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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 April 2010
How should we look back on the history and the origins of our ethical outlook and our way of life? We know that in the past, strange and appalling ethical views and practices have enjoyed widespread and sincere support. Yet we do not regard our contemporary outlook – to the extent that we do, at the present, have a common outlook – as one option among many. However bemused we may feel in ethical matters, at least on some issues we claim to have reasons that are good (enough). If we do not object to the use of the predicate ‘true’ in ethics, we may say that we are confronted with the (ethical) truth of an outlook. Or, to echo a provocative expression of David Wiggins, we claim that ‘there is nothing else to think’.
1 See for instance Wiggins, David, ‘Objective and Subjective in Ethics, with Two Postscripts about Truth’ Ratio (New Series) VIII (1995), 244Google Scholar.
2 Truth & Truthfulness: An Essay in Genealogy (Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2002), 20. Compare Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy (ELP) (London: Fontana Press/Collins, 1985), 16, ‘Philosophy as a Humanistic Discipline. The Annual Lecture of the Royal Institute of Philosophy’ Philosophy 75 (2000), 489–490; ‘Ethics and the fabric of the world’ (1985), in Making sense of humanity and other philosophical paper 1982–1993 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), 179–180; ‘Pluralism, Community and Left Wittgensteinianism’ (1992), in In the Beginning Was the Deed. Realism and Moralism in Political Argument (Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2005), 36.
3 ELP, 161; ‘The Truth in Relativism’ (TIR) (1974–75), in Moral Luck. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), 142–143. Judgments concerning past conceptions of social justice is the one exception Williams is prepared to make, cf. ELP, 165–166; ‘Human Rights and Relativism’ in In the Beginning Was the Deed, op. cit. n. 2, 69.
4 ELP, 159–160; ‘Philosophy’, op cit. n. 2, 488.
5 Compare ‘Saint-Just's illusion’ (1982), in Making sense of humanity, op. cit. n. 2, 146. Williams suggest that relativism of distance only applies to “fairly large scale systems or bodies of beliefs”; ELP, 162, 69, ‘Human Rights’, op. cit. n. 3, 69. Yet ethical judgments concerning individual people and their actions appear to suffer in the final analysis from similar defects as more general assessments, ELP, 162; cf. TIR, 141–142.
6 See also Scheffler, Samuel, ‘Morality Through Thick and Thin. A Critical Notice of Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy’, The Philosophical Review XCVI (1987), 427–428Google Scholar; Jenkins, Mark P., Bernard Williams (Chesham: Acumen, 2006), 142Google Scholar.
7 Jenkins, op. cit, n. 6, 124.
8 Compare Hollis, Martin, ‘The shape of a life’ in Altham, J.E.J. and Harrison, Ross ed., World, Mind, and Ethics. Essays on the ethical philosophy of Bernard Williams (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 173Google Scholar. Internalism is the starting point of much of the discussion in ELP, in particular of the rejection of ‘ethical theories’.
9 This contrasts with recent work where a more isolated discussion of Williams' relativism of distance is to be found, see e.g. Rovane, Carol, ‘Did Williams find the truth in relativism?’ in Callcut, Daniel ed., Reading Bernard Williams (Abingdon/New York: Routledge, 2009)Google Scholar; Baghramian, Maria, Relativism (London and New York: Routledge, 2004)Google Scholar.
10 See for instance, Jenkins, op. cit. n. 6, 139–140. Putnam appears to endorse Williams' views on interpretation, see Putnam, Hilary, ‘Objectivity and the Science/Ethics Distinction’ in Conant, James ed., Realism with a Human Face (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1990), 167–168Google Scholar.
11 This is the interpretation of the question that Williams ultimately deems acceptable, ELP, 6; cf. Morality. An Introduction to Ethics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1972), 73–81.
12 ELP, 19.
13 ELP, 20–21, cf. 3.
14 ‘Replies’ in Ross Harrison and J.E.J. Altham ed., op. cit. n. 8, 186 and 191–192. For the purposes of this paper, a more exact formulation of Williams internalism is unnecessary, cf. Joshua Gert, ‘Williams on reasons and rationality’ in Daniel Callcut ed., op cit. n. 9.
15 ‘Preface to the Canto Edition’ in Morality. An Introduction to Ethics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), XIII.
16 ‘Truth in Ethics’ (TIE) Ratio (New Series) VIII (1995), 230, 232. Although in ELP he argues that using so-called ‘thin’ ethical concepts such as ‘morally right’ or ‘morally acceptable’ we cannot formulate knowledge in the sense of “a body of propositional knowledge of ethical truths”, Williams is prepared, in later work, to predicate truth of ethical statements, cf. TIE, 227–229; ‘Who needs ethical knowledge?’ (1992), in Making sense of humanity, op. cit. n. 2, 211, n. 2.
17 Note that the point made in the text does not presuppose that there is a clear distinction between ‘thick’ and ‘thin concepts’, Scheffler, op. cit. n. 6, 414–417.
18 ELP, 142.
19 ‘Internal reasons and the obscurity of blame’ (1989) in Making sense of humanity op. cit n. 2, 37–38; cf. TIE, 236, 237; ‘Pluralism, Community and Left Wittgensteinianism’ (1992), in In the Beginning Was the Deed, op. cit. n. 2, 36.
20 See Williams, Morality, op. cit. n. 11, 79; cf. Williams's remark taken down in Jeffries, Stuart 2002: ‘The quest for truth’ – http://books/guardian.co.uk/review/story/01,12084,850062,00.html. and Mendus, Susan, ‘Making Sense of Our Lives’ Politicial Studies Review 5 (2007), 366Google Scholar.
