagant portrayal leaves him with a problem: that of explaining how an agent can “stand back” from her dispositions while nonetheless continuing to inhabit a practical perspective which is constituted by those same dispositions.

The inevitability of inauthenticity  191 Here is what Williams should say. In evaluating a particular disposition “from the outside,” we simulate the practical reasoning of an agent who does not have the disposition. We try to justify our possession of the disposition to an imaginary person who has some of our other dispositions but who doesn’t have the particular one under scrutiny. Of course, we don’t consciously imagine an actual conversation, rather, a subpersonal process carries out a kind of conversation between two practical reasoners, one with the disposition and the other without it. This simulational mechanism is familiar from contemporary discussions of “mindreading,” of our ability to predict and interpret the actions of other persons. In his own discussion of action-interpretation, Williams explicitly endorsed this model, now most closely associated with Alvin Goldman.7 My suggestion is that he could draw upon features of this mechanism itself to explain what the outside perspective amounts to. Williams can say that the “outside” perspective is so named because it involves addressing the perspective of a simulated other. Plausibly, we learn how simulate in this way via our interactions with actual others whose evaluative perspectives differ from our own.8 Notice that the model itself implies something that is absolutely crucial to Williams’ anti-Sidgwickian stance, namely, that in adopting the outside perspective we do not leave all of our evaluative dispositions behind.9 It is still a particular person who performs the “standing back” maneuver. Yet, this model implies that the vindication provided by the outside perspective must be indirect in a sense I will now define. Direct and indirect vindications The next key to Williams’ distinction lies in the kinds of justification provided by the two perspectives. In the quoted passage from the postscript to ELP, Williams’ use of the word “directly” provides an interpretive key. For some proposition P, he contrasts an account which “justifi[es] a disposition to accept” P with an account that “shows, directly” the truth of P. Thus, imagine a person who judges that some friend is worthy of his loyalty. According to Williams, the “outside” perspective on this judgment cannot deliver the conclusion that the person really deserves that loyalty. Rather, the best we can hope for, from this perspective, is an account which shows that the making of this judgment is somehow valuable by the lights of some other set of values. Something like this is suggested by what has just been said about “outside” simulation. Consider again my loyalty to a friend. If the outside perspective on that disposition involves simulating the practical perspective of an agent who is not loyal to my friend, then this (imagined) other cannot possess any of the positive evaluations, emotional attachments, and historical experiences that help to constitute the disposition itself (my loyalty). But they are therefore not going to be swayed by appeals to those very

192  Nicholas Smyth factors, which might serve to directly vindicate the thought that my particular friend is worthy of my loyalty. So, I am forced to relate my having the disposition to distinct things that the imagined other might value. This will be an indirect vindication, since it will explain the value of the judgment implicit in my loyalty not by citing its truth, but by relating it to some other set of values which is promoted or honored by my disposition to be loyal.10 This justificatory mismatch must be a key part of the story since W ­ illiams is clear in the quoted passage that the distinction between direct and indirect justification is key to his skepticism. Yet, I want to briefly argue that if this were all that Williams had meant to say, then his position would be uninteresting and very probably false. Williams may have been tempted to say that ethics “naturally” appears to agents under the guise of evaluative judgments which appear to simply be true without qualification, but this claim would surely rely on an overly simplistic picture of ethical experience. After all, ethical agents combine direct and indirect thoughts as a matter of routine practice. In Shame and ­Necessity, Williams himself provides the example of Ajax, who combines the simple thought that he “must” commit suicide with a series of higher-­order thoughts about shame, about his relations to others, and about his status as a warrior.11 To take another example, we do not need to be Rule-Utilitarians to see that “what if everyone acted this way?” is a basic ethical thought, as “natural” a part of ethical experience as any. Yet, the thought is manifestly a search for an indirect vindication of a first-order commitment, a vindication conducted in terms of some other, distinct set of values. The outside perspective is no less “natural” than the inside one, and its appearances have as good a claim to be included among the ethical appearances. Why should a theoretical story—which merely tells us how to think when we occupy this wholly natural “outside” perspective—alienate us from our projects? And given the ubiquity of indirect reflection in ethical life, why should the mere distinction between direct and indirect justification deliver the conclusion that ethics is something other than it seems to be? Though I believe we are now close to the correct reading, Williams cannot just have meant to highlight the fact that the “outside” perspective gives us indirect vindications of our beliefs and practices since those justifications are as much a part of ordinary ethical practice as anything else. There must be more to Williams’ pessimism, and to discover what it is, we need to look at a distinct sort of practical situation which consistently fascinated and troubled him. Substantive conflict Williams certainly meant, in the quoted passages, to highlight the distinction between a direct vindication and an indirect vindication of some

The inevitability of inauthenticity  193 ethical judgment. But as we have seen, he could not have meant to suggest that the “outside” perspective is something that philosophers invented and imposed upon first-order practice. Rather, he was also concerned to point out that the deliverances of the two modes can produce a certain psychological conflict in reflective agents. In other words, the difficulty is not due to formal differences between direct and indirect justification, it is due to tensions within the actual content of the justifications provided. This idea is already implicit in the famous case of Jim and the villagers, where Jim’s first-order commitment to nonviolence is in question.12 An indirect utilitarian is happy to say that this commitment is a good commitment to have, and for obvious reasons: it tends to maximize the good. Yet, Jim’s situation is precisely one in which his disposition will prevent him from maximizing the good since a violent act will save many lives.13 Thus, his natural sense that violence is to be avoided conflicts with the thought that in this particular type of case, violence can maximize the good. In his final book, Truth and Truthfulness (TT), Williams summarized the consequences of this situation in the following way: The trouble is that an agent… has no thought to fall back on except that it is Utilitarianly valuable that he should have this disposition, and this leaves no content to the disposition: he has no thoughts with which to counter the consideration that some alternative action in this situation is the one that has the best Utilitarian consequences.14 If the outside perspective on Jim’s disposition reveals that it is valuable because it generally produces good consequences, and if Jim accepts this, then there is a very real sense in which he no longer has the disposition in question. A settled disposition to avoid violence simply is the instinctive refusal to commit acts of violence; once it is regulated by reflection on general consequences, it loses the sense of “practical necessity” which, Williams claimed, accompanies our most basic ethical dispositions.15 This is what he meant when he described such dispositions as having “momentum,” or, elsewhere, “a certain depth or thickness”: phenomenologically, they appear as convictions that a certain behavior must or must not be performed.16 Williams is telling us that it is a deep fact about human beings that a gap must always open up between the two perspectives just described. Ordinary human commitments can be psychologically undermined if the outside, reflective mode is given priority, as Jim’s commitment to nonviolence may be destroyed by his wholehearted acceptance of indirect utilitarianism. This is reflectively induced practical alienation in a nutshell. At the social level, there are analogous dangers of institutional collapse in the face of external reflection. Edward Craig gives the useful example of a group of impoverished and endangered people who band together and enthrone a Hobbesian sovereign. Their shared, explicit justification for

194  Nicholas Smyth enacting this contract lies in the mutual security of all participants. But, for very ordinary reasons, a troublesome situation arises: Then a rebellion breaks out and I am ordered into action to put it down, whereupon it becomes vitally important that I should have acquired a loyalty to the sovereign that is not simply a matter of my enthusiasm for the function for which he was enthroned. The idea was that he would keep the peace and obviate the danger of early and violent death, but early and violent death is exactly what I and my comrades are now facing, in his service. So it seems that our best bet would be to walk away from the battlefield, leaving the monarch incompetent to do that very thing for which the monarchy was created. Its very function, in other words, requires that there be subjects whose loyalty to it is not just a matter of their belief that it fulfills that function.17 Craig’s example helps to bring out something that the case of Jim does not: this kind of clash between first-order dispositions and higher-order justifications is not really the stuff of fanciful philosophical thought experiments. Rather, it grows out of the conditions of human life itself. After all, we are beings who must form long-term dispositions to navigate our physical and social worlds given limited cognitive resources.18 ­Moreover, collective action is premised on the formation of such dispositions; without them, we could not really rely on one another in any deep sense. Craig’s subjects are loyal to their King, and the function of this disposition is to override the search for higher-order justifications, ­precisely ­because those higher-order justifications can easily erode their all-­ important ­instinctive commitment to the shared project.19 For these (and other) reasons, the idea that we could eliminate this structural feature of human society is almost certainly a fantasy. But this entails that human ethical practices and institutions can never be fully transparent to those who participate in them since reflective inquiry into their value has the tendency to undermine or destroy them. Or, to put it another way, ethics has no chance of being everything that it seems. This is neither a deliverance of purely metaphysical inquiry nor a revelation produced by looking at our lives from a God’s-eye perspective. It is, rather, a form of practical alienation that is faced by any reflective agent in a recognizably human social world. A case study At this point, we should address a potentially troublesome question. Surely, if this undermining effect is to be a real concern for us, we should be able to locate it in the world, that is, we should be able to find instances in which an agent taking the outside perspective has seriously threatened to undermine his or her deepest commitments. I take this demand very

The inevitability of inauthenticity  195 seriously: the mere spinning-out of a conceptual and moral-psychological theory which entails that there is a real practical problem facing human beings is never sufficient to show that there is a real practical problem facing human beings. Fortunately, a recent pair of utilitarian writers has (unwittingly) provided us with a perfect case study. I refer here to Peter Singer and Katarzyna de Lazari-Radek’s recent admission—in a book defending Sidgwick’s “esoteric” utilitarianism—that the theory itself may well deliver the verdict that people shouldn’t write books advocating belief in esoteric utilitarianism. “Arguably,” they note in a chapter defending esoteric theory, “we should not even have written this chapter.”20 It is not hard to see why, since esoteric utilitarianism is only meant to be believed in secret by a group of elites, and the best way to keep the secret is hardly to have a book defending the theory published by the largest academic press in the English-­speaking world. Here, Singer and de Lazari-Radek are confronted with a situational conflict between their personal commitment to an identity-­defining ­project—­academic writing—and a certain utilitarian version of the “outside” perspective on that project. Since we are reading these passages, we already know which side won the battle. To justify what looks like a violation of their own professed principles, they write: [I]n a book on Sidgwick, to fail to discuss the topic of esoteric morality would be to leave the impression that on this issue Sidgwick’s stance—and therefore utilitarianism in general—is indefensible. That impression could also have bad consequences. 21 Williams, I believe, would have been troubled by what is almost certainly a failure of truthfulness here. Singer and de Lazari-Radek seem unwilling to simply admit that they love academic writing, that philosophy is something to which they have devoted their lives, and that the dissemination of true ethical ideas is enormously important to them, consequences be damned. But this is not what they say. Instead, they choose to describe their decision to publish their theory as the outcome of utilitarian reasoning. Moreover, the reasoning itself is hard to process: an esoteric utilitarian, by definition, should want most of the population to think that utilitarianism is indefensible. By the lights of the theory, that is a good consequence, not a bad one. Because the utilitarian reasoning itself is inadequate, we should conclude that Singer and de Lazari-Radek’s motivating reasons were grounded in love and commitment, and not on their acceptance of any ethical theory. Yet, because the activity they love is so hard to justify by the lights of the particular version of “outside” reflection they have adopted, we should also conclude that wholehearted prioritization of that perspective could very well destroy their project. These are the real-world dangers of the outside perspective, dangers which are only avoided by simply switching

196  Nicholas Smyth off that perspective entirely. Moreover, these effects are not confined to utilitarian philosophers: an analogous practical problem faces any moral philosopher whose preferred conception of right action does not harmonize well with the extraordinary amount of time, energy, and public resources he or she expends in the tortuous search for the correct theory of right action. This ends my discussion of the skepticism Williams advocated in ELP. As the case study helps to show, the skepticism amounts to the claim that a recognizably human agent cannot have a life at all while giving deliberative priority to a higher-order or “outside” vindication of that life. As I will now argue, however, Williams’ deep skepticism may be his own undoing. If ethics cannot be everything that it seems, then Williams’ well-known and influential attacks on moral theory seem to lose a great deal of force.

The inevitability of inauthenticity In Utilitarianism: For and Against, Williams claimed to have identified a way in which utilitarianism alienates agents from their projects. Acceptance of the theory, he claimed, threatens to eradicate the very dispositions around which ethical life is built. 22 A very similar thought is implicit in the famous “one thought too many” problem for Kantian ethics, where it is suggested that the search for a higher-order justification for saving one’s spouse will undermine one’s commitment to the relationship. 23 These arguments have achieved canonical status, and Utilitarians and Kantians have spent a great deal of energy responding to them. But now, in ELP, we have something much more ambitious than a particular argument against a particular ethical theory. What we have is a global claim that no reflective inquiry can make ethical thought and practice fully transparent without producing practical alienation. What began its life as a specific critique of J.J.C. Smart’s view has become a universal solvent which will destroy any attempt to make ethics stand up to reflection. Since Williams insists that “there is no route back” from the reflective life, he now faces a very serious problem: in what sense is it a criticism of an ethical theory that its acceptance produces a scenario which we already inhabit, one from which there is virtually no escape? From Williams’ writings on utilitarianism and on Kantian ethics, one certainly gets the sense that he believed in some alternative, non-alienated state of affairs which was waiting for those of us who shared his insights about the ways in which such theories could distort our lives. In “Persons, Character and Morality,” alienation was traced to the “impartial moral consciousness” which feels “unease” at the possibility of conflict with the immediate demands of friendship and love. 24 And in Utilitarianism: For and Against alienation was said to be the result of our adopting a “purely utilitarian point of view.” Kantian and utilitarian theories are models for how “outside” reflection should work, and Williams claimed that each

The inevitability of inauthenticity  197 results in practical alienation. Yet, in ELP, we find him claiming that any “outside” reflection must produce that same alienation. This is a very serious problem, one which threatens to undermine many interesting arguments in ELP itself. Consider, for example, Williams’ criticism of R.M. Hare’s theory. Hare famously recommends two levels of moral thinking, intuitive and critical. Most of the time, Hare permits us to act instinctively on our ethical dispositions. However, some of our time must be spent in what he called the “cool hour,” within which we suspend our commitment to those dispositions and critically inquire into their utilitarian value. The passage from ELP in which Williams criticizes this view is very revealing: Is there anywhere in the mind or in society that a theory of this kind can be coherently or acceptably located? The theory finds a value for these dispositions, but it is still an instrumental value… This is what those dispositions look like when seen from outside, from the point of view of the utilitarian consciousness. But it is not what they seem from the inside. Indeed, the utilitarian argument implies that they should not seem like that from the inside. The dispositions help to form the character of an agent who has them, and they will do the job the theory has given them only if the agent does not see his character purely instrumentally, but sees the world from the point of view of that character. 25 Notice that this is precisely the same “gap” between inside and outside perspectives that must, according to Williams, destroy any attempt to make ethics stand up to reflection. According to this (putative) criticism, Hare’s theory asks us to be like the subjects in Craig’s example, where moments of reflection on the true function of our dispositions coexist, in an unstable manner, with our wholehearted commitments. This sounds like a nasty state to be in. But, again, if Williams is right, and no reflective inquiry can make ethical life transparent and still preserve it, then it is the state that any reflective ethical agent must be in if she is to have such a life at all. Williams asks, rhetorically, where such a theory could be “coherently or acceptably located,” but the answer to this question is now plain: Hare’s theory can be located precisely in the alienated human consciousness, which is doomed to vacillate between conflicting justifications. 26 The point, I hope, has been made clear. One of Williams’ most enduring ideas is that certain ethical theories threaten to produce a kind of practical alienation in us. Yet, if there is no alternative to this state, then this is not a criticism of such theories. In fact, it turns out that theories such as Hare’s are realistic in a highly desirable way: they correctly describe the structure of ordinary ethical experience. What can Williams say in response to this criticism? In the following two sections, I’ll canvass two possible lines of response, arguing that neither solves this problem.

198  Nicholas Smyth

The tragedy of truth and truthfulness Here, those familiar with Williams’ work will note that he suggested that at least some of our commitments could be made transparent to reflection in the right way. In ELP, he wrote: While ethical thought will never entirely appear as what it is, and can never fully manifest the fact that it rests in human dispositions, this will present greater obstacles to reflection in some conditions of ethical thought than in others. One thing that will make a difference is the extent to which ethical life can still rely on what I have called thick ethical concepts. They are indeed open to being unseated by reflection, but to the extent that they survive it, a practice that uses them is more stable in face of the general, structural reflections about the truth of ethical judgments than a practice that does not use them. 27 Indeed, TT is precisely an attempt to show that the thick concept “truthfulness” can survive reflection. Indeed, the book may be nothing less than an attempt to partially rescue us from the sort of deep and pervasive practical alienation I’ve described here. However, as I now hope to show, Williams’ attempt is ultimately tragic in a special sense. After a philosophical lifetime spent casting scorn on a mode of reasoning which alienates us from our projects, Williams finds himself unable to avoid that very mode of reasoning. He faces a problem: how to underwrite or reflectively vindicate our dispositions to truthfulness in a manner that is distinct from the sort of vindication provided by utilitarian such as Hare. I do not think that he solves this problem, at least, not here. Let us remind ourselves that this mode of reasoning essentially involves instrumentalizing our dispositions, portraying them, in Williams own apt phrase, as “devices for generating states of affairs.” A sophisticated consequentialist like Hare will recommend that we generally act on our most familiar dispositions, trusting that they are appropriately responsive to the ethical facts. Yet, they recommend this only because doing so is conducive to the general good, and not because the beliefs implicit in the dispositions themselves are true. We are thus invited to view our own dispositions merely as parts of the causal nexus, and as we have seen, Williams believed that this “outside” perspective produces practical alienation or inauthenticity. Unfortunately, it is very difficult to see how Williams avoids instrumentalizing truthfulness in precisely the same way. He claims to be doing more, but at crucial moments in the book, we are left with nothing but very general claims about how our dispositions to be sincere and accurate support, in a basically causal sense, other states of affairs that we value. In the first half of TT, Williams spends some time showing that a fictional genealogy of truthfulness can deliver the conclusion that the virtues of truth are of immense instrumental value for human beings. Of course,

The inevitability of inauthenticity  199 for the reasons just outlined, he recognized that this was not enough, and he went on to suggest that given a suitably sophisticated conception of intrinsic value, the real history of truthfulness could illustrate its intrinsic value to us. Briefly, he wanted us to see an intrinsic value as one which could be coherently related to other things we value, such as scientific activity, non-tyrannical political systems, and even authenticity itself. This relation, again, was supposed to be distinct from the means-ends relation characteristic of instrumental value. 28 By illustrating the social history of these values, he aimed to show that truthfulness is deeply related to those values. He argued that the development of such things as science, democracy, and authenticity was intimately bound up with the increased valuation of truthfulness. This “filling in” of the earlier genealogy with real history was supposed to enable Williams to pull off the requisite trick, to provide an evaluative foundation for truthfulness which could be wholeheartedly accepted by someone with the dispositions itself. 29 The difficulty may be put quite simply: this argument is a paradigmatic example of the “outside” perspective at work, the very perspective which, according to Williams himself, cannot directly vindicate any first-order commitment. The vindication is as indirect as any sophisticated consequentialist account. It doesn’t matter if we grant Williams to right to call truthfulness “intrinsically” valuable; nor does it matter that truthfulness is a thick ethical concept. These issues, unfortunately, are orthogonal to the skeptical position I’m considering in this paper. What matters is the structure of the vindication itself. It does not show that it is simply good to be truthful. Rather, it is a higher-order, reflective story which takes very general social goods and relates them to our dispositions to be truthful. It is indeed a vindicatory story, but as the quotation at the outset of this paper makes clear, that doesn’t address the problem at all, since Williams’ skepticism is supposed to have force even in the presence of a successful vindication of ethics. Recall that even if some bit of our ethical thought is vindicated, the consequences of that could lie only in justifying a disposition to accept certain ethical statements, rather than in showing, directly, the truth of those statements: but this is not how it would naturally appear to those who accepted them. For my own part, I simply cannot see how Williams circa 2003 avoids the very trap that he himself had constructed for other theorists, circa 1985. This is why I say that TT is a tragic book: in it, Williams becomes ensnared by a certain very subtle trap, one which had been designed and set by a younger version of himself. That said, it might be suggested that Williams has a different response to this problem, one grounded in his (apparent) commitment to a certain kind of subjectivism about justification. It is to this second strategy that I now turn.

