ETHICS AND THE LIMITS OF PHILOSOPHY

by Bernard Williams ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 1, 1985

Many philosophical mistakes are woven into morality,"" says Williams (Provost, King's College, Cambridge), and in this urbane and erudite but sometimes vague and highhanded essay he deftly ferrets them out. Aristotle believed that a specific sort of ethical, cultural, and political life would constitute a supreme, harmonious synthesis of every human potential, derived from an ""absolute understanding of nature."" But we have given up that belief and relativized the perspective of the agent, placing it alongside conflicting perspectives from other cultures. And since the dispositions of the agent are the ultimate support system of ethical value, that system has been torn from its moorings--for good. There is no longer any ""Archimedean point"" for the ethician to stand on and move the world, or construct a new one. Kant sought such an impartial standpoint with his practical reason, but practical deliberation is always ""first-personal,"" reflection and detachment are not the same thing. Prescriptivists connect all evaluation to action (saying something is better amounts to an order to prefer it to the less good), but this fails to do justice to aesthetic judgments, among other things. Williams is rather sharp-tongued: in his view, Aristotle's doctrine of the Mean is nearly useless, G.E. Moore's ""naturalistic fallacy"" is a ""spectacular misnomer,"" the hallowed Scholastic dictum that everything desired is desired sub specie boni is just not true. Williams is also a formidable analyst, but he doesn't often descend to argue cases and he invokes the social sciences as a corrective of philosophical ""timelessness,"" without exemplifying this in much detail. A difficult but rewarding book, of interest to serious students of ethics.

Pub Date: April 1, 1985

ISBN: 067426858X

Page Count: -

Publisher: Harvard Univ. Press

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 1985

Categories: NONFICTION