¹ I have in mind here particularly Williams, Bernard, Problems of the Self (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1973)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Williams, , Moral Luck (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Williams, , Making Sense of Humanity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and other works by Williams referenced below. I do not in this essay make use of his work on reasons for action, arguably his most important contribution to moral philosophy.

² Williams, Bernard, Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1985), 174–96Google Scholar.

³ In his naturalization of moral psychology, Williams sees himself as following in Nietzsche's footsteps. See Bernard Williams, “Nietzsche's Minimalist Moral Psychology,” in Williams, Making Sense of Humanity, 65–78.

⁴ Smart, J. J. C. and Williams, Bernard, Utilitarianism: For and Against (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1973)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁵ I think it follows from his doubts about Ross that Williams would find fault with particularism, or the claim that what we gain insight about is not so much general moral principles as particular moral judgments in particular cases.

⁶ Williams, Bernard, Shame and Necessity (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993)Google Scholar.

⁷ See Williams, Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy, chap. 9; and Williams, “Moral Luck: A Postscript,” in his Making Sense of Humanity, 241–47. Williams's preoccupation with dispensing with particular conceptions of morality can be found in virtually all of his works in ethics.

⁸ Williams, “Moral Luck: A Postscript.” This paper initially appeared in Statman, Daniel, ed., Moral Luck (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 1993), 251–58Google Scholar.

⁹ Williams, “Moral Luck: A Postscript,” 251.

¹⁰ Ibid., 251–52.

¹¹ Situations were described as consisting of such conflicting duties, so that ultimately what was one's actual duty was the one which was the most stringent duty in the circumstances.

¹² Ross was an intuitionist, and this posed a certain difficulty, in the absence of principles for determining stringency in the circumstances, for those who were not intuitionists.

¹³ Williams constantly invokes a moral/nonmoral distinction without always saying in what the distinction consists. But what he has in mind becomes clearer as he begins to contrast moral obligations with reflections on what is or may be important in a life, as I try to indicate below.

¹⁴ Williams, Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy, 181ff.

¹⁵ See Williams, Bernard, “Moral Luck,” in his Moral Luck (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981), 20–39CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

¹⁶ See Alan White, “Attempting the Impossible,” in Frey, R. G. and Morris, Christopher, eds., Liability and Responsibility (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997)Google Scholar.

¹⁷ Anscombe, G. E. M., “Moral and Legal Murder,” in Stein, W., ed., Nuclear Weapons: A Catholic Response (London: Burns and Oates, 1961), 43–62Google Scholar.

¹⁸ This cannot be true of all cases, at least if we are to individuate intentions by what they are intentions to do. Notice that, for Anscombe, so to speak, “trying” to murder the president is not what Assassin 2 is doing: he intends to murder the president but he is not “trying” to do so, if he does not act. I am not ultimately concerned with the distinction between mens rea and actus reus here, though, obviously, the law is.

¹⁹ The items on this list are of the sort that one might expect: Don't murder; Don't steal; Don't lie; and so on.

²⁰ Anscombe, G. E. M., Intention (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1957)Google Scholar.

²¹ See below for a discussion of how the moral/nonmoral distinction may be drawn in such a case.

²² Williams, “Moral Luck,” 35ff.

²³ See, for example, Goodchild, Peter, Oppenheimer (London: BBC, 1983)Google Scholar; Rhodes, R., The Making of the Atomic Bomb (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1986)Google Scholar; Stern, P., The Oppenheimer Case (New York: Harper and Row, 1969)Google Scholar; Pais, Abraham, J. Robert Oppenheimer: A Life (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006)Google Scholar; and Teller, Edward, The Legacy of Hiroshima (New York: Doubleday, 1962)Google Scholar.

²⁴ Anscombe, G. E. M., “Mr. Truman's Degree,” in The Collected Philosophical Papers of G. E. M. Anscombe, 3 (Oxford: Blackwell, 1981), 62–71Google Scholar.

²⁵ For recent work on Mallory, see Breashears, David and Salkeld, Audrey, Last Climb: The Legendary Everest Expeditions of George Mallory (Washington, DC: National Geographic, 1999)Google Scholar; and Hemmleb, Jochen, Johnson, Larry A., and Simonson, Eric R., Ghosts of Everest: The Search for Mallory and Irvine (Seattle, WA: Mountaineer Books, 1999)Google Scholar. These books summarize the state of play with respect to the search for Mallory and Irvine up to the discovery of Mallory's body in 1999.

²⁶ I put the matter this way in order to allow for the fact that the Sherpas of Nepal may well count as the finest high-altitude climbers in the world.

²⁷ For good accounts of Mallory the man, see Robertson, David, George Mallory (London: Faber and Faber, 1969)Google Scholar; and Pye, David, George Leigh Mallory: A Memoir (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1927)Google Scholar.

²⁸ Anker, Conrad and Roberts, David, The Lost Explorer: Finding Mallory on Mount Everest (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1999)Google Scholar.