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Subjectivism and alienation In “Moral Luck,” Williams described a fictionalized Gauguin who abandons his family to pursue an artistic project. Williams’ stated aim in the paper was to “explore and uphold the claim that in such a situation the only thing that will justify [Gauguin’s] choice will be success itself.” Yet, he immediately qualified this claim: One should be warned already, however, that, even if Gauguin can be ultimately justified, that need not provide him with any way of justifying himself to others… Thus he may have no way of bringing it about that those who suffer from his decision will have no justified ground of reproach. Even if he succeeds, he will not acquire a right that they accept what he has to say.30 And later, he writes that the family’s complaints “are, indeed, justified,” even in the case where Gauguin’s project succeeds.31 How are we to make sense of this? In spite of his refusal to explicitly endorse any such position, one standard interpretive route is to read Williams as a kind of subjectivist about justification. Sharon Street and Derek Parfit, for example, have recently interpreted Williams along these lines. 32 The position might look something like this: Subjectivism: X truly judges that action A is justified iff X has an evaluative framework according to which it is all-things-considered best to perform A, given complete factual knowledge of the situation. 33 But subjectivism, it must be stressed, is a theory about how the “outside” perspective ought to conduct its business. In other words, it is a perfectly general theory, a formula which enables us to determine the normative status of any action whatsoever. Here, I must tangentially mention that this feature of subjectivism explains Williams’ refusal to endorse it: subjectivism is a theory, and as such it would be odd for this most trenchant of anti-­ theorists to embrace it. Furthermore, contrary to numerous conflations that crop up over and over again in the literature, Williams’ internal reasons thesis does not entail subjectivism about reasons.34 Nonetheless, let us grant, for the sake of argument, that he could have held this position. If he did, it would be consistent for him to say, as he seems to say, that Gauguin can rightly feel justified in abandoning his family and that his family need not accept or acknowledge his justification. Each is correct to think as they do, given their respective evaluative frameworks. Moreover, it might be thought that this sort of position can save Williams from the objection I am raising in this paper. The objection, recall, is that Williams has painted himself into something of a skeptical corner.

The inevitability of inauthenticity  201 He criticized various moral theories for producing a certain kind of practical alienation, but he subsequently developed an argument according to which that sort of alienation is inevitable for creatures like us. This, again, is because of a certain mismatch between the deliverances of the “outside” perspective and the natural sense of justification that comes along with taking the “inside” perspective on our own dispositions. The suggestion under consideration therefore amounts to the following: by embracing a theory of justification which defines correct action in terms of an agent’s evaluative scheme, it will never be possible for the outside and inside perspectives to conflict. Since the beliefs implicit in the inside perspective arise directly from the very psychological elements which form the basis of a subjectivist theory of justification, it will (we suppose) always be the case that an agent is justified in following through on their deepest commitments. Jim will feel as though he can’t shoot the villager, and he will be justified in refusing to do so. Singer and de Lazari-Radek will feel as though they must publish their book, and they will be justified in doing so. The inside and outside perspectives will always harmonize, and as such, subjectivism is a one-shot antidote to practical alienation. Yet, a further problem looms, one that becomes salient when we take Williams at his word about Gauguin. For what is it that Gauguin believes (from the inside) when he is compelled to pursue his art? Certainly not that he desires to be a successful artist and that this desire provides him with all the justification he needs. Rather, the putative justificatory work will be done—as Williams explicitly says it will—by the prospect of success. That possible-future state of affairs itself will seem reason-providing, and not his present desire for it. And he is no outlier, here: rarely do agents wholeheartedly pursue patterns of action while thinking that are justified solely by the presence of their desires, or by the fact that they happen to make certain evaluative judgments. Using the example of generosity, Williams himself acknowledged this near-truism: The characteristic and basic expression of a moral disposition in deliberation is not a premiss which refers to that disposition—it is not the basic characteristic of a generous man’s deliberations that they use the premiss ‘I am a generous man’… Though the generous man is partly characterised by what goes into his deliberations, it is not that what goes into them are reflections on his generosity. 35 Thus, even on a subjectivist theory of justification, the outside perspective virtually guarantees practical alienation, since the theoretical vindication of our dispositions will very often be completely out of step with how things “naturally appear” to us when we inhabit those same dispositions. Instead of directing me toward the value that appears to inhere in various persons, objects, or states of affairs, subjectivism redirects agents to their own psychology. This is a paradigm instance of indirect justification, and it is no

202  Nicholas Smyth less jarring than the utilitarian story, which redirects me toward the general good. If utilitarianism is to be rejected for undermining our integrity, then we must reject subjectivism on precisely the same grounds, since wholehearted acceptance of subjectivism would rob us of the outwardness or world-directedness that Williams himself argued was essential to integrity. Having explored what I take to be the two most promising escape routes, and having shown that they do not permit escape, I conclude that the skepticism articulated in ELP weakens Williams’ highly influential criticisms of particular ethical theories. This is because his negative appraisal of such theories is only justified if they lead to an avoidable state of affairs. However, as Williams’ own attempts in TT show, broadly naturalistic reflection on the value of our dispositions ends up instrumentalizing those dispositions, and it therefore threatens to alienate agents from their own projects. And as our discussion of normative subjectivism has shown, even a theory which defines practical justification in terms of our own commitments will certainly fail to capture the way that ethical life seems to us, from the inside. Williams ought to have insisted that the only antidote to this inevitable practical alienation is itself practical. That is, all we can do, given his assumptions, is re-inhabit the inside perspective and simply live out our dispositions, refusing to see them as justified only by the lights of a higher-­ order theory. However, other theorists might wish to take another route and attack his skepticism at its roots. Consequentialists, in particular, may want to question entirely the normative authority of the “inside” perspective on ethics to deny that practical alienation is of any real significance. I’ll conclude by arguing that this move is not feasible, since there is an important sense in which the inside perspective is logically prior to the outside one, even for a consequentialist.

The priority of the “inside” perspective Some ethical theories self-consciously start with the inside perspective. For example, one of Kant’s most influential arguments begins with the claim that each agent is committed to the value of his or her own agency, in virtue of having goals at all. He then moves to the claim that we must value any instantiation of human agency as such.36 The move is much-disputed, but its starting point is recognizably the agent’s own private perspective on his or her values. Consequentialists ordinarily avoid giving any special priority to the particular standpoint of any agent. This, of course, is meant to be a strength of this type of theory: by prioritizing the general good, such a theory can avoid giving any pride of place to prejudice, self-indulgence, or subjective arbitrariness. However, as Williams himself pointed out, a purely impersonal standpoint is of little help to a consequentialist. “The good of any one individual,” Sidgwick famously wrote, “is of no more importance, from the point of view of the Universe, than the good

The inevitability of inauthenticity  203 of any other.”37 This utilitarian’s claim, we should notice, is consistent with the following proposition: no individual’s good is of any importance. The universe, it seems, has to decide that what is good for agents is good as such, and mere impartiality cannot deliver this substantive conclusion. Here, the consequentialist must, in the current jargon, deploy an intuition about which properties or states of affairs have intrinsic value. This much is admitted, for example, by hardline consequentialist Joshua Greene, who concedes that even consequentialism has to be based on an “affectively based evaluative premise.”38 Perhaps he will suggest that the intuition that suffering is intrinsically bad is self-evident. He will invite us to reflect upon cases, real or imaginary, to experience this self-evidence for ourselves. He might easily succeed in this, securing agreement among all careful, imaginative thinkers. We might even be moved toward an acceptance of some form of utilitarianism. Yet, what is important about this kind of argumentative move is that it straightforwardly invokes the “inside” perspective on values. It follows that no consequentialist of this variety can question the normative authority of the inside perspective without undermining his or her own theory. This may not seem obvious, but it is in fact very straightforward. The outside perspective, as we have seen, involves justifying the value of some object or disposition by quarantining its importance, by suspending its weight in practical deliberation and trying to say why it has value by the lights of some distinct set of values. However, by considering certain cases and making pro-utilitarian judgments about them, we are not suspending our commitment to the badness of suffering in order to say why suffering is bad. Rather, the argument has a much more direct form: we simply allow our disposition to judge that suffering is bad to operate normally. The consequentialist might insist that the badness of suffering is the deliverance of reason and not emotion or sentiment. This, it will be said, gives it a special authority. This maneuver is typical of intuitionist-­consequentialists, who follow Sidgwick in describing certain substantive evaluative claims as rational intuitions, or “intuitive propositions of real clearness and certainty.” However, this point is entirely orthogonal to the question I am considering. At no point have I suggested that either the inside or outside perspectives is “rational” or “emotional,” nor have I denied that our firmest convictions are accompanied by a certain sense of clarity and certainty. What I am suggesting is that this certainty cannot, logically, be delivered by the outside perspective since it is that very certainty which is suspended by the outside perspective. Moreover, the distinction itself is exclusive and exhaustive since either one suspends an evaluative commitment in seeking to justify it or one does not. It follows that the fundamental evaluative judgment(s) lying at the base of any consequentialist theory must be the product of the inside perspective, and that it is disastrous for the consequentialist to call that perspective into question.

204  Nicholas Smyth The argument over consequentialism can proceed from here, and the contours of that debate are by now familiar. However, it should now be clear that no system of ethical thought, consequentialist or otherwise, can avoid a confrontation with Williams’ particular brand of skepticism, which is often passed over in favor of more dramatic, metaphysical skepticisms. But Williams’ problem arises from a few very simple, intuitive facts. We can take up one of two conflicting perspectives on our values, and neither perspective is discardable, even in principle. What do we do with these apparent facts? What would non-alienating reflection on our values look like, and would we even want such a thing? These are some of the more central questions bequeathed to us by ELP, and they remain as pressing today as they did three decades ago, even if recent writings in ethics show little interest in them. I sincerely hope that renewed attention to this book will allow us to see the skeptical problem for what it is, and that moral philosophers will once again think deeply about the ways in which their theoretical activity can come into conflict with the exigencies of human life.

Notes 1 Bernard Williams, Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy (Harvard University Press, 1985). 2 There is no mention of the remark in reviews by Sam Scheffler, Susan Wolf, or Thomas Nagel. Thomas Nagel, “Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy by Bernard Williams,” Journal of Philosophy 83, no. 6 (1986): 351–60; Susan Wolf, “The Deflation of Moral Philosophy: Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy. Bernard Williams,” Ethics 97, no. 4 (1987): 821–33; Samuel Scheffler, “Morality through Thick and Thin a Critical Notice of Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy,” Philosophical Review 96, no. 3 (1987): 411–34.) One exception here is Blackburn, S. (1986). Making Ends Meet." Philosophical Books 27 (4): 193-203. 3 John L. Mackie, Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong (Penguin, 1977). 4 Williams, Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy, 222. 5 Thomas Nagel, The View From Nowhere (Oxford University Press, 1986), vol. 37. 6 One recent writer, Paul Sagar, has interpreted the so-called “gap” between inside and outside perspectives as, roughly, that infamous chasm between the amoralist’s actual reasons and the reasons we wish that he had. But, this interpretation cannot be right since it fails to make sense of why the gap is supposed to be a problem for us irrespective of our dealings with Sensible Knaves, of why it is supposed to produce a form of practical alienation even for those of us who do live recognizably ethical lives. The gap, I will argue, runs much deeper than this. See Paul Sagar, “Minding the Gap: Bernard Williams and David Hume on Living an Ethical Life,” Journal of Moral Philosophy 11, no. 5 (2014): 615–38. 7 From Truth and Truthfulness: “one way in which others can come to make sense of the action is by thinking themselves into the position of the agent, while taking on for the purpose of the exercise, so far as they can, his outlook and preconceptions… His identification with the outlook of the agent is temporary and, as it were, feigned… In current jargon, the exercise is conducted ‘off-line’” (TT 237). See Alvin Goldman, Simulating Minds: The Philosophy, Psychology, and Neuroscience of Mindreading (Oxford University Press, 2006), vol. 144.

The inevitability of inauthenticity  205 8 Williams would not, of course, be the first philosopher to develop a broadly social model of impersonal reflection in ethics. The notion was first defended in detail by Adam Smith in A Theory of Moral Sentiments. 9 “There is simply no conceivable exercise that consists in stepping completely outside myself and from that point of view evaluating in toto the dispositions, projects, and affections that constitute the substance of my own life.” Bernard Williams, “The Point of View of the Universe: Sidgwick and the Ambitions of Ethics,” in The Sense of the Past: Essays in the History of Philosophy (Princeton University Press, 2009), 277–96. 10 This set may even include the importance of loyalty in general, from which one still cannot derive the truth of “I ought to be loyal to this particular person.” 11 Bernard Williams, Shame and Necessity (University of California Press, 1992), 75–85. 12 John Jamieson Carswell Smart and Bernard Williams, Utilitarianism: For and Against (Cambridge University Press, 1973). 13 Arguing against the utilitarian’s invocation of “remoter effects” was Williams’ way of securing this conclusion. 14 Bernard Williams, Truth and Truthfulness: An Essay in Genealogy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002). 15 Bernard Williams, “Practical Necessity,” in The Philosophical Frontiers of ­C hristian Theology: Essays Presented to D.M. Mackinnon, eds. Donald ­MacKenzie ­MacKinnon, Brian Hebblethwaite, and Stewart R. Sutherland (­Cambridge University Press, 1982). For an illuminating discussion, see Robert J. Gay, “Bernard Williams on Practical Necessity,” Mind 98, no. 392 (1989): 551–69. 16 Bernard Williams, Making Sense of Humanity (Cambridge University Press, 1995), 169. 17 Edward Craig, “Genealogies and the State of Nature,” in Bernard Williams, ed. Alan Thomas (Cambridge University Press, 2007), 181–200. 18 See Bratman 1999. For a reading of Williams that brings him very close to Bratman in this way, see Markovits, Daniel, “The Architecture of Integrity”, 129–32. 19 Michael Bratman, Structures of Agency: Essays (Oxford University Press, 2007); Faces of Intention: Selected Essays on Intention and Agency (­Cambridge University Press, 1999). 20 Katarzyna de Lazari-Radek and Peter Singer, The Point of View of the Universe: Sidgwick and Contemporary Ethics (Oxford University Press, 2014). 21 Ibid. 22 Smart and Williams, Utilitarianism: For and Against. 23 Bernard Williams, “Persons, Character, and Morality,” in Moral Luck, ed. James Rachels (Cambridge University Press, 1981). 24 Ibid., 17. 25 Williams, Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy, 108. 26 In response to Williams’ complaint, Hare writes: I do my own moral thinking in the way described in this book… doing my best to employ critical and intuitive thinking as appropriate. In difficult situations one’s intuitions, reinforced by the dispositions that go with them, pull one in different directions, and critical thinking, perhaps, in another. Richard Mervyn Hare, Moral Thinking: Its Levels, Method, and Point (­Oxford University Press, 1981), vol. 93, 52. 27 Williams, Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy, 261. 8 The conception of intrinsic value is briefly laid out and defended in Bernard 2 Williams, “Plato’s Construction of Intrinsic Goodness,” in The Sense of the

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29 30 31 32 33

34

35 36 37 38

Past: Essays in the History of Philosophy, ed. Adrian W. Moore (Princeton University Press, 2009), 118–37. A similar account of intrinsic value can be found in Kagan (1998), “Rethinking Intrinsic Value.” Kagan argues, to my mind convincingly, that the fact that an object has value in virtue of its relational properties does not entail that it is only valuable as a means to promoting its relata. The pen that Abraham Lincoln used to sign the emancipation proclamation possesses intrinsic value, and the explanation of this value makes reference to the fact that it was used for a certain purpose by a certain man, Yet, that explanation in no way implies that the pen is only valuable because it can be used to sign important documents since its destruction and replacement by a similar pen would result in a diminishment of value in the world. A similar line of argument can be found in Korsgaard (1983). See Shelly Kagan, “Rethinking Intrinsic Value,” Journal of Ethics 2, no. 4 (1998): 277–97; Christine M. Korsgaard, “Two Distinctions in Goodness,” Philosophical Review 92, no. 2 (1983): 169–95. TT, Chapters 5–8. Bernard Williams, Moral Luck: Philosophical Papers, 1973–1980 (Cambridge University Press, 1981), 23–24. Williams, Moral Luck: Philosophical Papers, 1973–1980, 37. Derek Parfit, On What Matters (Oxford University Press, 2011), vol. II, 270; Sharon Street, “Objectivity and Truth: You’d Better Rethink It.” (unpublished ms) Available at https://files.nyu.edu/ss194/public/sharonstreet/Writing.html Numerous qualifiers would have to be added here to generate a reasonably complete and defensible model of normative subjectivism. I omit these for simplicity’s sake since the point I wish to make in this section does not turn on the presence of any such qualifiers. The internal reasons thesis, recall, is the view that a necessary condition on an agent having a reason for action is that it be suitably related to the agent’s subjective motivational set. Absent a sufficiency condition, internalism cannot entail subjectivism. The conflation of internalism with normative subjectivism is, unfortunately, extremely common in the meta-ethical literature. See Parfit (op. cit); Chris Heathwood, “Desire-Based Theories of Reasons, Pleasure, and Welfare,” Oxford Studies in Metaethics 6 (2011): 82; Ralph Wedgwood, “Instrumental Rationality,” Oxford Studies in Metaethics 6 (2011): 292; William Fitzpatrick, “Robust Ethical Realism, Non-Naturalism, and Normativity,” Oxford Studies in Metaethics 3 (2008): 165. For an admirably clear illustration of the distinction between internalism and subjectivism, see Kate Manne, “Internalism about Reasons: Sad but True?” Philosophical Studies 167, no. 1 (2014), 106. Williams, Moral Luck: Philosophical Papers, 1973–1980, 48–49. Immanuel Kant, Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals (Oxford University Press, 1785) AK. 4:429. Henry Sidgwick, Methods of Ethics (Kaplan Publishing, 1901), 253. Joshua D. Greene. “Beyond Point-and-Shoot Morality: Why Cognitive (Neuro) Science Matters for Ethics.” Ethics 124, no. 4 (2014): 695–726.

Works cited Bratman, Michael. Faces of Intention: Selected Essays on Intention and Agency. Cambridge University Press, 1999. ———. Structures of Agency: Essays. Oxford University Press, 2007. Blackburn, Simon. (1986). "Making Ends Meet." Philosophical Books 27(4): 193-203.

The inevitability of inauthenticity  207 Craig, Edward. “Genealogies and the State of Nature.” In Bernard Williams, ­edited by Alan Thomas, 181–200. Cambridge University Press, 2007. Fitzpatrick, William. “Robust Ethical Realism, Non-Naturalism, and ­Normativity.” Oxford Studies in Metaethics 3 (2008): 159–205. Gay, Robert J. “Bernard Williams on Practical Necessity.” Mind 98, no. 392 (1989): 551–69. Goldman, Alvin. Simulating Minds: The Philosophy, Psychology, and Neuroscience of Mindreading. Vol. 144. Oxford University Press, 2006. Greene, Joshua D. “Beyond Point-and-Shoot Morality: Why Cognitive (Neuro) ­S cience Matters for Ethics.” Ethics 124, no. 4 (2014): 695–726. Hare, Richard Mervyn. Moral Thinking: Its Levels, Method, and Point. Vol. 93. Oxford University Press, 1981. Heathwood, Chris. “Desire-Based Theories of Reasons, Pleasure, and Welfare.” Oxford Studies in Metaethics 6 (2011): 79–106. Kagan, Shelly. “Rethinking Intrinsic Value.” Journal of Ethics 2, no. 4 (1998): 277–97. Kant, Immanuel. Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals. Oxford University Press, 1785. Korsgaard, Christine M. “Two Distinctions in Goodness.” Philosophical Review 92, no. 2 (1983): 169–95. Lazari-Radek, Katarzyna de, and Peter Singer. The Point of View of the Universe: Sidgwick and Contemporary Ethics. Oxford University Press, 2014. Mackie, John L. Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong. Penguin, 1977. Manne, Kate. “Internalism about Reasons: Sad but True?” Philosophical Studies 167, no. 1 (2014): 89–117. Nagel, Thomas. “Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy by Bernard Williams.” Journal of Philosophy 83, no. 6 (1986): 351–60. ———. The View From Nowhere. Vol. 37. Oxford University Press, 1986. Parfit, Derek. On What Matters. Oxford University Press, 2011. Sagar, Paul, “Minding the Gap: Bernard Williams and David Hume on Living an Ethical Life,” Journal of Moral Philosophy 11, no. 5 (2014): 615–38.Scheffler, Samuel. “Morality through Thick and Thin a Critical Notice of Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy.” Philosophical Review 96, no. 3 (1987): 411–34. Sidgwick, Henry. Methods of Ethics. Kaplan Publishing, 1901. Smart, John Jamieson Carswell, and Bernard Williams. Utilitarianism: For and Against. Cambridge University Press, 1973. Wedgwood, Ralph. “Instrumental Rationality.” Oxford Studies in Metaethics 6 (2011): 280–309. Williams, Bernard. Making Sense of Humanity. Cambridge University Press, 1995. ———. “Persons, Character, and Morality.” In Moral Luck, edited by James Rachels. Cambridge University Press, 1981, pp. 1–19 ———. “Plato’s Construction of Intrinsic Goodness.” In The Sense of the Past: ­E ssays in the History of Philosophy, edited by Adrian W. Moore, 118–37. ­Princeton University Press, 2009. ———. “Practical Necessity.” In Moral Luck, edited by James Rachels. Cambridge University Press, 1981, pp. 124–31. ———. Shame and Necessity. University of California Press, 1992. ———. “The Point of View of the Universe: Sidgwick and the Ambitions of Ethics.” In The Sense of the Past: Essays in the History of Philosophy, edited by Adrian Moore, 277–96. Princeton University Press, 2009.