21 ELP, 51–53, 44–45, 152–155. Cf. ‘Saint Just’, op cit. n. 5, 141–149; ‘Philosophy’, op cit. n. 3, 249.
22 ‘Internal and external reasons’ (1980) in Moral Luck, op. cit. n. 3, 105–106. For the extension to functioning normally and being happy, see ELP, 40–43.
23 ELP, 147.
24 TIE, 237; cf. ‘Ethical knowledge’, op. cit. n. 16, 212, n. 6.
25 TIR, 141.
26 This applies even for more specific objections that depend on the particulars of the past outlook that is being judged, such as Putnam's observation that many ethical views cannot be disentangled from views about the world that according to Williams's own views on objectivity are open to scientific criticism, Putnam, op. cit. n. 10, 175; cf. Jenkins op. cit. n. 6, 144–145 or the question, put by Meitland and Mendus, why we should suspend our judgment on social systems or ways of life of the past, whereas Williams agrees, as I will explain in section 2, that we can and must judge them if they continue into the present, cf. Meiland, Jack W., ‘Bernard Williams' Relativism’ Mind 88 (1979), 261Google Scholar; Mendus op. cit. n. 20, 373. Other recent critics are even more outspoken in identifying the question of a common ethical enterprise as the main issue in the debate with relativism of distance, cf. Rovane, op. cit. n. 9 and her opposition between ‘unimundialism’ and ‘multimundalism’ and John Cottingham, ‘The good life and the “radical contingency of the ethical”’ in Daniel Callcut ed., op. cit. n. 9, 31: ‘we can contemplate the fascinating variety in human cultures and ethical systems yet at the same time see all or many of them, in their different ways, as satisfying or approaching the conditions for human fulfilment.’
27 Quotations are taken from McDowell, John, ‘Critical Notice of Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy by Bernard Williams’ Mind XCV (1986), 384Google Scholar; for similar criticisms see Putnam, op. cit. n. 10, 177, 105.
28 Meiland, op. cit. n. 26, 258–259; Waldron, Jeremy, ‘How to argue for a universal claim’ Columbia Human Rights Law Review 30 (1998–1999), 308Google Scholar.
29 ELP, 163–164; cf. Ibid.: ‘Today all confrontations between cultures must be real confrontations’. This last point also clarifies that what distinguishes real from notional confrontations is not well put in terms of ‘adopting’ or ‘going over to’ the alternative outlook; even if we cannot envisage ‘going over’ to a particular present-day outlook, confrontation with that outlook is not notional, because we share with its supporters the concern of having to live on the same shrinking planet.
30 ELP, 159–160.
31 Scheffler, op. cit. n. 6, 428. Scheffler makes the point for justice.
32 TIR, 142.
33 This interpretation is confirmed by the fact that questions of justice or injustice of past societies are immune to the relativism of distance, since ‘some conceptions of justice were used in those societies themselves’, ELP, 166; for related thoughts see TIE, 234; ‘Saint Just’, op. cit. n. 5, 137; ‘Human Rights’, op. cit. n. 3, 69; ‘Realism and Moralism in Political Theory’ in In the Beginning Was the Deed, op. cit. n. 2, 3–6; cf. also Scheffler, op. cit. n. 6, 428. We encounter an analogous thought in Chapter 7 of Truth & Truthfulness, op. cit. n. 2, where the discovery of history is portrayed as ‘an intellectual advance’, because it satisfied intellectual needs in a sense already present earlier, see especially 170.
34 ELP, 159–160.
35 ‘Human Rights’, op. cit. n. 3, 69; cf. Meiland, op. cit. n. 26, 260 discovers a similar argument in TIR but he does not formulate it quite so generally.
36 TIR, 141, 142; ‘Philosophy’, op cit. n. 3, 491.
37 Ibid.
38 ‘Replies’, op. cit. n. 10, 190–191; ‘Obscurity of blame’, op. cit. n. 19, 39–40; ELP, 192.
39 Compare Jenkins, op. cit. n. 6, 146. But Jenkins does not elaborate.
40 TIE, 239.
41 ELP, 143–144, advances another argument in favour of this conclusion, convincingly refuted in Moore, A.W., ‘Can Reflection Destroy Knowledge?’ Ratio (New Series) IV (1991)Google Scholar and Quinn, Warren, ‘Reflection and the loss of moral knowledge. Williams on objectivity’ (1987) in Morality and Action. Edited by Philippa Foot (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993)Google Scholar.
42 As Williams knows, of course, TIE, 237; but he does not seem to take it into account.
43 ELP, 14.
44 Given that my analysis does not in any way minimize the distinction between real alternatives and merely notional alternatives, it cannot be discarded as an instance of what TIR, 142–143 calls ‘the evaporating view’.
45 The importance of these experiences of an unrepeatable or inaccessible excellence was pointed out to me by Arnold Burms. One of his most telling examples comes from the history of art: we admire the greatness of past masters, while acknowledging that it would be plain silly (if not criminal) for us to try and paint exactly as they did. I do not think that Williams does justice to this kind of experiences in the ethical case when he disposes of them as ‘ethical stories we tell about the past or the exotic [that] have little to do with the reality of those times or places. […] They do not really think about other societies, but use them as a source of emblems or aspirations’, ELP, 162–163.
46 Benjamin Constant, ‘The Liberty of the Ancients Compared with that of the Moderns’ (1819), in Political Writings. Translated and Edited by Biancamaria Fontana (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), 322.
47 Op. cit n. 46, 317, cf. 309, 312–313.
48 Op. cit n. 46, 321.
49 Op. cit n. 46, 316, cf. 323.
50 ‘Saint Just’, op. cit. n. 5, 141–142, 149–150.
51 I would like to thank Arnold Burms, Herman De Dijn, Johan Taels, Xavier Vanmechelen and, in particular, Wilfried Goossens for comments on earlier versions.
