Minding the Gap: Bernard Williams and David Hume on Living an Ethical Life

Bernard Williams thought that philosophy should address real human concerns felt beyond academic philosophy. But what wider concerns are addressed by Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy, a book he introduces as being "principally about how things are in moral philosophy"? In this article, we argue that Williams responded to the concerns of his day indirectly, refraining from explicitly claiming wider cultural relevance, but hinting at it in the pair of epigraphs that opens the main text. This was Williams's solution to what he perceived as the stylistic problem of how to pursue philosophy as cultural critique.Taking the epigraphs as interpretative keys to the wider resonances of the book, we show how they reveal Williams's philosophical concerns-with the primacy of character over method, the obligation to follow orders, and the possibility of combining truth, truthfulness, and a meaningful life in a disillusioned world-to be recognisably rooted in the cultural concerns of post-war Britain. In the light of its epigraphs, the book emerges as the critique of a philosophical tradition's inadequacies to the special difficulties of its cultural moment. | INTRODUCTIONBernard Williams defended inaccessibly technical philosophy on the ground that the path to something helpful was often hard and technical. But he also felt that, at the end of the line, philosophy should "speak truthfully to a real human concern, to something that could disturb or interest a grown-up person quite apart from any involvement

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“…63 63 Williams (2006a, p. 52). Some of the consequences of this gap are traced in Sagar (2014b) and Smyth (2019). …”

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confidence: 99%

“…242–7; 2019). For a contrary view to the effect that Williams underwent a profound shift away from Hume, see Sagar (2014b).…”

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confidence: 99%

The shaken realist: Bernard Williams, the war, and philosophy as cultural critique

Krishnan

Queloz

2022

European J of Philosophy

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“… See Stocker (1976),Railton (2003),Sagar (2014), McGeer (2014),Doris (2015),Smyth (2019), andJefferson (2019). With the exception of Smyth's treatment, however, the tensions addressed all seem to me subtly different from the one at issue here.The self-effacing functionality of blame…”

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The self-effacing functionality of blame

Queloz

2020

Philos Stud

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This paper puts forward an account of blame combining two ideas that are usually set up against each other: that blame performs an important function, and that blame is justified by the moral reasons making people blameworthy rather than by its functionality. The paper argues that blame could not have developed in a purely instrumental form, and that its functionality itself demands that its functionality be effaced in favour of non-instrumental reasons for blame-its functionality is self-effacing. This notion is sharpened and it is shown how it offers an alternative to instrumentalist or consequentialist accounts of blame which preserves their animating insight while avoiding their weaknesses by recasting that insight in an explanatory role. This not only allows one to do better justice to the authority and autonomy of non-instrumental reasons for blame, but also reveals that autonomy to be a precondition of blame's functionality. Unlike rival accounts, it also avoids the ''alienation effect'' that renders blame unstable under reflection by undercutting the authority of the moral reasons which enable it to perform its function in the first place. It instead yields a vindicatory explanation that strengthens our confidence in those moral reasons.

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“…What he rejected was Hume’s ‘terminal degree of optimism’ that existing commitments to much of our ethical practice – and in particular, the philosophical theory that has grown up around and in some cases warped that practice – could survive honest critical reflection upon its own status; for example, with regard to our concepts of moral responsibility, blame and established practices of punishment (Williams, 1995a; 1999, p. 256; 2006b, pp 119–26). Thus Williams did not propose a thoroughgoing ethical scepticism to the effect that all our values are jeopardised by their lack of ultimate support, but a more focused and limited scepticism threatening to destabilise specific values and beliefs that we possess but can no longer honestly believe in (Sagar, forthcoming).…”

Section: Liberalism and Scepticismmentioning

confidence: 99%

From Scepticism to Liberalism? Bernard Williams, the Foundations of Liberalism and Political Realism

Sagar

2014

Political Studies

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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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Minding the Gap: Bernard Williams and David Hume on Living an Ethical Life

Abstract: 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.

Cited by 8 publications

References 4 publications

The shaken realist: Bernard Williams, the war, and philosophy as cultural critique

The shaken realist: Bernard Williams, the war, and philosophy as cultural critique

The self-effacing functionality of blame

From Scepticism to Liberalism? Bernard Williams, the Foundations of Liberalism and Political Realism

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