208  Nicholas Smyth ———. Truth and Truthfulness: An Essay in Genealogy. Princeton University Press, 2002. ——— Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy. Harvard University Press, 1985. ———. Moral Luck: Philosophical Papers, 1973–1980. Cambridge University Press, 1981. Wolf, Susan. “The Deflation of Moral Philosophy: Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy. Bernard Williams.” Ethics 97, no. 4 (1987): 821–33.

12 How should one live? Williams on practical deliberation and reasons for acting Roger Teichmann

Practical deliberation as radically first-personal The starting point of Bernard Williams’ Ethics and the Limits of ­Philosophy (1985) is Socrates’ question: How should one live? As ­Williams remarks, the ‘should’ in this question relates to reasons for acting: ‘Should draws attention to the reasons I have for acting one way rather than another’ (1985, 18). Living, of course, isn’t a kind of action, but a general reflective deliberation on how to act (on what sorts of action to go in for) is at least an essential component of deliberation on how to live, and it is because of this that ‘How should one live?’ is a question asking after reasons. In Williams’ words, ‘Socrates’ question, then, means “how has one most reason to live?”’ (1985, 19). In the chapters that follow, Williams spells out a variety of ways in which he thinks philosophers’ attempts to answer Socrates’ question come unstuck. And some, though by no means all, of his arguments rely for their force on Williams’ own conception of practical reasons. On Williams’ conception of a reason for acting, there are special difficulties faced by anyone who tries to give reasons to another person for acting in a certain way. Insofar as moral philosophers are attempting to justify certain ways of giving people reasons for acting, their task will appear daunting or even hopeless to the extent that people are free simply to rebut any practical reasons offered them. Or so it can appear on Williams’ account. Two crucial and interrelated features of Williams’ conception of a practical reason are: first, his idea of practical deliberation as radically first-personal, and second, the role he assigns to the agent’s desires. Let us consider these in turn. In his criticism of Kant’s argument for the impartiality of both t­ heoretical and practical deliberation, Williams claims that the argument only works for theoretical deliberation, writing, ‘It fails to apply to practical deliberation, and to impose a necessary impartiality on it, because practical deliberation is first-personal, radically so, and involves an I that must be more intimately the I of my desires than this account allows’ (1985, 67). Why is practical deliberation radically first-personal? The answer is given on the next page:

210  Roger Teichmann Practical deliberation is in every case first-personal […] The action I decide on will be mine, and […] its being mine means not just that it will be arrived at by this deliberation, but that it will involve changes in the world of which I shall be empirically the cause, and of which these desires and this deliberation itself will be, in some part, the cause. (1985, 68–9) Of course if I am deliberating what to do, my deliberation is first-­personal, at any rate in the sense that what I am wondering is expressible by the question ‘What shall I do?’ But what if I am deliberating what you are to do? Perhaps you have come to me for advice; or perhaps I have authority over you and am working out what you are to do, given some objective. Example: my objective is that a stockade be built around the hut. I reason: ‘We first of all need wood; and to get that, some trees will need to be felled; so you should (or you must) go into that glade and chop a tree down’. Here, the action I decide on is not mine, it is or will be yours. This, it will be said, is off topic if we are interested in Socrates’ question, which we must surely read as meaning ‘How am I to live?’ But one consequence of Williams’ account is that I cannot go about answering that question, or any of the particular practical questions relative to which Socrates’ question is architectonic, by relying on or appealing to the deliberations of others. As Williams writes, ‘The I of the reflective practical deliberation is not required to take the results of anyone else’s properly conducted deliberation as a datum’ (1985, 69). ‘Required’ here appears to mean ‘rationally required’; and we might wonder how someone else’s properly conducted deliberation on your behalf could fail to rationally require your acquiescence. The other person gives you some reasons for action, which will be good ones if her deliberation was indeed properly conducted, and yet you say, ‘I don’t accept that – I’m not going to do that thing’. Such a reply seems hard to justify unless amplified by mention of countervailing reasons, or unless you have reasons for not wanting to discuss the matter with that person. (A discussion is after all a human activity which there can be various reasons for or against going in for.) But perhaps I am ignoring the phrase ‘as a datum’. What I am not rationally required to do, it may be claimed, is accept the conclusion of another person’s practical deliberation as a datum, i.e. without my seeing how it follows from the given premises. Rational autonomy requires me to make any reasoning my own before I accept it. (The thought is a very Kantian one.) However, there is much practical deliberation of which this is certainly not true, as when I rely on an authority, such as my doctor, whose conclusion that I take such-and-such a medicine I do well to heed regardless of whether I see how it was arrived at. It might be highly irrational of me to put off taking the medicine till such time as I grasp the cogency of my doctor’s thinking.

How should one live?  211 Perhaps then the important phrase is ‘reflective practical deliberation’: considering what to do to get better doesn’t count as reflective deliberation, something that takes place only when considering such general practical questions as that of Socrates. But Socrates’ question only makes sense if answering it gives me a guide how to answer such particular questions as whether to follow doctor’s orders. Part of the answer to Socrates’ question will surely be that one should on occasion take the results of other people’s practical deliberations as a datum. And those deliberations will of course be second- or third-personal.

Desires as reasons Why is Williams led to think of practical deliberation as radically first-­ personal? The answer, I think, has to do with the role he assigns to an agent’s desires, as necessarily underpinning that agent’s reasons for action. This is the second of the two features of Williams’ conception of practical reason mentioned above. On Williams’ account, the reasons for which somebody could act, or does act, are only reasons for him because they connect in the right sort of way with his desires, or more generally with what Williams calls his ‘motivational set’. Practical deliberation consists in the summoning of reasons for or against certain possible actions; if those reasons have to be underpinned by the agent’s own desires, then evidently the conclusions of bits of practical deliberation must fit in with what the agent wants, must be acceptable from the agent’s point of view. Even if a bit of practical deliberation is framed in the second person (e.g. when functioning as advice), its cogency will depend on the (proposed) agent’s having certain desires, desires expressible in the first person – ‘I want…’, ‘I’d like it if…’, etc. This view hardly justifies calling practical deliberation itself ‘radically first-personal’. Be that as it may, it is a naturally tempting view, especially after Hume. The intimacy of the connection seen by Williams as existing between practical reasons and desires can be illustrated by his statement, in Chapter 1 of Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy, that ‘desiring to do something is of course a reason for doing it’ (1985, 19). How does this statement fit with the role of practical reasons in deliberation? If I am deliberating whether to φ, does the fact that I want to φ count as a reason for φ-ing? That is to say, can my desire to φ be one of the facts of the case which I am to take account of in my deliberations, a fact which may be given a certain independent weight? The problem is that in deliberating whether to φ, I am ipso facto deliberating whether to want to φ; my already wanting to φ had better not be taken as a given. You can on occasion treat certain of your desires as facts of the case in the course of practical deliberation. But these will be desires with which you do not identify. Anselm Mueller gives the following illustration, in the

212  Roger Teichmann form of a practical syllogism, of what it is to treat one’s desires as facts of the case: Anyone who wants to kill his parents will be helped to get rid of this trouble by consulting a psychiatrist; I want to kill my parents; If I consult a psychiatrist I shall be helped to get rid of this trouble; NN is a psychiatrist; So I’ll consult NN. What this example shows, among other things, is that there is something wrong with saying that a bit of practical reasoning will point to a particular conclusion courtesy of its including reference to a relevant desire or desires of the agent. At the very least, we would need to qualify this as meaning that the reasoning includes reference to those desires of the agent with which she identifies. But which are the desires with which you identify? Answer: those which you do not regard simply as facts of the case in the course of deliberating what to do. The desire to kill her parents, in Mueller’s syllogism, is being taken by the deliberator as one of the facts of the case – and this, crucially, is shown by what conclusion she arrives at. A different conclusion, e.g. ‘So I’ll buy a gun’, would show that the agent did after all identify with her desire to kill her parents (at least for now). If the agent in fact ends up consulting a psychiatrist, and we ask ‘Why did you do that?’, she might answer, ‘I wanted to kill my parents’, thus giving one of the reasons for her action, i.e. one of the considerations that appeared in her practical deliberation. If on the other hand she ends up killing her parents and in answer to ‘Why did you do that?’ just says, ‘I wanted to kill them’, she has not given a reason for her action at all. For we will want to know why she wanted to kill her parents; indeed, our original question ‘Why did you kill your parents?’ is in effect the same as the question ‘Why did you want to kill your parents?’ Anselm Mueller1 points out that somebody who reasons: ‘Real autonomy consists in satisfying all one’s desires, so I’ll …’ or ‘Giving in to temptation / to a strange desire is the best way to get rid of it, so I’ll…’, distances himself from his desire just as much as the person in the above syllogism. That is to say, treating certain of one’s desires as ‘facts of the case’ is compatible with acting on those desires. We should also mention the phenomenon of hunger. You can feel hungry, and hence desire to eat, and then in deliberating how to get some food treat this desire as a fact of the case, but evidently not in such a way as to prevent your ‘identifying with’ the desire. (I owe this point to David Cockburn.) But in fact ‘I’m eating because I’m hungry’ is more informative than ‘I’m eating because I want to’: even if hunger involves the desire to eat, it is not the same thing as – is not nothing more than – the desire to eat. We might say that the reason that hunger provides a good reason for eating has to do with its natural (though fallible) role or function,

How should one live?  213 namely that of signalling the need to eat (i.e. a current need for nutrition). The phenomenon of hunger seems in fact to illustrate how natural needs, rather than desires, can underpin practical reasons.

Internal and external reasons Williams is surely wrong to say that one’s desire to do something is a reason for doing it. But what of the more general thesis that reasons for action only count as such if they derive (in the right way) from the agent’s motivational set? This is the thesis famously argued for in Williams’ ‘Internal and External Reasons’, in which he coins the phrase ‘motivational set’. In practice, Williams takes the elements of a motivational set to be desires, and his model is in fact a version of that well-known beast, the ­belief-desire model of intentional action, according to which an action counts as intentional if and only if it is caused (‘in the right way’) by a suitable belief together with a suitable desire. But it may be significant that he wants to be quite liberal as to what sorts of items can appear in a motivational set, S, writing that ‘S can contain such things as dispositions of evaluation, patterns of emotional reaction, personal loyalties, and various projects, as they may be abstractly called, embodying commitments of the agent’ (1981b, 105). In similar vein, Davidson had in ‘Actions, Reasons and Causes’ (1963) bundled a number of things together under his heading of ‘pro attitude’: desires, urges, tastes, economic prejudices, etc. A worry arises in both cases that if an agent’s reasons turn out not obviously to ­derive from any desires he has, the philosopher (Williams or Davidson) will recruit some other sort of state, such as a ‘disposition of evaluation’, in the role of proxy for a desire, taking this to confirm the original thesis about reasons for action – which it can only really do if there is a clear cousinship between the various things called ‘pro attitudes’ or included in S. That there is such a cousinship does not in those two articles get argued for, and the question is evidently moot. Nevertheless, this issue is not the one I want to home in on, for I think we can locate a more clear-cut problem with the argument of ‘Internal and External Reasons’. The conclusion of that argument is that a person’s reason for doing X must be ‘internal’, in the sense that doing X is conducive to the satisfaction of some element(s) of that person’s motivational set. A putative reason for the person to act which is merely ‘external’, i.e. which does not connect in this sort of way with his motivational set, is not a genuine reason for him to act. To rule out various absurdities, Williams adds certain provisos – for instance, that a desire based on a false belief (e.g. that the liquid in that bottle is water, not petrol) will not count as providing an internal reason for an action under the corresponding description (e.g. ‘drinking the contents of that bottle’). For Williams as for Davidson, the key thing about an element of a motivational set is that it has a productive role – it is a required causal condition of intentional action. And for Williams, this is what excludes the possibility

214  Roger Teichmann of there being genuinely external reasons for action. The crucial sentence runs: ‘Nothing can explain an agent’s (intentional) actions except something that motivates him so to act’ (1981b, 107). The term ‘motivate’, when used as Williams uses it, is a philosopher’s term, and can be explained as follows: being motivated to φ involves both that one see reason to φ and that this ‘seeing reason to φ’ be a potential or actual efficient cause of one’s φ-ing. And the thought comes naturally that for something to be an efficient cause of a person’s φ-ing it must be a state of that person, or alternatively must cause an appropriate state of that person. It cannot simply be a fact such as that my king is threatened by your rook. ‘External’ facts like these, then, cannot ever motivate you to act. This last, however, can be allowed by one who believes in external reasons, as can the idea that the recognition of a reason to act may (at least sometimes) be called an efficient cause of acting. What the proponent of external reasons wants to say, or should want to say, is that an external reason can explain why someone did something, such as move their king. The question at issue boils down to this: whether you can only explain actions by reference to their efficient causes. Williams argues his case in reference to the story of Owen Wingrave, whose family tried to persuade him to join the army for the putatively external reason that all his male ancestors did so. Here is the key move in the argument: Even if it were true (whatever that might turn out to mean) that there was a reason for Owen to join the army, that fact by itself would never explain anything that Owen did, not even his joining the army. For if it was true at all, it was true when Owen was not motivated to join the army. (1981b, 107) This argument appears to rely on the following principle: If it could be the case that p without X’s φ-ing, then in the case where X does φ the fact that p can’t by itself explain why X φs. Such plausibility as this principle has seems to be down to the phrase ‘by itself’. Consider the principle as applied to efficient causes. Without the phrase ‘by itself’, the principle is surely not true of explanations invoking such causes. For in some cases of efficient causation the cause is a necessary, rather than a sufficient, condition of the effect’s occurring, e.g. where the coming together of a sperm and an egg count as the originating cause of someone’s being born. (Obviously, ‘necessary’ doesn’t here mean ‘logically necessary’.) Indeed even with the phrase ‘by itself’, the principle fails to be true for causes that are merely necessary conditions. Being only a necessary condition, such a cause cannot ‘by itself’ result in the effect; but our

How should one live?  215 question is: can it explain it? That is to say, can one adequately explain the effect just by citing this event or fact? The answer must be Yes: for if, in order to explain some effect, you had to gather together enough conditions as would together suffice for its occurrence, then causal explanation would be much harder to come by than it actually is. Thus Williams’ principle appears not to work for causal explanation. Nevertheless, the reason I think Williams finds himself relying on this principle is because he has efficient causation in mind, something that is shown in his use of the term ‘motivate’. Now, it is true that if we want to explain, for example, why Owen comes to change his mind and join the army, we may well need to say ‘He came to accept the reasons given by his relatives for joining the army’, and it is this acceptance that will count, in this context, as the efficient cause or trigger of his action. But if we ask Owen why he has joined the army, his reply is likely to be ‘Because all my male relatives did before me (etc.)’, a reply that is not equivalent to ‘Because I came to accept as a good reason that all my male relatives did before me’. Indeed, for the latter statement to be appropriate, Owen must be in the position of someone who gives as a reason for his action, ‘Because all my male relatives did before me’, a statement which thus has explanatory priority over the one about his acceptance of the reason, either in its first-person or its third-person form. (There is an analogous point to be made about the reasons one has for one’s beliefs.) Someone who explains her action by giving a reason for it is not typically giving an efficient cause of that action, for she presents the reason as a good reason, one that we can in principle discuss and together evaluate, and none of that is true of efficient causes such as drinking too much alcohol or taking some Valium or even being in some ‘mental state’. This is all very familiar territory, and in view of Williams’ own critique of the tendency in utilitarianism to alienate us from our practical reasons by presenting them third-personally as ‘just more causal factors’, it might seem surprising that in ‘Internal and External Reasons’ he ends up defending a kind of causalism about reasons. But that, I think, is just what he is doing. A further argument given by Williams is that for Owen to come to accept this reason as a reason, he must deliberate from his already-existing ­motivations – that is, he must do so if his acceptance of the reason is to count as rational (1981b, 108–9). But can’t Owen just come to see matters differently? Beforehand, other reasons, reasons for not joining the army, seemed to him stronger than those given by his relatives; now he finds the latter more compelling, relatively speaking. Why should he have derived this view of things from already-existing motivations or beliefs or anything else? In explaining himself, he may use ideas with which he is already at home, but this modest fact hardly points to internalism. There is in any case an unclarity in the idea of someone’s deriving a practical conclusion from his motivations, or of his being led by ‘rational deliberative processes’ from existing motivations to a new motivation. If Owen starts to think ‘I really ought to do this, since all my male ancestors did’,

216  Roger Teichmann that thought itself would appear to manifest a ‘disposition of evaluation’, the sort of item Williams includes in a motivational set. 2 Was this disposition ‘already there’? Or did it come into being? Since a little earlier Owen was not disposed to think or say ‘I really ought to do this, etc.’, we should perhaps say the second. Could this new disposition come out of a­ lready-existing dispositions by ‘rational deliberative processes’? Only if the already-existing dispositions could be expressed as premises of some kind; for a deliberative process is rational only if it can be expressed in the form of some sort of argument or bit of reasoning. In fact, we would surely do better to talk of the rational processes as leading from certain thoughts to a new thought or thoughts (‘I really ought to do this…’ etc.). Perhaps these premise-like thoughts are expressible as imperatives, or Fiats, rather than as assertions; that could be debated. But the reference to already-existing ­motivations made it sound as if a person’s character was the important thing. It is, of course, in one sense, since your character is shown in the sorts of thoughts you endorse, assert, defend, etc. What we are left with is simply the truism that an agent only arrives at practical conclusions rationally if those conclusions are supported by premises (thoughts) which he endorses. Williams’ statement that ‘I must deliberate from what I am’ (1985, 200) seems to be a misleading way of saying ‘I must deliberate from what I think’.3 And if Owen did derive his acceptance of the reason ‘Because all my male ancestors did’ from already-existing motivations (whatever that amounts to), this would not mean that the force of the reason as a reason was, for Owen, only as good as the motivations from which he derived it. It might in fact be the other way around: that these ‘motivations’ can be seen as justifiable by reference to their appropriately yielding an objectively good reason for action. The ‘objectivity’ here, I would argue, is a species of intersubjectivity, having to do with the social nature of the practice of asking for and giving reasons; but to defend this view in detail would take me too far afield.4 Some philosophers wish to draw a distinction between internal and external reasons by adducing the distinct forms, ‘X had (a) reason to φ’ and ‘There was (a) reason for X to φ’, conceding some sort of genuine role to the latter form. Perhaps (they argue) we may be in a position to say of somebody, ‘There was a reason for her to consult a psychiatrist’ while having to admit that she had no reason to consult a psychiatrist, lacking an appropriate motivational set.5 I will not debate the question whether these two English idioms differ in this way or not since the point does not seem to be central. What is surely of importance is such a fact as this: that the reasons someone gives why she did or is doing or proposes to do such-and-such are (typically) on all fours with the reasons another might give why she should, or should not, do or have done such-and-such. The question ‘Why?’ elicits from an agent her practical reasons (the reasons she has or had, according to the way of speaking suggested), but that is not its only function, for the same sort of question can be asked by the agent – as ‘Why should I do that?’ or ‘Why should I have done that?’6 An answer to this kind of question may surely mention reasons

How should one live?  217 that ‘there are (were)’ for the agent to do such-and-such. It would be an odd sort of social delicacy that prevented you from stating such reasons; and you do not after all state them merely as tempting options – the agent might find them very untempting, given her ‘motivational set’. In a dialogue between agent and interlocutor, reasons for and against will be competing; they will occupy the same logical space, so to speak, and there need be no talking at cross purposes of the sort that the alleged distinction between reasons that X has and reasons that there are would appear to entail. It is worth pointing out also that there are some ‘internal reasons’ the possibility of which presupposes the genuineness of certain ‘external reasons’. Let’s say I want to play a game of chess, and so have an internal reason e.g. to phone my chess-playing friend. In that case, I must know what chess is: namely, a game with these and those rules. I know, for instance, that rooks move laterally, and not diagonally. But what does that mean? It means that you can move a rook laterally, and cannot move it diagonally. The ‘can’ and ‘cannot’ here are species of that sort of modal of which Elizabeth Anscombe showed the importance, calling the latter a ‘stopping modal’.7 ‘A player cannot move a rook diagonally’ is not a hypothetical imperative, equivalent to ‘If you desire to play chess, you ought not to move your rook diagonally’ – for you can neither understand nor exemplify the antecedent of this conditional unless you already know what playing chess is, i.e. that it consists in following rules such as ‘A player cannot move a rook diagonally’. The attempt to cash out uses of stopping modals in terms of hypothetical imperatives of this kind thus results in a vicious circle or infinite regress.8 And one who learns how to play chess must learn (or have already learnt) the reason-giving, action-guiding function of modals like ‘can’ and ‘cannot’. I show my understanding of these modals by acting appropriately, as Anscombe argued. Hence desiring to play chess presupposes understanding that ‘You must move your king’ etc. give reasons for action that are not reasons because of anyone’s subjective desires. If rules constitutive of practices are expressed by means of Anscombean modals, then this point will apply not only to games like chess but also to such institutions as promising.

