Ethics and the Limits of Bernard Williams

Williams's views on the following topics are expounded and criticized: the disanalogy between ethics and science; foundations of ethics in psychology; the self-disposability of the conscious subject; the bearings on one another of ethics and religion; the bogey of obligation; and the relevance of Greek philosophy. It is maintained that ethical arguments have a closer analogy with those of science than Williams will admit, though it is conceded that some moral questions are probably in principle incapable of being settled due to conflict of basic criteria, especially happiness and fairness