King's College Cambridge Bernard Williams was an ethical sceptic, but he was also a proponent of liberalism. To what extent can one finally be both? This article explores this question through a particular emphasis on Williams, but seeks to draw wider lessons regarding what ethical scepticism should and should not amount to. It shows how ethical scepticism can be reconciled with a commitment to what Williams, following Judith Shklar, called 'the liberalism of fear', which is revealed as an ecumenical outlook for different stripes of ethical sceptic. The article concludes by drawing some lessons for the recent 'realist' turn in political theory.

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Bernard Williams is frequently supposed to be an ethical Humean, due especially to his work on 'internal' reasons. In fact Williams's work after his famous article 'Internal and External Reasons' constitutes a profound shift away from Hume's ethical outlook.

Over the past two decades, Philip Pettit has consistently argued for an understanding of “republican” liberty in terms of nondomination. Yet in his major published studies, he has almost nothing to say about markets, nor about the economy more generally. I contend that this is a seriously problematic omission, insofar as markets represent a major problem for republican views of freedom. In short: if freedom requires the absence of the mere possibility of arbitrary interference (as Pettit maintains), then the widespread existence of markets indicates that on a republican view the vast majority of people in the world today exist in the dominated position of slaves. As a result, Pettit cannot adopt the “complacency” towards market transactions that he officially avows. But in turn, we ought to be highly skpetical that the republican account of freedom is a viable one.