Human nature and the ethical I have argued that there are significant problems with Williams’ conception of practical reason, both as regards his claim that practical deliberation is radically first-personal and as regards his claim that all practical reasons are internal reasons. What effect does this have on the project or projects of Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy? Some of Williams’ projects are not affected. Take Chapter 9, ‘Relativism and Reflection’. It is notable that in this chapter Williams is much more concerned with ‘we’ than with ‘I’, with our concepts and our ways of looking at things. Issues such as that of incommensurability between concepts of different cultures are issues that comprehend those facts about social practices

218  Roger Teichmann and intersubjectivity which I hinted at a moment ago. The purported significance of an agent’s desires plays no role in the arguments of Chapter 9. Matters are a little different when we turn to Chapter 3, in which ­Williams criticises philosophical attempts to locate the foundations of ethics in notions of human well-being. He distinguishes two ways of reading Socrates’ question, as a question whose answer is addressed ‘to anyone’ and as a question whose answer is said to hold ‘for anyone’. And he allows the Aristotelian move of prioritising the second reading: ‘How should one live?’ may be answered on someone’s behalf. For Aristotle, the answer will relate to that person’s own well-being or eudaimonia, and Williams assumes that any account invoking well-being as ethically foundational will aim at providing an answer of this sort. This means that such accounts will face a well-known charge, namely that they present the virtuous person as self-concerned in a way that appears at odds with our picture of what ethical thought should look like – for such a person will apparently be aiming at his own well-being. Williams discusses how this charge might be responded to, and it is in the course of this discussion (1985, 51–2) that he puts forward his reasons for being sceptical about the prospects for ethical naturalism. He begins by saying that the agent’s view ‘from within’ of her ethical dispositions is itself expressive of those dispositions, i.e. is expressive of an ethical outlook; that is to say, even if the agent is indeed thinking of her own dispositions in the course of ethical deliberation, she will see those dispositions as aiming at good and valuable things, and as being good dispositions because they so aim. She thus prioritises goods that are external to her own dispositions, and cannot be justly accused of egoism. But Williams denies what Aristotle and his philosophical descendants say, that these external goods are conceptually independent of the ethical dispositions; Williams regards the value of these aimed-at goods as in the eye of the beholder, i.e. the beholder who has those dispositions. From what he calls ‘the outside view of those dispositions’, we find that ‘there is a sense in which they [the dispositions] are the ultimate supports of ethical value’ – the value of such things as other people’s welfare and the requirements of justice. Williams then argues that whereas Aristotle thought the inside and outside views of one’s dispositions of character would necessarily be in harmony if one was a virtuous person, we moderns have reason to doubt that such harmony is achievable. For the outside view tells us, what we want to deny from the inside point of view, that the exclusivity that is characteristic of our ethical dispositions (at least ideally, from the inside point of view) cannot really be justified. He writes: Our present understanding gives us no reason to expect that ethical dispositions can be fully harmonized with other cultural and personal aspirations that have as good a claim to represent human development. Even if we leave the door open to a psychology that might go some way in the Aristotelian direction, it is hard to believe that an account

How should one live?  219 of human nature – if it is not already an ethical theory itself – will adequately determine one kind of ethical life as against others. (1985, 52) Two points are made here, one to do with non-ethical dispositions being in competition with ethical ones, the other to do with the plurality of possible kinds of ethical life that might be determined by an account of human nature. It seems to me that neither point presents a real difficulty for an Aristotelian, and the source (or a source) of Williams’ belief that there are difficulties here is, I shall suggest, his excessively ‘first-personal’ conception of practical reason. The ‘other cultural and personal aspirations’ Williams has in mind are not, of course, things like aiming to own more Rolls Royces than your father ever owned. They are aspirations ‘that have as good a claim to represent human development’ as do ethical ones. What is meant by the phrase ‘human development’? It is a useful and important notion; but when we begin to explain it e.g. by reference to examples, it looks very much as if we will be talking about human flourishing, where this means not only the flourishing of individuals but that of communities. As to the latter, we should remember that the natural history of human beings includes facts about the life of the group; in mentioning communities, we have not departed from the topic of human nature. Earlier in the chapter, Williams mentions creativity in the arts and sciences and ‘the unhappiness and the unloveliness that may be part of creative activity’ (1985, 47); and it is clear that artistic activity is meant to embody one of those cultural and personal aspirations that can allegedly conflict with ethical aspirations. The importance of a work of art, however, surely relates to its capacity to enhance human life, human thought and feeling, both in the artist and in her spectators, readers or listeners; and it is no mere cheat to say that these matters lie squarely in the domain of human well-being. That art and the creation of art are of ethical importance may be gladly admitted, and it is only those addicted to what Williams calls the morality system who will find that a hard truth to swallow. Likewise, with scientific creativity or exploration, the pursuit of knowledge or understanding is the pursuit of an important component of human flourishing, something that Aristotle himself would have stressed. There will be much messiness or indeterminacy surrounding the ordering of ethical goods in real life, and if there are problems of ‘harmonising’, such problems will arise as much in connection with, say, justice and charity as with sociability and creativity. Moreover, the possibility of different ways of living well and flourishing, and the fact that a person may have to choose between incompatible ways of life, are quite consistent with an account which takes well-being as ethically foundational. Such an account, admittedly unlike Aristotle’s, will be pluralist. Williams’ second point in the above passage assumes an unnecessary monism.

220  Roger Teichmann But Williams may well mean something more radical than I have so far indicated. He may mean that a person following her dream can in some sense be within her rights to respond to our question ‘Why are you doing this?’ by saying ‘I really want to; it is my heart’s desire’; and to say this in the face of the prima facie cogent reasons we give her why she should not do the thing in question. That it is a project she holds dear, that she thinks of it as part of herself, part of her Self – these facts, I suspect, are for ­Williams powerful practical reasons in themselves, ones that evidently cannot be called ‘ethical reasons’ and which on that account will be in genuine competition with any opposing ethical reasons. And this takes us back to his claim that ‘desiring to do something is of course a reason for doing it’, a claim which I have argued is false. In an interview in The Guardian published in 2002, Williams said that ‘if there’s one theme in all my work it’s about authenticity and self-expression […] It’s the idea that some things are in some real sense really you, or e­ xpress what you [are] and others aren’t […] The whole thing has been about spelling out the notion of inner necessity. That someone who [sic] has to do something, has to live in a certain way or discovers something is really him, what he belongs to, what is his destiny – I’m drawn to all that’.9 It’s clear that the terms ‘authenticity’ and ‘self-expression’ need careful explaining. And there are two directions in which an explanation might point that are equally problematic for Williams: by one explanation, authenticity and self-expression are a part of human flourishing, and hence available to an Aristotelian account of the good life, while by the other, they are as much features of the life of a Goebbels as of the life of a Beethoven. We might try to avoid the latter possibility by stipulating that authenticity and self-expression be constrained by something like Mill’s ‘harm principle’, but that would simply reinstate ethical priorities, as well as keeping Gauguin at home.10 In the end, I think we must reject the picture that Williams offers and what lies behind that picture: the subordination of practical reason to subjective desire.11

Notes 1 In personal correspondence. 2 The thought would not be the only possible manifestation of this disposition: presumably Owen is now disposed to say or think other related things, such as ‘Maybe my earlier stance was too self-concerned’, ‘One can after all take a sort of pride in one’s family’, ‘My friend Jack did the right thing when he joined up’ – or whatever, depending on exactly what kind of change of heart it was that Owen has undergone. 3 Even this may go too far: does the person ordered to go and chop down a tree deliberate from what he thinks, or in effect from what another thinks, concerning a matter about which the subordinate may have no opinion (‘We need to build a blockade’)? Asked ‘Why did you chop down that tree’, he is most likely to reply, ‘Because I was ordered to’, and he need not be so reflective as to entertain any ‘evaluative stance’ towards his being obedient to X, a stance that might do duty as a putative ‘motivation’. Unless by such a stance we just mean

How should one live?  221 the trait of obedience; but that trait is manifested simply in doing things for the reason ‘X ordered me to’. 4 I expound and defend this view in Teichmann (2011); see especially Chapters 1 and 2. 5 This suggestion was made by both Simon Blackburn and Anthony Price during the discussion of this paper at the original 2015 conference. 6 It is notable that both these questions can typically be rephrased as the ­impersonal-sounding ‘Why do that?’ 7 See, e.g., Anscombe 1981. 8 Nor is the rule-statement equivalent to ‘If you move your rook diagonally, that will not count as playing chess’. If you don’t put one foot in front of the other alternately, what you do (e.g. hop) won’t count as walking. These are at best remarks about the linguistic rules governing the use of ‘chess’ and ‘walk’; our interest, however, is in the practical rules constitutive of activities like chess – and not of ones like walking. 9 Stuart Jeffries, ‘The Quest for Truth’, The Guardian 30 November 2002. 10 See Williams 1981a. 11 I am grateful to David Cockburn for comments on an earlier draft of this paper.

References Anscombe, G.E.M. 1981. ‘On Promising and its Justice’, in Ethics, Religion and Politics: Vol. Three of the Collected Papers of G.E.M. Anscombe, Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 10–21. Davidson, D. 1963. ‘Actions, Reasons and Causes’, in Journal of Philosophy, Vol. 60, No. 23, 685–700. Teichmann, R. 2011. Nature, Reason and the Good Life: Ethics for Human Beings, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Williams, B.A.O. 1981a. ‘Moral Luck’, in Moral Luck, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 20–39. ———. 1981b. ‘Internal and External Reasons’, in Moral Luck, Cambridge: ­C ambridge University Press, 101–13. ———. 1985. Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy, London: Fontana Press.

13 Practical deliberation and the first person David Cockburn

Introduction [P]ractical deliberation is first-personal, radically so, and involves an I that must be more intimately the I of my desires than this [a Kantian / impartialist] account allows. When I think about the world and try to decide the truth about it, I think about the world, and I make statements, or ask questions, which are about it and not about me. … Because of this, the I of this kind is also impersonal. The question ‘What should I think about this question?’ could as well be ‘What should anyone think about this question?’ …. It is different with deliberation for action. Practical deliberation is in every case first-personal, and the first person is not derivative or naturally replaced by anyone. (Williams, 1985, pp. 67–8) In the above classic formulation of an idea that has had considerable recent currency, Bernard Williams suggests that general confusions about the nature of practical thinking lie behind images of the necessarily ‘impersonal’ character of morality. The idea that reasoning about what to do is marked off from reasoning about what is the case through its essentially ‘first-personal’ character is deployed in opposition, both to the ‘impartialist’/‘universalising’ emphasis of Kantian ethics, and to the consequentialist suggestion that the question ‘What should I do?’ is subservient to the question ‘How should the world be?’ or ‘What does justice or morality require of any person so situated in order that things go as well as possible for all?’

‘If I were you’ An initial, tempting, response to the proposal would be this: If there is a sense in which practical deliberation is essentially first-­ personal when I am thinking about what I should do, it is, in just that sense, essentially third-personal when I am reflecting on what another

Practical deliberation and the first person  223 should do, and second-personal when I am discussing with another what she should do. This, however, would be to miss the point. Williams writes: The should of practical reason has, like any other, a second and a third person, but these forms merely represent my perspective on your or his interests and rational calculations, the perspective of “if I were you”…. (Williams, 1985, p. 61) In the context of an argument with aims closely related to those of ­W illiams, Peter Winch remarks, more cautiously: [W]hen I think about the moral decisions and dilemmas of others, it seems to me that I am very often asking: ‘What would I think it right to do in such a situation?’ That is, I am making a hypothetical agent’s judgement of my own. (Winch, 1972, pp. 153–4)1 In considering this version of the priority of the first-personal, I will work with Winch’s example of a dilemma faced by Captain Vere, commander of a British vessel in 1797, in Herman Melville’s story Billy Budd. 2 The story concerns the court martial of a technically guilty but morally innocent young sailor who strikes and kills his superior officer. Winch asks what he would have said and done if faced with the same circumstances as Vere, and replies that he should have found it morally impossible to condemn a man innocent before God under such circumstances. Just what is Winch doing? And why? Is he offering a conjecture about how he would behave in such circumstances? If so, one might wonder what grounds he could have for confidence in such a conjecture in view of the radically hypothetical character of the circumstances. One might also ask: what of more than purely psychological interest would be the significance of such conjectures? After all, it could be that the most straightforward hypothetical story that places Winch in the imagined situation is one such that the judgements of that individual would manifestly be pretty worthless (since, for example, he would be scared witless). A more sympathetic reading might focus on Winch’s phrase ‘a hypothetical agent’s judgement’. I take what Winch has in mind here to be a hypothetical judging: that is, a reasoning to a conclusion as if I were in that situation.3 Now, this will leave us with questions about just how much of myself I am to carry over into the imagined scenario. One will, perhaps, have no trouble with such questions if one pictures the ‘I’ in thoroughly Cartesian terms: as a featureless, ahistorical, core that happens for the moment to be clothed in a particular body, psychology, culture and history. On such a view, an individual’s particular embodiment and all that goes

224  David Cockburn with that are features of his ‘circumstances’: aspects of the place at which he now happens to be located on more or less the same level as the fact that he is now sitting in his study in a grey overcoat. But then, perhaps Winch should also find it clear that if he were Vere he would do exactly what Vere does. Winch’s thought that he could not, in Vere’s circumstances, have acted as Vere did would, then, embody a confusion.4 Right thinking people do not accept a Cartesian picture of the self. But consideration of it highlights a dilemma faced by such exercises of the imagination. For while the Cartesian picture may draw the line between the self and its circumstances in the wrong place, we should not suppose that there is, in the abstract, a right place to draw it. Some such line is crucial, for, in so far as it is held to be important that it is me that features in the imagining – and that is the core of the current proposal – we need to be clear what may be built into the hypothetical scenario without that being compromised. Now, on one hand, if we keep properly in mind just how differently Winch’s life would have had to have gone for him to have ended up as a commander of a 19th-century military vessel, will we not begin – must Winch not ­begin – to lose any serious grip on the thought that the imagined individual is him: Winch? To put the point differently, we can ask, what work is the thought that the imagined individual is him doing in Winch’s imaginings? On the other hand, Winch might seek to bypass such problems by simply picturing himself as flown in from London for the afternoon (having cancelled all his classes for the day) to sort out a tricky situation on one of his majesty’s ships. But while there might now be no problem with the idea that he is imagining himself in this situation, we might wonder just how far this would be to imagine himself in this situation: the one that faced Vere. Bypassing some awkward questions about general historical context, the imagined Winch has not had bestowed on him by his majesty’s government the responsibility of captaining this ship, does not have the relationships with others on the ship that Vere does, will not face the questions that Vere will when they return home and so on. On this approach, then, there may be significant doubts about how seriously it could be said that Winch has succeeded in imagining himself in the same circumstances as Vere; and to the extent that that is so there must be doubts about the relevance of what ‘he’ would do in his imagined circumstances to the question of what Vere should do. My intention here is not to cast doubt on the idea that when thinking about what another should do or has done there are crucial roles for reflection on how things look from where she is or for appeals to the idea of ‘What I would do if I were in your shoes’ or ‘if I were you’.5 If the considerations I have presented are roughly right, however, we should not expect these ways of speaking to be readily regimented in such a way as to tie in neatly with any general account of the self or of moral reasoning. With that, I believe that the dilemma highlighted in my previous paragraph points to serious difficulties in any attempt along these lines to give substantial

Practical deliberation and the first person  225 philosophical content to any general claim of the form: ‘Practical thought is radically first-personal’. Those difficulties aside, this way of construing the idea of practical thought as essentially ‘first-personal’ may turn out to be in direct conflict with ideas sometimes articulated in the thought that it is essentially ‘personal’. In ways on which I have touched, the former might seem to sit better with a universalising picture in which in making a judgement for myself I am making a judgement for anyone in such a situation.

Reasons for action as involving self-reference I have been considering a sense in which practical deliberation might be supposed to be essentially ‘first-personal’ in that thought about what another should do is in some way a mirror of, or grounded in, thought about what I should do. I want to turn now to a different idea that is also clearly present in Williams’s thinking and seems better attuned to the idea of the ‘personal’. The idea appeals to a supposed sense in which thought aimed at action is marked off in a quite general way from thought aimed at belief through the place that self-reference has in the content of the thought. As Williams expresses it, since belief aims at getting the world right, the thinking appropriate to it will be thought about the world; and so the reasons I may appeal to are facts that would be reasons for anyone to hold that belief. By contrast, in thought aimed at action what is at issue is how I – this individual located at this particular point in the world – should act. And so the question ‘What should I do in this situation?’ is not at all the same question as ‘What should anyone do in this situation?’; and the reasons that I have for doing something are not in themselves, in virtue simply of being genuine reasons, reasons for another’s doing anything. Self-reference is ineliminable in all practical deliberation in that an agent’s reasons for action – that in the light of which she acts – always include facts about herself. To revert to Billy Budd, Winch is readily read6 in the following way: the fact that he, Winch, feels the particular character of horror that he does at the idea of executing a man ‘innocent before God’ is itself a factor that would appropriately feature in his thinking about what to do were he in Vere’s circumstances. Williams himself explicitly identifies the mistake in this line of thought when he writes, in another context: ‘We must reject any model of personal practical thought according to which all my projects, purposes, and needs should be made, discursively and at once, considerations for me. I must deliberate from what I am’ (Williams, 1985, p. 200). While someone else may take such considerations into account when assessing my behaviour, I do not, characteristically, appeal to them when deciding how I should act; and one who did so would generally be judged to be guilty of some kind of confusion. It is the fact that Billy Budd is ‘innocent before God’ that, we might hope, will carry the day for Winch; not the fact that he, Winch, feels horror at the judicial execution of such a man. The fact that Winch feels

226  David Cockburn such horror is a necessary part of the background to this reason carrying for him the weight that it does. But that is not at all the same as saying that this fact about him is part of his reason for acting as he does. So far as considerations of this kind go, there seem no grounds for doubting that practical reflection is, characteristically, just as much thought about the world, just as little thought about myself, as is theoretical reflection; and no grounds for accepting in any general form Williams’s suggestion that ‘The reasons that B has for doing something are not in themselves reasons for another’s doing anything’ (Williams, 1985, p. 61). Similar considerations apply in the context of another kind of example that Williams discusses elsewhere: an example in which the philosophical issues at stake concern impartiality. Taking up William Godwin’s question ‘What magic is there in the pronoun “my”, that should justify us in overturning the decisions of impartial truth?’, Alasdair MacIntyre argues that it is only in so far as my preferential treatment of a loved one can be given an impartial moral justification that my action is acceptable (MacIntyre, 1983). By contrast, Williams argues that to introduce morality in such cases is to distort the situation: if any justification is offered over and above an appeal to the fact that it was his wife that he saved, the agent has been provided with ‘one thought too many’: it might have been hoped by some (for instance, by his wife) that his motivating thought, fully spelled out, would be the thought that it was his wife, not that it was his wife and that in situations of this kind it is permissible to save one’s wife. (Williams, 1981, p. 18)7 But does this present us with a fair picture of the options? Someone is wondering what was my motivation for sacrificing so much to save this woman – my wife. Was it my love for her that moved me? Was it my convictions about obligations husbands owe their wives? Was it my fears for the fate of the company of which we are joint directors? My wife will, no doubt, hope that the fact of her being company director didn’t come into it; nor any conviction I have that husbands ought to save their wives. But on grounds of the same form she may hope that the fact that she is my wife didn’t come into it either. If it should turn out that, because of some legal technicality, we are not married this would, she might hope, have made no difference to my urge to save her. Just as we ascribe one thought too many to the man if we suggest that he is motivated by the thought that a husband ought to save his wife, so we do if we suggest that he is motivated by any thought of the form: ‘This person is my wife’, ‘This person has a quite special place in my life’ or ‘I have lived with this woman for 30 years’. What is crucial for him is the fact that it is Deirdre. That she is his wife may explain why the thought ‘It is Deidre’ has for him the force that it does. But that is quite a different matter.8

Practical deliberation and the first person  227 The idea that in cases of this kind there is necessarily some form of self-reference in the agent’s motivation (whether or not ultimately subsumable under impartial morality) is a mistake. The reference to its being ‘my wife’ does not capture the ‘personal’ dimension of my thought: does not capture the way in which who this is matters to me.9 We must (to adapt a remark by Williams quoted earlier) reject any model of personal practical thought according to which my love for my wife is necessarily a consideration for me. I deliberate from what I am; and what I am is such that the fact that it is Deirdre that is in danger is a consideration of central significance in my thought about what I am to do. My valuings are not, characteristically, features of the reasons on which I act. One might add: if they were there would be nothing essentially first-personal about practical deliberation. For in thinking about what another should do the valuings that go into my reasoning would, presumably, have to be hers, not mine. Furthermore, if we do build all of the thinker’s valuings, loves, aspirations and the like into her circumstances – construe these facts about herself as aspects of the content of her reasons on something like the same level as the fact that this man is starving  – we may, again, find ourselves committed to a radically impersonal conception of practical thought in this sense: anyone in those circumstances must, if she is thinking straight, reach the same conclusion about what is to be done.10

Deontology and self-reference There is a more specific way in which it is sometimes suggested that self-­ reference will have a key place in any adequate moral thinking. Opposition to a consequentialist ethic may take the form of an insistence that there are restrictions on how it is permissible to act in pursuit of some end. For example, I am not to lie or kill even if my doing so could be expected to produce the best overall results impartially considered: even if, for example, I reasonably anticipate that by killing one man myself I will prevent a number of other killings and so minimise the number of killings that will occur. Now, on an understanding of such restrictions that has quite wide currency such moral thinking is ‘agent-relative’: that is to say, on one interpretation of that term, it insists that each of us appropriately gives a special place to one person’s actions – her own – over those of others. As the point may be expressed, an agent-relative morality is one that gives to different agents different aims in that it gives to me the particular aim of, for example, keeping to a minimum the number of my acts of killing.11 This understanding of a deontological restriction makes it an easy target for critics who see a form of moral self-indulgence in such refusals to follow a course that has the best overall upshot impartially considered. But it is a misunderstanding. For there is no reason to insist that any form of self-­reference need be involved in my motivating reasons in such cases.

228  David Cockburn My reason for refusing to do what is proposed may be, for example, the fact that ‘It would be murder’. Something else that I must take account of in deciding what to do is the fact that by killing this man I may prevent a number of other killings. But we are seeing the situation through the eyes of consequentialism if we suppose that in refusing to kill I am attaching greater moral weight to my own actions than to those of others.12 The point is a general one, which has application beyond the specifically ‘moral’ sphere. Thus, Timothy Chappell writes: Again, to love someone is I-involving. That is, to love someone is to desire (affectively) that I should see him get his well-being, and (very often or typically) to be concerned that I should be involved in bringing it about—causally involved in it…. Love is thus self-referential (or perhaps better I-referential). (Chappell, 2014, p. 86)13 Chappell is resisting the idea that what is crucial to love at this point is simply a concern that the beloved flourishes. But to suppose that the correction needed lies in an insistence that self-reference is involved in my ­motivation – that what matters to me is that I should be involved in bringing about the beloved’s well-being – is, again, to view the alternatives in consequentialist terms. The problematic nature of that can, again, be brought out through consideration of the charge of self-indulgence. A mother for whom the thought ‘I should be the one who saves him’ carries any weight at all in circumstances in which her child’s life is at risk and there are others present whose prospects of success are greater than her own might well be judged to display a love that is, at best, seriously damaged. What, we might hope, matters to the mother is saving him: where this does not reduce, in one direction, to ‘that he should be saved’, nor, in the other, to ‘that she should save him’. While there is a good bit more to be said here, a very little of which I will try to say later, for the moment my point is simply that the introduction of self-reference into my reasons for action – ‘I should be the one who saves her’ – does not seem a promising route to bringing out the distinctive concern to help one whom we love. I have suggested that deontological restrictions need not involve any idea of an agent-relativity – understood as an essential self-reference – in my reasons for action. That said, it might seem clear that the conclusion of my reasoning involves an ineliminable self-reference. For the conclusion is, for example: ‘I can’t do this’. I will return to this. First, I want to spend a little time on the notion of ‘the personal’.

The first-personal and the personal The notion of the ‘first-personal’ is sometimes understood in a way that puts the emphasis, not on self-reference, but on the idea that my thinking

Practical deliberation and the first person  229 about what I should do is essentially my thinking – in a sense that marks it off from thought about what is the case. Thus, David Alm writes: Rational agency essentially involves deliberation, and deliberation is a first personal activity: it is essentially something I do, starting from my goals, ends etc, leading to my decisions and my actions; and when I act, my actions will be good or bad, wise or foolish. (Alm, 2008, p. 655) It is, perhaps, in a similar spirit that Sebastian Rödl writes: ‘A first-person thought, by nominal definition, is such that, not per accidens, but in virtue of the manner of thinking it, the subject thinking it is she of whom she thinks’ (Rodl, 2010, p. 6). The further these formulations move from the idea of self-reference the more one might wonder whether what we see here involves a genuine contrast with thought about how things are. (Isn’t my thinking about the causes of the First World War something that I do, leading to my beliefs, those beliefs being potentially wise or foolish?) The suggestion may, however, be that we see a crucial contrast in the fact that an individual’s thought about what she is to do may legitimately reflect individuating features of her character, her general moral sensibility or her particular position in the world in a way that, in the context of thought about what is the case, would inevitably mark failures of thought. While the place that the importance of maintaining discipline at sea has in Vere’s thinking, or the place that this woman (my wife) has in mine, involve no self-reference, they are ‘personal’ in the sense that they reflect the particular perspective that the agent brings to the situation; and in the eyes of those who resist the impartialist/universalising leanings of much moral philosophy do so quite legitimately. It is not, however, clear that this personal dimension of at least some practical thought marks a contrast between thought about what is the case and thought about what to do. It is important to bear in mind here that the contrast between ‘belief’ and ‘action’ is not that between ‘theory’ and ‘practice’. The sense (if there is one) in which anyone ought to believe that ‘The sun is 93 million miles away’ may not be a sense in which anyone (for example, a woman in the Sahara) ought to believe – as I do – that ‘It will probably rain today’. Or, perhaps more relevant, suppose that the woman with whom I have lived for 40 years is charged with a serious crime. The evidence, which I am unable to explain away, is such that no competent jury could fail to convict her. Yet knowing her as I do, I know that she could not have done such a thing; and I know from her face and her words that she did not do it. If, as we can readily suppose, I have nothing to say to others, or to point to, that ought to change their view, what I should think about this question is not what anyone should think about it. Of course, such personal factors can also distort our thinking. But my point is simply that it is not clear that its potentially ‘personal’ character marks

230  David Cockburn off thought about what to do from thought about what is the case: that the latter involves drawing a conclusion for anyone in a sense in which the former does not. Nor is it clear that this notion of the ‘personal’ is helpfully linked with the idea of the ‘first-personal’. In one everyday use of the term, to describe something as ‘personal’ is to remark, not on its being peculiarly about me, but on the range of people with whom it may be discussed: with whom it may be shared. Reflection, both on what to do and on what to believe, may be more or less personal in this sense. We might speak here of the ‘spirit’ in which another may be able to enter into discussion of my concern; or with whose advice or criticism I am willing to engage. Parents can discuss difficult decisions involving their child in a way in which they cannot with others. One, particularly fundamental, aspect of this lies in the fact that while ‘It is Mona’ features as a reason in the thinking of each in roughly the same way, for most others that use of the name ‘Mona’ is simply excluded. We can tell others what we are discussing, but there may be substantial limits on the extent to which we can (or are willing to) share our thought with them. There may be substantial limits, too, on the extent to which I feel obliged to justify my behaviour to a stranger; or, in another kind of case, on the extent to which I feel obliged to justify it to one whose whole moral outlook is utterly alien to me. A ‘justification’ for what one has done is something that is offered, not to the world, but to particular others whose challenge one feels called on to meet. My aim here is not so much to defend such limits on the demands of justification as simply to locate the issue correctly. My suggestion, then, is that an adequate characterisation of this face of the supposedly ‘personal’ character of much practical reflection will need to focus, not on the first-personal, but on the second- or inter-personal.14

The conclusion of practical reasoning I suggested that deontological restrictions need involve no ‘agent-relativity’ in the sense of essential self-reference in the process of reasoning. That said, it might seem clear that the conclusion of practical reasoning involves an ineliminable self-reference. For the conclusion is, for example: ‘I can’t (or I must) do this’. Thus, in a defence of Williams, Gaynesford writes that when I decide to do something ‘I have to recognise that the person in the situation is me; that it is I who am called on to pull the lever’ (de Gaynesford, 2010, p. 91). One might wonder whether we could not with equal justice say: when, on the basis of my observation of the clouds, I come to the conclusion that it will probably rain today the upshot of my reasoning is that this is something I should believe: not something anyone (including the woman in the Sahara) should believe. ‘With equal justice’: that is, perhaps, none. In each case, ‘I’ enters into the situation in that it is me that draws the conclusion. But that is not a way in which I enter into my thinking.

Practical deliberation and the first person  231 That said, I want to suggest that a key contrast between deliberation about what to do and deliberation about what to believe lies right on the surface at this point: lies in the fact that while the conclusion of the latter is a belief the conclusion of the former is, as Aristotle remarks, an action.15 I am not sure whether the way I will take Aristotle’s proposal can be defended as a completely general claim about practical reason, nor if it is true to Aristotle. It is certainly not true to the way Aristotle’s suggestion has been developed by some who quote it with approval. Thus, Sebastian Rodl suggests that the lesson to take from Aristotle is that the conclusion of a process of practical reasoning is a judgement that is an action (Rodl, 2007, pp. 48–9).16 To be sure, the ‘judgement’ is not conceived by Rodl as a state of mind from which the action flows. But his suggestion may still reflect a failure to appreciate the radical nature of Aristotle’s proposal: may involve the insertion of a judgement at just the point at which it is important to see that what we have is an action as opposed to a judgement. In a striking defence of the view that Aristotle’s remark can be defended as a completely general claim about practical reasoning Phillip Clark notes that there are two quite different phenomena that could be called ‘reaching a conclusion in practical reasoning’ (Clark, 2001, p. 491). There is coming to a belief about where the weight of reasons lies: that is, being persuaded that something is true of an action – perhaps, that it is one that I ought to perform – by an argument that it is so. But there is also coming to act, or forming an intention to do so, on the basis of certain reasons. As he expresses the contrast, ‘[T]hinking this is the conclusion to draw is one thing and drawing it is another’ (Clark, 2001, p. 494). Deciding that I ought to do x is one thing; deciding to do x is another.17 It is helpful to remember that we sometimes have no inclination to hold something we are doing up to others as ‘what I ought to do’. This is, perhaps, particularly obvious in the case of someone who is generally quite indifferent to moral considerations; or of someone confronted with a situation in which a loved one is in immediate serious danger. But the point may hold too in cases in which an agent is concerned with the moral demands that face him. In Clark’s terms, he may draw the conclusion in action without forming any judgement about where the weight of reasons lies: without forming of the action a judgement – a judgement that he would articulate to himself or hold up to others – that this is what he ought to do. Perhaps in the face of criticism he will defend himself; but perhaps he won’t even do that – he is just not interested in discussion.18 As we might express this, in deciding, in the light of the considerations that confront me, to do a certain thing I need take no stand on this being the thing for me to do, or the thing to be done in these circumstances. That is, just as there is reasoning whose conclusion is a belief, so there is reasoning whose conclusion is an action. And note: in the case of ‘theoretical’ reasoning the conclusion is not of the form ‘So I must believe it is raining’, but ‘It is raining’; so the conclusion of a piece of practical reasoning is not, or need not be, of the form ‘I

232  David Cockburn must do this’, but the action of, say, helping the injured man. And just as in reasoning whose goal is to establish what is the case it is the forming of the belief that is the drawing of the conclusion, so in reasoning whose goal is action it is the acting itself, or the forming of the intention to act, that is the drawing of the conclusion.19 If one supposes that the conclusion of a piece of practical reasoning is a judgement about what someone is to do, it may seem clear that it must involve reference to who it is that is to do it: that is (in the first person case) me. But in so far as the conclusion of a piece of practical reasoning is, not a judgement about what someone is to do, but the action itself there need be no sense in which it involves reference, however implicit, to the one who is to act. Of course, there are cases of practical reasoning in which the conclusion is a judgement that I ought to do something. Isn’t it clear at least in these cases that the conclusion involves substantial self-reference? A comparison with belief is again helpful here. A process of reasoning about what is the case may issue in a judgement, which I may announce in these terms, that ‘The butler did it’. In certain circumstances, I may, however, opt for the formulation ‘I believe the butler did it’. While the reasons for this can vary, there is one familiar kind of case in which it is fairly clear that the use of the word ‘I’ here is not helpfully construed in terms of ‘self-reference’. Thus, the words ‘I believe’ may function, not to indicate any change of subject matter from the butler to myself, but to indicate my stand on the judgement: they express (not report) my hesitancy about it. What, now, of the relation between helping the injured man and judging that ‘I ought to help this injured man’? As with belief, there is a variety of cases. In my thought or speech, the word ‘I’ may serve to pick out who should be helping. (As it may, in the case of belief, serve to pick out who is to believe.) The man clearly must be helped, and, while others could offer what is needed, I am in a better position than them, or have a special responsibility, to provide it. Here there is genuine, and ineliminable, self-­ reference. But is it always so? Well, suppose that our general (whether or not acknowledged) starting point in moral philosophy is a consequentialist picture: a picture in which the fundamental notion for practical thought is that of a state of affairs that is to be brought about or prevented.20 And suppose that, alongside this, we are clear that crucial areas of practical reflection are ‘personal’ in the sense that my commitment to act in a certain way myself need carry no demand that others, either now or when they find themselves in similar circumstances, should do so too. It will then seem that in such circumstances the judgement that I ought to do this involves an essential reference to myself as being the one who ought to do it. I suspect, then, that our detecting a pervasive, genuine and ineliminable self-reference in judgements of the form ‘I ought to x’ may reflect an underlying consequentialist picture of the norm for practical reasoning. If we

Practical deliberation and the first person  233 reject that picture, we will be open to the possibility that the words ‘I ought to do it’ characteristically express (not report) my stance towards that action; in something like the way in which the words ‘I believe the butler did it’ may express (not report) my stance towards that judgement. Perhaps (adapting a remark of Wittgenstein’s) we should say: ‘I ought to do it’ is (often) no more a statement about a particular person than doing it is. 21 I present that suggestion with some hesitancy: because my defence of it has been very limited because its generality may be misplaced and because it may not be clear what it takes for it to be true that ‘self-reference is involved’ in a statement or judgement. More cautiously, then, my suggestion is that we go wrong if we see in such uses of the word ‘I’ a mark of the fundamentally first-personal character of practical thinking of a kind that marks it off from thought about what is the case. The idea that that is what we see characteristically arises in opposition to the view that morality is in some sense essentially ‘impersonal’. 22 Thus, in opposition to the idea that any acceptable moral reasoning about what one should do in a particular situation will lead to the same conclusion whoever it is that is in the situation and is doing the thinking Williams writes: ‘Practical deliberation is in every case first-personal, and the first person is not derivative or naturally replaced by anyone’. But we would do better to say that practical deliberation is, in many cases, essentially ‘impersonal’: not in the Kantian sense that it is thought about what anyone ought to do, but, rather, in the sense that it is not thought about what anyone ought to do.23 Neither the thinker nor his characteristics need enter into either his reasoning or his conclusion – any more than they characteristically do in thought about what is the case.

Conclusion: the second person In my opening remarks, I floated the following thought: If there is a sense in which practical deliberation is essentially first-­ personal when I am thinking about what I should do, it is essentially third-personal when I am reflecting on what another should do, and second-personal when I am discussing with another what she should do. I have raised doubts about whether there is a sense in which practical deliberation is essentially first-personal when I am thinking about what I should do. Setting that to one side, I want to conclude by noting something that I believe is right in that response: namely, that it is important that we give due weight to the contrast between reflecting on what I should do and reflecting on what another should do; that we do not give priority to the first-person case in the sense of thinking of the latter as in some sense a mirror image of the former. 24

234  David Cockburn Consider second-person cases: cases in which I reflect, in discussion with another, on what she should do. If I know another well enough seriously to engage with her in such reflection, I will need to take into account facts about her nature that will bear on the ways in which particular reasons can carry weight with her – as I do not (characteristically) take such facts about my own nature into account when weighing reasons that confront myself. In this sense, thought about what another should do may involve an essential and eliminable reference to who it is that is going to act: may do so in just the sense in which I have argued that thought about what I should do does not. As in other areas of philosophy, the strand of Cartesianism that involves giving priority to the first person case introduces significant distortion. It is important to recognise that thought about what another should do is a form of practical deliberation that needs understanding in its own terms: that it should not be represented as simply a reflection of the supposedly ‘purer’ case of first person deliberation. 25

Notes 1 Winch’s explicit target is Sidwick’s universalisability requirement on moral thought. 2 I will bypass complications that arise from the fact that this is a fictional example: sometimes speaking as if the story is a report of an historical incident. 3 Perhaps as at a training college for detectives the instructor says: ‘You walk into the billiard room. There is a body by the fire, blood all over the floor, and the butler standing by the window with a carving knife in his hand. What conclusion do you draw?’ 4 See (Winch, 1972, p. 163). Drawing in detail on Williams, David Velleman points out that one of the things that ‘imagining that I am Napoleon’ can be is imagining being Napoleon, and that involves simply imagining a particular situation as experienced by Napoleon. In such cases, ‘I, David Velleman, am absent both from the image and from the content of the imagining: I’m not imagining anything about the person who I actually am’ (Velleman, 1996). I take this to be true and important. I also take it to be fairly clear that nothing along these lines will provide any sustenance for the idea that practical deliberation is essentially first personal; nor do any better at creating space for Winch’s thought: ‘If I had been Vere I could not have acted as he did’. See also Williams (1973, pp. 26–45). 5 My hunch is that our sense of what of myself I am to carry over in such imaginings is conditioned, case by case, by our sense of just what are the morally significant features of the other’s situation. 6 Whether he is rightly so read is a more tricky question, and not one that I can pursue here. 7 Williams’s discussion moves fairly freely between ‘motivation’ and ‘justification’ in the way echoed in my summary. My focus at the moment is on ‘motivation’. I will touch on questions relating to justification later. Perhaps I should add that I take it that we should not read Williams’s phrase ‘motivating thought’ in terms of the idea of some inner antecedent of the action. Roger Teichmann has helped me to see that there are serious questions to be asked about just how we should read it, both in Williams’s account and in my alternative to it. These are, however, questions that I will have to skirt round here.

Practical deliberation and the first person  235 8 For a detailed discussion that seems to me very much on the right lines see (Keller, 2013). See also Thomas: ‘An agent’s personal point of view is not a determinant of value, nor, for that matter, of reasons. Phenomenologically, it makes values available to an agent’s judgement …. the judger is taken “transparently” to those values and reasons’ (Thomas, 2005, p. 32). 9 It no more does so if, as I have heard people do in discussion, we put the stress on ‘my’ rather than ‘wife’. 10 For interesting doubts about movement in this direction, see Winch (1972, p. 169). 11 For helpful discussions for and against this idea, see Alm (2008), Darwall (1986), Feltham (2010), Humberstone (1991), and Thomas (2005). I have particular sympathy for the criticisms developed in this last paper. 12 In a very helpful discussion Korsgaard suggests that a ‘basic feature of the consequentialist outlook still pervades and distorts our thinking: the view that the business of morality is to bring something about’ (Korsgaard, 1993, p. 24). Korsgaard argues, very plausibly, that this distorting feature underpins philosophical appeals to the distinction between agent-relative and agent-neutral reasons. See also Thomas (2005). 13 I am taking up just one of a number of ways in which Chappell argues that love is I-involving. 14 Working within a broadly Kantian framework, Korsgaard appeals to Wittgenstein in defence of the idea that the reasons on which we act ‘are not private, but public in their very essence’, adding ‘like a town square’ (Korsgaard, 1996, p. 139). But, in a striking treatment of the same Wittgensteinian themes, Lars Hertzberg has observed that ‘the fact that something is not private, in the sense of being restricted to one individual, does not entail that it is public’ (Hertzberg, 2002.) 15 See The Movement of Animals (Aristotle and Barnes, 2014), 701a17. 16 See also Korsgaard’s suggestion that there is a sense in which no human action can happen without reflective endorsement (Korsgaard, 1996, p. 161). 17 It is an interesting question whether there might not be an analogue of this point in the case of belief. 18 It is, I believe, very relevant that in cases of the latter kind challenge by others will often be felt to be seriously out of place. As Williams remarks of cases of a kind discussed earlier, whether or not we take the fact that it was his wife as ‘justifying’ his action, it is a fact that should silence comment (Williams, 1981, p. 18). 19 I appeal here to a distinction that is crucial to Clark’s argument: that between the conclusion of a process of reasoning – which is, for example, the content of what is believed – and the drawing of the conclusion, that is, the coming to believe it. As Clark remarks, ‘a belief, being a mental state, is not the sort of thing that could follow from the premises’ (Clark, 2001, p. 490). Similarly, an acting is not the sort of thing that could follow from the premises of a process of practical reasoning. 20 See endnote 12 for references to Korsgaard’s useful remarks on this. See also the following observation by Williams: The action I decide on will be mine, and […] its being mine means not just that it will be arrived at by this deliberation, but that it will involve changes in the world of which I shall be empirically the cause, and of which these desires and this deliberation itself will be, in some part, the cause. (Williams, 1985, pp. 68–9) I would suggest that this remark leans (no more) in a direction that is both consequentialist and Cartesian in a way with which Williams should be very unhappy.

236  David Cockburn 21 See Wittgenstein (1969, p. 67). See also Wittgenstein’s remark: ‘When I say “I am in pain” I do not point to a person who is in pain’ (Wittgenstein, 1958, $ 404). Similarly, when I decide how to act I do not point to a person who is to act. With this, just as when I am in pain there is no identifying of the person who is to cry out, so when I decide how to act there is no identifying of the person who is to act. For an excellent discussion with which I am in very close agreement in all of this, and which relates points of this kind explicitly to formulations of these issues in the terminology of ‘agent-relative reasons’, see Thomas (2005). 22 In defending the ineliminability of the self-reference – ‘it would be wrong for me….’ – de Gaynesford appeals to the fact that ‘it is crucial to Vere that it might be permissible for another captain to exercise a preferential option in this case’ (de Gaynesford, 2010, p. 96). Whether or not there is anything in Melville’s story that justifies this judgement (I have doubts), it is readily imaginable that someone should face a difficult moral decision and yet nothing of this kind be crucial to him: not because it is clear to him that others should act as he does, but because no ideas about how others should act in such circumstances have any place in his thinking. 23 I am not sure what to make of the startling ambiguities here: ambiguities that we see in Winch’s remark: ‘deciding what one ought to do is not a matter of finding out what anyone ought to do in such circumstances’ (Winch, 1972, p. 168). 24 The heart of the mistake as it concerns me here is, in fact, not so much the priority given to the first-person case but the failure to acknowledge the deep asymmetries between the cases. We see what I would argue is another version of that mistake in the following remark by Korsgaard: If you accept the thesis that consciousness is reflective rather than internally luminous, then you must admit that you don’t have access to your own mind in that way. So that doesn’t mark a difference between the kind of relationship you have to yourself and the kind you have to others. All we’ve got here is a matter of degree. You know some people better than others; if you’re honest and lucky, you know yourself pretty well.… – the space in which meaning and reasons exist – is a space that we occupy together. (Korsgaard, 1996, p. 144) 25 I would like to thank the following people for comments, often extremely helpful and equally often not at all adequately addressed, on earlier versions of this paper: Sophie Grace Chappell, Christopher Cordner, Andrew Gleeson, Martin Gustafson, Ylva Gustafson, Lars Hertzberg, David Levey, Maureen Meehan, Tristan Nash, Karsten Schöllner, Roger Teichmann and Carolyn Wilde.

Bibliography Alm, D. (2008). Deontological Restrictions and the Self/Other Asymmetry. Noûs. 42(4), pp. 642–72. Aristotle, and Barnes, J. (2014). Complete Works of Aristotle, Volume 1. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Chappell, T. (2014). Knowing What To Do: Imagination, Virtue, and Platonism in Ethics. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Clark, P. (2001). The Action as Conclusion. Canadian Journal of Philosophy. 3(4), pp. 481–506. Darwall, S. (1986). Agent-Centred Restrictions from the Inside Out. Philosophical Studies. 50, pp. 291–319.

Practical deliberation and the first person  237 de Gaynesford, M. (2010). The bishop, the valet, the wife, and the ass. In: B. Feltham and J. Cottingham, eds., Partiality and Impartialiaty – Morality, Special Relationships, and the Wider World. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 84–97. Feltham, B. (2010). Introduction. In: B. Feltham and J. Cottingham eds., Partiality and Impartiality – Morality, Special Relationships, and the Wider World. ­Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 1–25. Hertzberg, L. (2002). On the need for a listener and community standards. In: M.  Gustafsson and L. Hertzberg eds., The Practice of Language. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, pp. 247–59. Humberstone, I.L. (1991). Two Kinds of Agent-Relativity. The Philosophical Quarterly. 41(163), pp. 144–66. Keller, S. (2013). Partiality. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Korsgaard, C.M. (1993). The Reasons We Can Share: An Attack on the Distinction Between Agent-Relative and Agent-Neutral Values. Social Philosophy and Policy. 10(1), pp. 24–51. Korsgaard, C.M. (1996). The Sources of Normativity. Cambridge: Cambridge ­University Press. MacIntyre, A. (1983). The Magic in the Pronoun “My”, Moral Luck by Bernard Williams. Ethics. 94(1), pp. 113–25. Rödl, S. (2007). Self-Consciousness. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Rodl, S. (2010). The form of the will. In: S. Tenenbaum, ed., Desire, ­Practical Reason, and the Good. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Retrieved 5 Feb. 2018, from www. oxfordscholarship.com/view/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195382440.001.0001/ acprof-9780195382440-chapter-7 Thomas, A. (2005). Reasonable Partiality and the Agent’s Point of View. Ethical Theory and Moral Practice. 8(1/2), pp. 25–43. Velleman, D.J. (1996). Self to Self. The Philosophical Review. 105(1), pp. 39–76. Williams, B. (1973). Imagination and the self. In: B. Williams, Problems of the Self. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 26–45. Williams, B. (1981). Persons, character and morality. In: B. Williams, Moral Luck. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 1–19. Williams, B. (1985). Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy. London: Fontana Press. Winch, P. (1972). The universalizability of moral judgements. In: P. Winch, Ethics and Action. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, pp. 151–70. Wittgenstein, L. (1958). Philosophical Investigations. Oxford: Basil Blackwell. Wittgenstein, L. (1969). The Blue and Brown Books. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.

14 Moral authority and the limits of philosophy Catherine Wilson

Bernard Williams’s view that normative reasons – reasons for an agent to do one thing or other – must arise from or be derivable from that agent’s ‘motivational set,’ which he characterises as including ‘dispositions of evaluations, patterns of emotional reaction, personal loyalties, and various projects, as they may abstractly be called, embodying commitments of the agent’ (1985: 105), lies at the centre of his normative theory. His rejection of the thesis that normative reasons exist independently of the psychological states of individuals supplied the metaethical basis of his two-pronged attack on consequentialism and Kantian deontology. According to the most optimistic proponents of moral theory, it is possible to investigate and to discover our moral obligations and permissions, what we owe to others, and what moral reasons are truly overriding of our other interests. What an individual ought, objectively, to do for moral reasons need lie neither within the individual’s current motivational set nor in what might be called their ‘extendible set.’ Williams denied that moral philosophy could provide any such account. Where natural science could aim at descriptively adequate portrayals of the external world, there could be no descriptively adequate portrayal of moral reality, including morality’s duties, obligations, permissions, and reasons (1978: 65–6, 1985: 139). Such are the limits of philosophy. Furthermore, he implied that to condemn a proposed course of action on the grounds that, if put to one of the tests proposed by the Kantian or the consequentialist, the action would fail the test, was to behave superstitiously, assigning to moral theory an authority, comparable to divine authority, that it cannot possess. ‘We should treat God as a dead person,’ he declared (1985: 32–3) and accordingly banish the thought that there are moral obligations issuing from a transcendental source outside of some human’s thinking and wanting. My aim in this paper is to defend Williams’s metaethical scepticism and his criticisms of what is sometimes called ‘moral aggression.’ At the same time, I point to a tension in his overall position and try to sharpen up the defence of the idea that it is possible to be ‘outside’ modern moral theory without being outside morality. Kantian and consequentialist formulas of

Moral authority and the limits of philosophy  239 obligation are not authoritative, but there was genuine epistemic progress in the evolution of modern moral theory.

Internal reasons Internal reasons, when proffered, answer the question ‘Why did you/are you going to do that/choose that/decide on that?’ The respondent will typically reply by citing a need, a wish, a hope, or an aim, or a fact about the world or themselves that they know. To have a reason, according to the internalist,1 is to be in a particular psychological state, involving both belief (or speculation) and desire. Desires do not motivate in the absence of beliefs, guesses, or assumptions –a desire to eat this because I am hungry implies the belief, guess, or assumption that this is food – and such cognitive states do not motivate action in the absence of appetite, or a desire to please or obey. Both facts and desires may be cited in response to the ‘Why’ question, but often the fact can be taken to be common knowledge or the desire assumed to be commonly shared and so not worth making explicit. For Williams, a person P who asserts, or simply thinks ‘I have reason R to do X’ must be at least somewhat motivated to do X. R may not seem to P a decisive reason for doing X since P may have more compelling reasons not to do X and to do something else. Unfortunately, Williams gave no analysis of what is involved in my thinking you have reason R to do X, or in my thinking that R is not a reason or at least not an all-things-considered reason for you to do X. For example, I can think that you have reason to hold up a liquor store, and that in your shoes I would have reason to do so as well, but that there are also much better reasons for you not to do that, of which you are unaware. This oversight appears to leave Williams’s attack on moral theory vulnerable. For, in effect, both the Kantian and the consequentialist assert that there are reasons of their sorts for you to do or forbear from certain actions, reasons of which you may well be unaware. In prescribing actions to you, the moral theorist argues – consistently with internalism – from within their own motivational set, but insisting that their reasons are much better than the reasons you have for whatever your own, perhaps poorly furnished motivational set is inclining you to do. Williams was able to agree that, in certain practical contexts, the reasons for P to do X are actually to be found not just in the set of beliefs and desires of which they are aware and can report on, but in beliefs and desires that are in some way within range for them. So, it is a reason for P not to drink the stuff in the glass that it is petrol because if P were told what’s in the glass, they would not want to drink it. Williams had a slightly harder time explaining why teenage P does not have good reason to kill herself, believing reason R, the fact of her heartbreak and her wish to be out of pain, will never end. We can tell her it will, but she is incapable of believing us. There is no way to get her into the state where she doesn’t think she has reason to kill herself. Nevertheless,

240  Catherine Wilson we can confidently say that she does not. We seem to be aware of a fact; the fact that she has insufficient reason to kill herself, and it is this knowledge that seems to justify our interfering with her and preventing her doing what she most wants to do. For the externalist about reasons, moral reasons are like this. Well-informed people are (internally) aware of them and they ‘apply to’ or are ‘binding on’ even those incapable of acknowledging them as reasons. So, the externalist about reasons might defend modern moral theory by arguing as follows: Kant and Bentham discovered reasons that were then incorporated into their own motivational sets. Kant’s came to include a strong commitment to dutiful actions where deception, endurance of mental and physical ills (avoidance of suicide), charity, and worldly exertion were concerned; Bentham’s to include a strong commitment to equal consideration of every person’s welfare and its enhancement. Whenever these reasons conflict with others, these are the decisive ones, in the same way that ‘our’ reasons against suicide are better than the teenager’s, and moral facts about what ought to be done can have the same objectivity as the fact that she ought not to kill herself. Mutatis mutandis, the argument from betterness could be run for some favoured, updated version of the classic deontological or consequentialist theories. Williams would I suspect have responded as follows: If we were not very confident that our teenager will agree, on some not very far off day in the future, that she did not really have a decisive reason to kill herself, and if we were not very confident that she will be grateful to those who prevented her from doing so by exercising force, we would have to concede that she did have a decisive reason to kill herself. We can garner no such confident agreement with regard to the strong prescriptions of moral theory. There is no reason to think that if everyone were forced to acts on its reasons, they would in good time come to see that they were overriding reasons and be grateful in retrospect for the coercion. To put the matter in the starkest terms, for Williams, Kant and Bentham claim an authority to which they are not entitled, and thereby delude their followers, presenting their reasons (as charismatic leaders do) as the reasons. I call this the ‘Owen’s Dad Objection.’

The ‘Owen’s Dad’ objection Williams appeals in his paper on ‘Internal and External Reasons’ (1985: 106) to Owen Wingrave, a character in a story by Henry James. In the story, Owen’s father presents him with considerations in favour of joining the army, urging him to do so. It is a family tradition, says the father: joining up is the patriotic thing to do, the threat to the nation is grave, and so on. These considerations do not move Owen. He accepts that these things are the case, but he just doesn’t want to join the army, and Williams says he has accordingly been given no reason and has no reason to join the army.

Moral authority and the limits of philosophy  241 ­ antians, Suppose now that you have read Kant and a selection of modern K along with Bentham and a selection of modern consequentialists. You have been presented with certain facts, or what certain writers took or take to be facts – that all living creatures seek pleasure and shun pain that moral responsibility is not precluded by the Newtonian nature of the universe, and that it is irrational to do to others what you would not wish to have done to you. You have been reminded that you are a human being with dignity, and not just an animal, or conversely, reminded that animals, like humans, can have good or bad lives. But suppose you just can’t get to the acceptance of their reasons for donating to charity, or being a vegetarian or not telling lies to your spouse from where you are now. Like Owen, you just don’t see certain presented reasons as reasons for you. For you, Bentham and Kant and all their interpreters are Owen’s Dad figures. They are virtually presenting their reasons to you; their reasons would move some people, but you are unmoved. It is not the case either that you can refute their arguments with your own arguments or that you are a psychopath and career amoralist. You just don’t take their reasons as applying to you. Williams’s extensively discussed ‘Gauguin’ fable (1981: 20–39), which unnerves so many readers, illustrates the condition of being unmoved.2 In the story, ‘Gauguin’ decides to go to Tahiti to paint, abandoning wife and children. He worries over his decision, but he does not even try to justify it, either in terms of utility, by, for example, predicting that the benefit to future people of enjoying his paintings will likely outweigh the hardships and suffering of the few left at home, or by deciding that he could will that everyone in his situation did likewise. He agonises for a while … stay or go? … then he’s out the door. Extending Williams’s argument, we observers have no solid basis for saying that Gauguin is like our despondent teenager, that he has overriding reasons, first, to take on board utilitarian or Kantian considerations in deciding whether to go or stay, and second, to do what the theory says he ought to do. Gauguin does not seem to be under any factual misapprehension, unlike the teenager who believes falsely that her heart will never mend. If, when their reasons are presented to you, you refuse to take them into consideration, the moral theorist may deem you irrational and uncaring; but then Owen’s Dad may be led to make the same accusations against Owen. Does it matter that Bentham and Kant and their developers are philosophers and Owen’s Dad is not? It is hard to see how the occupational category of the presenter of reasons could change the ontological status of their presented reasons. The semantics and pragmatics of reasons and ­reason-giving is what it is for any user of moral language. Williams accordingly wins the metaethical debate. There appears to be no way to establish directly the authority of moral theory. Presented reasons are always internal reasons, whose internality is contingent.3 Williams does not maintain that Gauguin’s actions are irreproachable; on his view, any observer, not just a member of Gauguin’s directly affected family is free to express their disapproval, citing Gauguin’s selfishness and irresponsibility in

242  Catherine Wilson the language of virtue theory, or producing consequentialist or Kantian accusations. But, on his view, we are required to give up the myth of moral reasons that are not just reasons corresponding to the motivational sets of some human being or human beings urged on the rest of us and that can confer objective obligatoriness, permissibility, and forbiddenness on any action.

Challenging the comparison The bold suggestion that Kant and Bentham are metaethically on all fours with Owen’s Dad is nevertheless unnerving. For one thing, we are strongly impelled to evaluate Owen’s-Dad-type reasons by reference to philosophical principles but not to evaluate ­Kantand-Bentham-type reasons by reference to whether they are, for example, patriotic. It seems serious and appropriate for Owen to ask himself whether he might be bettering the world at a small cost to himself by joining the army, even if he concludes that he will not be. It does not seem serious and appropriate for someone to ask whether producing the greatest good for the greatest number, or behaving according to generalisable maxims, is a family tradition. On the analysis given, this intuition about appropriateness and seriousness merely reflects our contingent cultural positioning. Indeed, Williams argues that because of your position in time and space, in effect your cultural and family traditions, as an Aztec priest or Samurai warrior, you may well be outside the space of Kantian and utilitarian reasons (1985: 160–1). Second, despite Williams’s agreement that Gauguin is vulnerable to criticism, his metaethical internalism appears shadowed, if not overshadowed, by a kind of plaidoyer for amoralism, or at least for the making of certain reprehensible calculations. Once freed of the myth of morality, the implication appears to be, we come to realise that what we have to fear, where our other-regarding actions are concerned, is not a mysterious, yet terrible condition of being objectively morally in the wrong. We will not be hunted down by the Furies: it is only the accusations and resentment of our fellows, the long arm of the law, and our own consciences we have to fear. These forces present us with calculable risks. The probability of something really disagreeable coming at an agent from those sources can be weighed against the satisfaction of his desires. Williams invites this interpretation through his insistence that it is for the most part nonmoral projects, like Gauguin’s passion for painting tropical scenes, that keep the appetite for life sharp. Unless I am propelled forward by the conatus of desire, project, and interest, it is unclear why I should go on at all: the world, certainly, as a kingdom of moral agents, has no particular claim on my presence or, indeed, interest in it. (1985: 12)

Moral authority and the limits of philosophy  243 Those in heroic rescue occupations, including certain branches of law, medicine, social work, politics, or philosophy may have acquired strong, internalised altruistic motivations that diminish their interest in nonmoral pursuits. They are the ‘moral saints’ (Wolf 1982) of the world and untypical in this regard. In following his arguments, we seem to move from a ­value-neutral metaphysics, to scepticism about the epistemic status of moral theories, to an invitation not to care about the interests of other people. This is an unwelcome endpoint. The ‘strong,’ Williams seems to be urging us, should go for it. Gauguin is one of the strong ones, by reason of ability and circumstances. He has the financial wherewithal to buy the ticket to Tahiti and even, by reason of maleness, the social power to abandon wife and children and strike out on his own. He has exceptional practical autonomy (Friedman 2003: 98–9). These metaphysically contingent features are, from the philosophical point of view, supplementary to a motivational set that has artistic ambition and a love of the tropical colour and indolence at its core, and Williams appears to ignore their import. If Mette-Sophie Gauguin had had the same artistic ambitions, and the same love of tropical colour and indolence, she would not have been able to pursue the project that supposedly makes Gauguin’s life worth living. But so what? The defender of Williams will ask. Motivations are as metaphysically contingent as endowments and circumstances. They come as a package; our projects may be formulated on the basis of our endowments and circumstances or they may be disconnected from them, requiring exceptional effort for their fulfilment or ensuring their failure, as in the case of Anna Karenina (1989: 26–7). It is hard to argue with that harsh-but-true empirical claim. Nevertheless, the implied encouragement to pursue projects without subjecting them to moral testing in terms of available theories is profoundly disturbing to anyone who thinks that the purpose of morality is to protect the weak from the strong. Morality prevents those persons with broad or highly focussed ambitions and the strength, talent, and social backing to realise them from doing so at the expense of those less fortunate in endowments and circumstances.4 Williams is certainly aware of this function of morality. As he comments, ‘Ethics concerns the demands, needs, claims, desires of others. Egoism is not an ethical system.’ (1985: 12). Repression of egoism does not, however, appear anywhere in the Gauguin situation as it is depicted. And if no one is really getting hurt by the fictional Gauguin’s departure (as seems to have been the case with the real Gauguin), the narrative becomes philosophically pointless. A man goes to Tahiti to paint, and his family are glad to see the back of him! For Gauguin’s decision to have the import Williams intended, other people have to suffer. The challenge, then, is to see how Williams’s internalism about reasons can be made consistent with the view he also appears to accept that morality is our supremely valuable social arrangement for protecting the weak from the strong.

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The exceptionalist threat The threat needing to be dispelled is what might be called ‘Moral Exceptionalism.’ Morality, the Exceptionalist says, may be necessary for the masses. Because I am so clever, attractive, appetitive, visionary, and charismatic, or possessed of such an extraordinary mission and saddled with such important responsibilities to save the world, conventional morality does not apply to me. I am aware of the reasons it presents me with, but they do not move me. Exceptionalism has been seen as a social and philosophical problem since the time of Socrates. On what might be termed the ‘wicked fringe’ are his opponents who insist that the strong should be able to give free rein to their powerful appetites and that the little people should not get in their way.5 ­Hegel’s world-historical figures, with their deep influence on ­German politics of the 20th century, are another example. Nietzsche, with his talk of the ­Uebermensch and contempt for the ‘herd,’ is an anti-Kantian, ­anti-Utilitarian Exceptionalist. Dostoyevsky’s Raskolnikov tries the position out. The larger nation states are prone to Exceptionalism as well. Because we are so well-armed, so wealthy, and led by such clever men, their implicit reasoning is, we claim for ourselves the privilege of nuclear arsenals, i­nvasions, and assassinations. This view is the source of unlimited trouble in the world. We regard these people and nations as extremely dangerous. They appear to us as free riders, taking advantage of the fact that other people are morally better behaved, inclined to be trusting, and either reluctant to exert counterpressure or unable to do so. On a less extreme level, one meets with a certain amount of Exceptionalist special pleading in everyday life, in the form of people’s explanations and excuses when it comes to questions of duty and responsibility in work and love. People who are unreliable are a source of justified resentment on the part of us more conventional and predictable types. Various accounts of moral obligation try to show why both Uebermensch behaviour and (in case you side with Owen’s father and think Owen is displacing burdens selfishly) underperformance are unattractive options for agents. In theological frameworks, we are told that God will smite the ambitious and mighty, and that God expects you to hold your end up in the areas of performance specified in command texts, no matter who you are and what your problem is. In naturalistic, Humean frameworks, we learn that our fellows will smite us, though in a more subtle way, for aggression or shirking, withdrawing their good will and cooperation, leaving the Exceptionalist isolated, unhappy, and perhaps even powerless. The Exceptionalist may, however, know things about the world and about him or herself that make the threat, whether from the other world or this one, not credible. Moral theory lectures the Exceptionalist that he is actually no more important than anyone else and that his pains and pleasures do not count for more. The moralist may assume and appeal rhetorically to

Moral authority and the limits of philosophy  245 a desire to meet the qualifications of being a full human being rather than a wanton or an animal. But these reasons as well may fail to move him; the Exceptionalist recognises that they move other people but not him. No one can prove to him that there is something illogical in his position. This person has positioned himself outside ‘the morality system’ and we can’t argue him back in. How might Williams have responded to the Exceptionalist threat and resolved the tension noted between internalism and the function of morality and moral discourse? On his behalf, I propose the deployment of the notions of a ‘condemnatory narrative’ and a ‘vindicatory narrative.’ These are not devices Williams uses, but they are consistent with his perspective. Gauguin is not mistaken in not heeding consequentialist or Kantian reasons in the way that a thirsty man about to drink petrol is mistaken about what he ought to or may do and about to make a serious prudential error, or as a teenager about to kill herself is mistaken. However, he may be making a big moral mistake in going to Tahiti. It may come to be the case that there is a condemnatory narrative, tellable in thick terms – terms of selfishishness, vanity, overestimation of one’s abilities, and irresponsibility – that is accepted as the best account of what Gauguin did and what happened. The best account of what happened may be a narrative in which he causes severe and prolonged suffering to his abandoned family and/or in which his project, like Anna Karenina’s, fails because of his own shortcomings, or because of how the world responds to his endeavours. However, the best narrative may turn out to be vindicatory, perhaps involving references to Gauguin’s misery and desperation in Europe and the languishing of his talents there.6 In the vindicatory narrative, Gauguin is able to realise the project that makes his life worth living, and those who were harmed by his departure were not harmed egregiously and recover in good time. Talk of the ‘best account’ and of ‘acceptance’ brings in, to be sure, the ineliminable perspectivalism of metaethical internalism and leaves open the possibility that any given assessor is unable to decide between a condemnatory and a vindicatory account. But the issue for the internalist is not: what makes one moral judgement objectively true and another objectively false? It is rather: when I (or ‘we’) confidently make a moral assessment, to what are we committed? My answer is that are committed to the proposition that our value-laden narrative of what happened cannot be superseded by a superior and opposing one. On Williams’s view, as I understand it, I can opt out of the morality system in rejecting utilitarian or Kantian reasons, on any occasion on which they are presented to me. But I can’t opt out of morality because, like all ordinary human beings, I have been inculcated into a framework that makes use of condemnatory and exculpatory narratives. These frameworks vary somewhat from individual to individual, but they are shared within a culture that discusses moral problems with its members. In the geographical catchment area of the culture, there will be people who do not share this

246  Catherine Wilson framework at all: they are deeply alienated or psychopathic. Philosophy cannot to persuade them to share anything like ‘our’ framework; they need to be avoided and maybe kept under surveillance. But the rest of us can be inside morality, identifying and avoiding wrongdoing, without signing up to any version of the major moral theories. The apparent demonic potential in Williams’s denial that moral theory furnishes external reasons that are binding on Gauguin whether he acknowledges them or not can thereby be contained. The worry is that if Gauguin is excused via a vindicatory narrative, the Callicleses, Napoleons, Hitlers, and Raskolnikovs will not be far behind, because they too, under some general description such as ‘pursuing one’s own project regardless of the consequences for others’ have done ‘the same thing.’ But they will not be excused – and will be condemned – unless we think that the best possible descriptions of what they did and what happened, formulated in thick moral terms, constitute success stories with vindicatory moral narratives. This line of response is vulnerable to two objections which can, however, be answered. First, the critic may insist that perhaps in ancient times, or in early modern times, or in non-Western cultures, it was, or is possible to be ‘inside morality’ and indifferent to the concepts and claims of Kantianism and consequentialism but that this is not possible for us in 21st-century Europe and America. Although Kantianism and consequentialism are theories or families of theories, constructed by humans, and reflecting their own knowledge and preferences, they have both become ineliminable elements of our modern moral framework. Williams sometimes suggests that the Greeks’ study of how to live was superior to the post-Kantian study of duties and obligations (1985: Ch. 1), but this, says the critic, is romantic primitivism and inconsistent with Williams’s own emphasis on real options (1985: 160–4). Accordingly, the thick-terms narratives we create, understand, and apply are formulated in terms of the reasons presented by the modern moral theories. We are incapable of accepting either a success narrative or a failure narrative that does not implicitly reference the reasons presented in modern moral theory as the best account that can be given of what the agent did and what happened. Moreover, the critic continues, the essentially other-directed, self-­sacrificing consequentialist and Kantian values and reasons represent a significant ­advance on moral theory as the ancients and early moderns left it. Kant and the Utilitarians showed us what was wrong and limited in ancient ethics, its pride and indifference to the weak and the numerous. We have made genuine epistemic progress in abandoning the tribal and class-based perspectives of our ancestors and taking on more generous forms of altruism. In response, Williams’s defender, backtracking somewhat on his criticisms of ‘progressivism’ in Shame and Necessity (1993: 6–12), might agree that there is much of value in the theoretical innovations of the 18th and 19th centuries. Concern for the multitude of others and a self-critical attitude towards one’s own exceptionality are internal attitudes worth cultivating,

Moral authority and the limits of philosophy  247 as well as being inescapable considerations for us, modern people. The best fitting narrative may well cite Kantian and consequentialist considerations. Nevertheless, it need not do so, and the best fitting narrative, if it is a success narrative, may well be one in which Gauguin’s actions are neither universalisable in a nontrivial way nor productive of the best overall situation, taking everyone’s pains and pleasures into account. The best narrative, if it is a narrative of failure, need not cite either Gauguin’s failure to bring about the best situation he could, nor his dereliction in avoiding obligations he would will others to uphold. There is no theoretical standard – currently known to ‘us’ or unknown to ‘all of us’ – such that the best narrative must meet it. The second objection is that once Owen’s Dad has presented his reasons, reasons about which he feels strongly, such family traditions, and the duty to one’s country, Owen, by virtue of the fact that it’s his Dad, owes him an explanation for why he is not moved. His not being moved by them – his thinking they are not reasons for him – does not excuse him from having to do more than simply assert that he is not moved. Owen may aim to be conciliatory in proposing to uphold family traditions in some other way, or confrontational in saying the military tradition the whole family has followed up to now is morally wrong. But he ought to say something. Similarly, when the philosophical culture of which Williams is a member has put Kantian and consequentialist reasons for doing and forbearing on the table, he owes that culture something of an explanation. The fictional Gauguin does not need to make a case against some Utilitarians or Kantians for his indifference to their reasons. His inventor, however, does. Since ‘we’ brought it up, and since Williams is part of ‘our’ philosophical culture, he owes us a direct response to his implied suggestion that Gauguin need not pass Kantian or Utilitarian test to be justified in what he does, or submit his proposed course of action to any particular test whatsoever. Pressed in this way, I would expect Williams’s defender to argue as follows: The major moral theories do not take the first person standpoint into account. Sometimes the sacrifice required of the individual, the demand placed on that person, by the theory is just too great. As Williams insisted, without first-person projects, immediate wants, and desires for things beyond the basic necessities of life, the general utilitarian project would have nothing to work on. Social reality is such that the individual and what he or she wants and cares about is constantly threatened by the aggressive actions of others and by social policies that inhibit ordinary people’s personal projects and stunt their ambitions, or that force them to do things to which they feel an instinctive revulsion, such as killing other people. These actions are all too often demanded on the grounds of the sacrifices required of the individual for the good of others. As Owen may rightly protest that his father just doesn’t see him as the individual he is, as very different in temperament and ambition, from the military men of the family, so the advocate for ‘Gauguin’ and indeed anyone

248  Catherine Wilson else is entitled to protest – whether we accept their account of things or not  – that Kantian and consequentialist reasons don’t recognise their individuality. I may not be able to justify in theoretical terms my refusal to push the fat man off the bridge, even if it will save five lives or twenty. It’s just something I can’t do because of how I am, and while I may be angrily requested to give some kind of justificatory account of myself, I am not required to give it in Kantian or consequentialist terms. Indeed, I cannot be objectively required to give it at all.

Concluding remarks To conclude, I wanted to make two main sets of points in this chapter. First, I wanted to back up Williams’s attack on external reasons. Second, I wanted to show how the Utilitarian or Kantian philosopher is in some, but not all respects like Owen’s father. Platonic moralists remind us that we regard people as sometimes ignorant of or unresponsive to reasons which they later discover or attend to or weigh more heavily than they did. It seems obvious that other people often ought to do things they do not want to do. The fact that people can be unaware of reasons or misestimate their strength or quality, but can still be said to have reason to do certain things or make certain choices, is taken to indicate that having a reason or a decisive reason to do something cannot consist of being in a psychological state involving some degree of motivation. Rather, they maintain, it involves being related to something external to us all.7 One way to be related to an entity it is not to see it: the moral reason is in that case like an object hidden behind a closed door, accessible but not accessed. Or, like an object hidden behind a locked door, or one you are too weak or just too lazy to open; the reason is accessible to others but not to you. If being furnished with new information and new arguments enables us to improve our motivational sets for a better fit with the world, as the case of the man-with-petrol-in-his glass indicates that it can, why not suppose that new information about people, along with new moral arguments, can push us all towards motivational sets that better reflect moral reality? Avoiding being poisoned is, however, an almost universal human aspiration. Practical reason, comprising both prudence and ethics, could be a science if all practical aims converged to this extent, but, as Williams took pains to emphasise, they do not. ‘Prudential realism,’ the position that there is always a unique fact of the matter about how you should invest your money, or exactly which car you ought to buy, does not find ready defenders. We recognise that people’s values and priorities differ and that prudential ‘oughts’ are advice given from some person’s perspective – a person who presents themselves as knowing what ought to be known – including facts about how the target advisee is similar to or different from other people – to know what to do.

Moral authority and the limits of philosophy  249 Why then is there resistance to the idea that moral philosophy offers moral advice that is similarly perspectival, and that the advice can be ‘better than it was’ without being a descriptively adequate account of our duties and obligations because there can be no such thing? I suspect the answer lies in the evolutionary origins of moral judgement as contrasted with prudential judgement. Prudential judgement originates in the ability of animals to do what is in the interest of their own survival and reproduction. This requires the animal to foresee what will probably happen but also to be extremely sensitive to its context and to its own condition. Behavioural flexibility is important in ensuring survival and success in a changing natural and social environment. By contrast, a certain rigidity and predictability are the foundation of the cooperative social life upon which the success of our species depends (Wilson 2003: 22–4). Anti-individualistic rule-following is very essence of morality and distinguishes it from prudence. The message of morality, as explained by Kant, who seems to be basically right on this score, is this: You are not special! We tend to think that it is psychological reasons ‘inside’ our heads –our motives, desires, and values – that largely determine what we ought to do in our self-interest, but that there are transcendental reasons ‘outside’ our heads that determine what we ought to do morally. But in fact, all reasons are in our heads; it is just that our heads make us think that the moral reasons are like walls and barriers outside us so that they can fulfil their social function. In arguing for the ‘limits of philosophy,’ epistemically and prescriptively, Williams intended to show us how moral discourse and argument actually function and – equally controversially – to enter a plea for relief from moral aggression for the more put-upon members of our own moral community.

Notes 1 Williams’s ‘internalism about reasons’ should not be confused with ‘moral internalism’ understood as the doctrine that moral claims about the good or the right, if accepted, motivate the agent to act upon them. For discussion, see Parfit and Broome (1997). 2 Most commentary (e.g. in Statman 1993) focuses on whether Gauguin’s posthumous career success justifies his decision to leave; my focus is rather on whether Gauguin’s refusal to assess his action in theoretical terms, the terms that we observers virtually present to him, is wrong. See, however, Levi (1989). 3 For other defences of this conclusion, see Prinz (2007 esp. 112–27) and Joyce (2001, esp. 31–51). 4 For a defence of this position, see Wilson (2003), passim. 5 The problem is extensively discussed in Plato’s Gorgias where Callicles presents his case at 832 ff. and 488b ff.; and in Republic Bk I 338b, where Thrasymachus presents his. 6 On ‘overdemandingness’ and its nonobvious relationship to Williams’s notion of ‘integrity’, see Chappell (2007). 7 A view well, though not altogether convincingly, defended by Milgram 1996.

250  Catherine Wilson

Works cited Chappell, Timothy (Sophie Grace) (2007) ‘Integrity and Demandingness,’ Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 10, pp. 255–65. Friedman, Marilyn (2003) Autonomy, Gender Politics, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Joyce, Richard (2001) The Myth of Morality, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Levi, Don S. (1989) ‘What’s Luck Got to Do with It? Philosophical Investigations 12, pp. 1–13. Milgram, Elijah (1996) ‘Williams’s Argument Against External Reasons,’ Nous 30, pp. 197–220. Parfit, Derek and John Broome (1997) ‘Reasons and Motivation,’ Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Supplementary Volumes 71, pp. 99–146 Plato (1997) Complete Works, ed. John M. Cooper and Danny M. Hutchinson, Indianapolis: Hackett. Prinz, Jesse (2007) The Emotional Construction of Morals, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Statman, Daniel, ed. (1993) Moral Luck. Albany: State University of New York Press. Wolf, Susan (1982) ‘Moral Saints,’ Journal of Philosophy 79, pp. 419–39. Williams, Bernard (1993) Shame and Necessity, Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press. ——— (1989) ‘Internal Reasons and the Obscurity of Blame,’ Logos 10, pp. 1–11. ——— (1985) Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy, London: Fontana. ——— (1981) Moral Luck, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ——— (1978) Descartes: The Project of Pure Enquiry, Abingdon: Routledge. Wilson, Catherine (2003) Moral Animals: Ideals and Constraints in Moral Theory, Oxford: Clarendon.

Index

Absence of Regret Interpretation 137–8, 140 absolute conception of reality 23 Ackeren, M.v.: “Williams (on) doing history of philosophy” 3–4 actions: admirable 109; already-existing motivations 215–16; beauty as reason 107–12, 122–6; beliefs 231; calculable risks 242; creative 219; cultural and personal aspirations 219; deontological restrictions 227–8; efficient causation 214–15; exceptionalism 244–8; external 214; greatest good 242; heroic occupations 243; instructive opposites 110–11; internal 213; internal/external reasons 216–17, 239–40; outside view of ethical dispositions 218–19; protecting weak from strong 243; reason-giving properties 111; reasons 209; second-personal 233–4; selfexpression 220; self-reference 225–7; stopping modals 217; unmoved by authority of moral theory 240–2; virtuous 108–9 “Actions, Reasons and Causes” 213 Adams, Douglas: The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy 151 admirability 109; sports 115 aesthetics: aesthetic versus moral beauty 111–12; Aristotelean view 105–6; beauty as reason for action 107–12, 122–6; normativity104–6; reducing duty to booty 110; technai 105 agents: blameworthiness 130–1; desires 211–17; regret 137; relative actions 227–8 aiskhros 110–11 alarmism 12

alienation 54, 60–4; antiquarian approach comparison 65; dialogue model comparison 65; familiarizing the historical alternative 61; finding alternatives to contemporary debates 61–3; genealogy comparison 64–5; historical contrast 61; Kantian and utilitarian theories 196–7; practical 189–96; rational reconstruction 63–4; Socratic question versus modern questions 62; subjectivism 200–2 Alm, David: rational agency 229 already-existing motivations 215–16 alternatives to contemporary debates 61–3 amoralists 12, 68, 93, 241 analysis: language 17–18, 22 ancient philosophy: historical distance from current theories 55–6 Anscombe, Elizabeth: stopping modals 217 anti-anti-luckists 130 anti-individualistic rule-following 249 anti-luckism 130, 145–6 antiquarian approach 55; history of philosophy 65–6; incompatibilities with other methods 67; transhistorical identity 59–60 Archimedean point 11–15, 22, 94, 149 Argument for Our Utter Moral Failure 169–70; Objectivity 181; Principle of Hope 173–4; progress 170–3; retrospection 174–7; Shameful Conclusion 177–80; validity 169–70 Aristotle: aesthetics 105–6; characterizations of choice 79–80; courage 80; egocentric 74; ethical good and desire 74–5; eudaimonia

252 Index 77, 105; function argument 73–4; how one should live 72–3, 218; instructive opposites 110–11; lives of civic virtue 75–6; natural virtues 76; Nicomachean Ethics 72; practical reason conclusion 231; self-interest 13–14; technai 105; unity of virtues 77–8; virtue criteria 74 artistic creativity 219 Assassins case 130 authority: ethical theories 16; exceptionalism 244–8; internal reasons 239–40; prescribing 30; unmoved by authority of moral theory 240–2 Ayers, M.: antiquarian approach 55 beauty: admirability 109; aesthetic versus moral 111–12; descriptions 108; families of reason-giving properties 111; Glaucon’s challenge 116; good as beautiful and beneficial 117–20; honour codes 116; instructive opposites 110–11; liveability with oneself 115–16; reason for action 107–12, 122–6; reducing duty to booty 110; sports admirability 115; virtuous 108–9; vocabulary-cloud 110–11 “Beauty, duty, and booty” 5 behavioural flexibility 249 beliefs: convergence 19; reasons for actions 231 benefit/harm equation with goodness/ badness 118–20 Bentham: external reasons for actions 240 Beyond The Fringe: beauty as reason for action objection 123–4 Billy Budd 223–4 Blackburn, Simon: “Lonely in the Littlemore: confidence in Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy” 2–3 blame system 40 blameworthiness: moral luck 130–1 business of making rules 30 Chappell, Sophie Grace: “Beauty, duty, and booty” 5 Chappell, Timothy: self-reference motivation 228 choice: Aristotle’s characterizations 79–80 Clark, Phillip: practical reason conclusion 231

Cockburn, David: “Practical deliberation and the first person” 7 communitarianism 88–9 confidence 20; Humean genealogies justificatory power 34; reflection 31–3; relativism of distance 33–4; sentimentalists 34; thick terms 32 conflicts: objectivism 150; relativism 150–1; substantive 192–4 confrontations: irrelativism of distance 161–3; moral judgments 154–6; real option condition 156–60; real versus notional 152–3; relativism of distance 160–1; synchronic versus diachronic 162 consequentialism 202–4; deontologists comparison 121; exceptionalism 246 consolations: morality system 46 contractualism 16 convergence: beliefs 19 cool hour 197 courage 78–80 Craig, Edward: substantive conflict 193–4 creativity: actions 219 critical moral thinking 197 cultural aspirations: reasons for action 219 Darwall, Stephen: second-person interactions 29 Davidson, Donald: humanity 165; pro attitudes 213 de Lazari-Radek, Katarzyna: esoteric utilitarianism 195–6 degrees of blameworthiness: moral luck 130–1 deliberation: practical 209–10; reflective 211 deontology: consequentialism comparison 121; self-reference 227–8 desires: Aristotle 74–5; motivational set 213–17; reasons for acting 211–13 diachronic confrontations 162 dialogue model 54; historical distance 56; history of philosophy 65–6; transhistorical identity 59–60 direct passions 29–30 direct vindications 191–2 distance: irrelativism 161–3; relativism 33–4, 153–4, 160–1 diversity: human nature 41; Humes’ views on moral variation 47 Drivers case 130 duty to booty 110

Index  253 efficient causation 214–15 Enlightenment: retrospection 175–6 epistemological worries 112 epoch relativism 182–4 “Epoch relativism and our moral hopelessness” 6 equality 92–3 esoteric utilitarianism 195–6 ethical theories 16–17; authority 16; correctness 38; prejudices 17; styles 15–16 Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy 1; absolute conception of reality 23; Archimedean point 11–12; clarity 9; confidence 20; convergence 19; ethical theories 16–17; how one should live 10–11; knowledge 19–20; linguistic analysis 17–18; morality 21–2; negativity 22; objectivity 18–19; past/present theories historical distance 55–6; practical reason 14–15; relativism 20–1; science contrast 19–20; styles of ethical theory 15–16; tensed knowledge 23; truth, truthfulness, and meaning of individual life 10; well-being 13–14 eudaimonia 77, 105 evolutionary analogues 113 exceptionalism 244–8 external actions 214–17 extrinsic failures 132 failures: Argument for Our Utter Moral Failure 169–70; extrinsic versus intrinsic 132 first-order moral worries 112 first-personal deliberation 222–5; selfreference 228–30 first-personal practical reason 219 force of reason 85 Forster, E.M.: Ronny Heaslop character 179 Fricker, Miranda: moral judgment 154–6 function argument 73–4 Garber, D.: antiquarian approach 55 Gauguin case 132–3; justification 135–6; practical necessity 145; regret 136–40; transformation 141–3 “Gauguin’s lucky escape” 5 Gaynesford, M.: practical reason conclusion 230 genealogy: alienation effect comparison 64–5

Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai 158–9 Glaucon’s challenge 116 “The good life and the unity of the virtues: some reflections upon Williams and Aristotle” 4 goodness/badness equation with benefit/ harm 118–20 Gorgias 117–20 Government House utilitarianism 17 Greco, Lorenzo: “Humanism and cruelty in Williams” 4; HumeWilliams relationship 40 Greek texts 72; aiskhros 110–11 happiness: virtue connection 45 Hare, R.M.: intuitive and critical moral thinking 197; sentimentalist tradition 29–30 hermeneutical reappropriation 113–14 heroic occupations 243 historical context: Argument for Our Utter Moral Failure 169–70; epoch relativism 182–4; objectivity 181; Principle of Hope 173–4; progress 170–3; retrospection 174–7; Shameful Conclusion 177–80 historical distance 55–6 history of philosophy: alienation effect 60–4; antiquarian approach 55, 60, 65–6; dialogue model 54, 59–60, 65–6; finding alternatives to contemporary debates 61–3; genealogy versus alienation effect 64–5; historical texts 60; incompatible methods 67; incompatible results 67–8; past/ present distinction 55–6; pragmatic approach 66–8; questions and answers distinction 56–8; rational reconstruction 58, 63–4; Socratic question versus modern questions 62 The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy 151 Hobbesian question 85 honour codes 116 honourable actions 109 hope: Principle of Hope 173–4 how should one live 10–11, 209; agent desires 211–13; Aristotle 218; creative activity 219; cultural and personal aspirations 219; motivational set 213–17; outside view of ethical dispositions 218–19; practical deliberation 209–10;

254 Index reflective deliberation 211; selfexpression 220 “How should one live? Williams on practical deliberation and reasons for acting” 6–7 Huemer, Michael: rejecting progress 171–3 human nature: uniformity versus diversity 41 human rights: self-evidence 91–4 “Humanism and cruelty in Williams” 4 Hume, David 27–30; Adam Smith comparison 29; direct/indirect passions 29–30; Humean tradition 27–30; moral causes 28; moral variation 47; morality system 39–43; science of man 48; skeptical reflections 42–3; uniformity of human nature and sentiments 41 Humean genealogies: justificatory power 34 “Hume’s optimism and Williams’ pessimism” 3 Hume-Williams relationship: blame system 40; consolations 46; distance without repudiation 46–9; Greco/ Sagar assessment 39–40; inside/ outside gap 41–3; optimism 44–5; pessimism 48; religion and theology 47–8; science of man 48; virtue and happiness connection 45 hypothetical judgment 223–4 identities: phenomenological 113 immunity: morality 38 impartiality 226 impossibilities: reflection 23 Improved Transformation Interpretation 142–3 incompatibilities: methods and results 67–8 indirect contributions 61–2 indirect passions 29–30 indirect vindications 191–2 “The inevitability of inauthenticity” 6 inside perspectives 190–1, 202–3 instructive opposites 110–11 instrumentalizing dispositions 198 inter-cultural encounters: suspension of judgment 154 internal actions 213, 216–17, 239–40 intrinsic failures 132 intuitive moral thinking 197

irrelativism of distance 161–3 “The irrelativism of distance” 5 Jarmusch, Jim: Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai 158–9 judgments: Argument for Our Utter Moral Failure 169–70; hypothetical 223–4; irrelativism of distance 161–3; moral evaluation of past social contexts 182–4; objectivist versus non-objectivist views 154–6; objectivity 181; practical reason conclusion 231–2; Principle of Hope 173–4; progress 170–3; prudential 249; real option condition 156–60; relativism of distance 160–1; retrospection 174–7; Shameful Conclusion 177–80; suspension 154 justification: direct/indirect vindications 191–2; moral luck 135–7; subjectivism 200–2 kakon 118–19 kalon: cause of occlusion 117–20; honour codes 116; liveability with oneself 115–16; nobility and utility 125; sports 115 kalos 110–11 Kantianism: alienation 196–7; business of making rules 30; exceptionalism 246; external reasons for actions 240; moral luck 131; rational action 14–15 knowledge 19–20; point of view 22–3; reflection destroying 31–3; tensed 23 Lang, Gerald: “Gauguin’s lucky escape” 5 language: analysis 17–18 liberalism: political legitimation 85–6; queasy liberals 168 liberty 87–8 liveability with oneself justification 115–16 “Lonely in the Littlemore: confidence in Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy” 2–3 Meiland, Jack: real option condition 157–8 Melville, Herman: Billy Budd 223–4 metaethics: boring 35 methodological pluralism 64–8; alienation effect versus genealogy

Index  255 64–5; antiquarian approach 65–6; dialogue model 65–6; incompatible methods 67; incompatible results 67–8; pragmatic approach 66–8 modern questions: Socratic question comparisons 62 Modified Absence of Regret Interpretation 138–40 Moore, Adrian: naturalistic fallacy 17 “Moral authority and the limits of philosophy” 8 moral beauty: aesthetic beauty comparison 111–12 moral blame 144 moral causes: Humean tradition 28 moral comfort/discomfort 115–16 moral evaluation: Argument for Our Utter Moral Failure 169–70; objectivity 181; past social contexts 182–4; Principle of Hope 173–4; progress 170–3; retrospection 174–7; Shameful Conclusion 177–80 moral hopelessness: Argument for Our Utter Moral Failure 169–70; objectivity 181; Principle of Hope 173–4; progress 170–3; retrospection 174–7; Shameful Conclusion 177–80 moral luck: anti-luckism 145–6; blameworthiness of agents 130–1; Gauguin case 132–3; justification 135–7; Kantian morality 131; morality system 130–2, 144–5; NonMoral Value Interpretation 133–4; practical necessity 145; regret 136– 40; Self-Realization Interpretation 134–5; transformation 141–3 moral normativity: aesthetic normativity comparison 104–6 moral objectivism 149–50 moral obligations 144 moral primitivism 112 moral realism: beauty as reason for actions objections 122–6; benefit/ harm equation with goodness/ badness 118–20; cause of occlusion 117–20; Glaucon’s challenge 116; liveability with oneself 115–16; nobility and utility 125; sports admirability 115 moral saints 243 moral theories: Williams’ definition 31 morality system: anti-luckism 145–6; consolations 46; harmony aspiration

38–9; Hume 39–43; immunity 38; moral luck 130–2, 144–5; obligations 37–8; optimism 44–5; philosophical ethics 38; practical necessity 145; purity 38; reactions 28; Socrates’ how one should live 11; virtue and happiness connection 45; Williams’ definition 21–2 motivational set 213–17; alreadyexisting motivations 215–16; calculable risks 242; efficient causation 214–15; exceptionalism 244–8; external reasons 214; greatest good 243; heroic occupations 243; internal actions 213; internal reasons 239–40; internal/external reasons 216–17; protecting weak from strong 243; stopping modals 217 Mueller, Anselm: agent desires 211–12 Nagel, Thomas: moral luck 130–1 natural virtues 76 naturalistic fallacy 17 nature of ethical thought 164–5 Ng, Geraldine: “The irrelativism of distance” 5 Nicomachean Ethics 72 Nietzsche: exceptionalism 244; genealogy 64 1984 (novel) 86 nobility 125 Nodier, Charles: retrospection 176 Non-Moral Value Interpretation: moral luck 133–4 normativity: aesthetic versus moral 104–6; beauty as reason for action 107–12 notional confrontations 148, 152–4 objectivity 18–19, 149–50; Argument for Our Utter Moral Failure 169–70; conflicts 150; moral judgment 181; moral judgments 154–6; queasy liberals 168; relativism 163–4; social self-consciousness 164–5 obligations 144; morality system 37–8 occlusion to kalon 117–20 Odysseus 119–20 opposites: instructive 110–11 optimism: Hume-Williams relationship 44–5 ordinary-life thinking: sporting achievements 115

256 Index Orwell, George: 1984 86 outside perspectives 190–1 outside view: ethical dispositions 218–19 Owen’s-Dad-type reasons 240–2 passions: direct/indirect 29–30 personal aspirations: reasons for action 219 pessimism: Hume-Williams relationship 48 phenomenological identities: reappropriation 113 Philoctetes 119–20 philosophical ethics 38 Plato: egocentric 74; eudaimonia 77; Gorgias 117–20; reducing duty to booty 110; Republic 72; unity of virtues 77–8 platonic moralists 248 point of view 22–3 political realism: force of reason 85; historical justification 84–8; liberal legitimation 85–6; liberty 87–8; relativism of distance 89–91; selfevidence of human rights 91–4; truth 86–7 Polus: Gorgias 117–20 power: Humean genealogies justificatory 34 practical alienation 189–90; direct/ indirect vindications 191–2; esoteric utilitarianism 195–6; inside/outside perspectives 190–1; substantive conflict 192–4 practical deliberation 209–10; firstpersonal 222–5; second-personal 233–4; self-reference 225–7 “Practical deliberation and the first person” 7 practical necessity 145 practical reason 14–15, 209; agent desires 211–13; conclusions 230–3; cultural and personal aspirations 219; deontological restrictions 227–8; first-personal 219, 222–5; motivational set 213–17; personal character 228–30; practical deliberation 209–10; reflective deliberation 211; second-personal 233–4; self-expression 220; selfreference 225–7 pragmatic approach: history of philosophy 66–8

prejudices: ethical theories 17 prescribing 30 Price, Anthony: “The good life and the unity of the virtues: some reflections upon Williams and Aristotle” 4 Principle of Hope 173–4 pro attitudes 213 progress: rejecting 170–3 prudential judgment 249 prudential realism 248 purely voluntary acts 11 purity of morality 38 queasy liberals 168 rational action 14–15, 73 rational intuitions 203 rational reconstruction 58; history of philosophy 63–4 reactions: moral 28 real confrontations 152–4; moral judgments 154–6; relativism 148 real option condition 156–60 reality: absolute conception 23 reappropriation 112–14; answers 113–14; benefit/harm equation with goodness/badness 118–20; cause of occlusion 117–20; evolutionary analogues 113; hermeneutical reasons 113–14; honour codes 116; liveability with oneself 115–16; phenomenological identities 113; Ship-of-Theseus changes 113; sports admirability 115; translation equivalences 114; worries 112–13 reason-giving properties 110–11 reasons for actions 209; agent desires 211–13; calculable risks 242; creative 219; cultural and personal aspirations 219; deontological restrictions 227–8; exceptionalism 244–8; first-personal 222–5; greatest good 242; heroic occupations 243; internal/external 216–17, 239–40; motivational set 213–17; outside view of ethical dispositions 218–19; practical deliberation 209–10; practical reason conclusion 230–3; protecting weak from strong 243; reflective deliberation 211; second-personal 233–4; self-expression 220; selfreference 225–7; stopping modals 217; unmoved by authority of moral theory 240–2

Index  257 reflections: destroying knowledge 31–3; impossibilities 23; inside perspective 202–3; practical alienation 189–96; reflective deliberation 211; skeptical 42–3; social self-consciousness 164–5; truthfulness 198–9 regret 136–40; Absence of Regret Interpretation 137–8; agent-regret 137; Modified Absence of Regret Interpretation 138–40 relational relativism 150–1 relativism 20–1; conflicts 150; epoch 182–4; irrelativism of distance 161–3; moral objectivity 163–4; real versus notional confrontations 148; relational 150–1 relativism of distance: appraisal conditions 160–1; confidence 33–4; moral evaluation of past social contexts 182–4; objectivist versus non-objectivist views on moral judgments 154–6; political realism 89–91; real versus notional confrontations 153–4 religion: Hume-Williams relationship 47–8 Republic 72 retrospection: rejecting 174–7 Rini, Regina: “Epoch relativism and our moral hopelessness” 6 Rödl, Sebastian: first-person thought 229; practical reason conclusion 231 Romanticism: retrospection 176 Russell, Paul: “Hume’s optimism and Williams’ pessimism” 3 Sagar, Paul: Hume-Williams relationship 40–2 science: contrast with ethics 19–20; creativity 219; man 48 second-person interactions 29 second-personal practical deliberation 233–4 self-evidence of human rights 91–4 self-expression: reasons for action 220 self-interest 13–14 Self-Realization Interpretation: moral luck 134–5 self-reference: deontology 227–8; first-personal deliberation 228–30; practical reasoning conclusion 230–3; reasons for action 225–7

self-understanding: irrelativism of distance 161 The Sense of the Past 72 sentiments: confidence 34; sentimentalist theories 29–30; uniformity 41 Shame and Necessity 112 Shameful Conclusion 177–80 Ship-of-Theseus changes 113 Singer, Peter: esoteric utilitarianism 195–6 skepticism 189–90; direct/indirect vindications 191–2; esoteric utilitarianism 195–6; inside/outside perspectives 190–1; practical alienation 189–90; substantive conflict 193–4 Smith, Adam: Hume comparison 29 Smyth, Nicholas: “The inevitability of inauthenticity” 6 social context 153; irrelativism of distance 161–3; moral evaluation of past 182–4; objectivist versus non-objectivist views 154–6; real option condition 156–160; real versus notional 153–4; reflection 32–3; synchronic versus diachronic confrontations 162 social self-consciousness: ethical reflection 164–5 Socrates: benefit/harm equation with goodness/badness 118–20; cause of occlusion to kalon 117–20; exceptionalism 244; how one should live 10–11, 57–8, 62, 72–3, 209 Sophocles: Odysseus and Philoctetes 119–20 sports: admirability 115 stopping modals 217 styles: ethical theory 15–16 subjectivism: alienation 200–2 substantive conflict 192–4 suspension of judgment 154 synchronic confrontations 162 technai 105 Teichmann, Roger: “How should one live? Williams on practical deliberation and reasons for acting” 6–7 tensed knowledge 23 theories: historical distance 55–6 transformation: Improved Transformation Interpretation 142–3; Transformation Interpretation 141–2 transhistorical identity 59–60

258 Index translation equivalences 114 Trollope, Frances: morally atrocious 178 Truth and Truthfulness: substantive conflict 193 truthfulness 198–9; politics 86–7 uniformity of human nature and sentiments 41 unity of virtues 77–8 universal constituency 38 utilitarianism 16; alienation 196–7; esoteric 195–6; ethical views as product of reflection 17; Government House 17 Utilitarianism: For and Against 196 utility 125 virtues: Aristotle 74–7; benefits 116; considerations 81; courage 78–80; happiness connection 45; natural 76; truth 86–7; virtuous actions 108–9 well-being 13–14; how should one live 218 why-be-moral problem: beauty as reason for actions 122–6; benefit/

harm equation with goodness/ badness 118–20; cause of occlusion 117–20; Glaucon’s challenge 116; honour codes 116; liveability with oneself 115–16; nobility and utility 125; sports 115 Williams, Bernard: importance of Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy 1; moral theory definition 31; Shame and Necessity 112; Truth and Truthfulness 193; Utilitarianism: For and Against 196; written contributions to philosophy 9; see also Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy “Williams (on) doing history of philosophy” 3–4 Wilson, Catherine: “Moral authority and the limits of philosophy” 8 Winch, Peter: first-personal deliberation 223–4 Wingrave, Owen 214–16, 240–2 worries: reappropriation 112–13 Yukichi, Fukuzawa: retrospection 175