Bernard Williams' and the Costs of Being Moral
Keywords:
Obrigação Moral, Bernard Williams, IntegridadeAbstract
According to the main moral theories we inherited from modernity, to take morality seriously, we need to cultivate only interests, relationships, and projects that align with our moral duties and obligations. In numerous books and articles, Bernard Williams challenges this view. He contends that non-moral practical reasons compete with morality, and in many situations, it would be both philosophically suspect and ethically undesirable to give deliberative priority to our duties and obligations. The objective of this article is to present some counterarguments to this skeptical viewpoint. My argument is that Williams's skepticism is motivated by a particular romantic vision of how we should live our lives, which may be too permissive and lenient in a socially unjust world like ours. Furthermore, I argue that, contrary to Williams's skepticism, moral obligations are not incompatible with the agent's integrity.
References
ALTHAM, J.E.J; HARRISON, R (eds.). “World, Mind and Ethics: Essays on the Ethical Philosophy of Bernard Williams”. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995.
ARISTOTLE. “Nicomachean Ethics”. Trans. C.D.C Reeve. Cambridge: Hackett Publishing, 2014.
ASHFORD, E. “The Demandingness of Scanlon’s Contractualism”. Ethics, 113, 2, 2003. Pp. 273-302.
BLACKBURN, S. “Making Ends Meet“. Philosophical Books, 27, 4, 1986. pp. 193-203.
CULLITY, G. “The Moral Demands of Affluence”. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004.
FRICKER, M. “Bernard Williams as a Philosopher of Ethical Freedom”. Canadian Journal of Philosophy, 50, 8, 2020, pp. 919-933.
GRECO, L. Humean Reflections in the Ethics of Bernard Williams. Utilitas, 19, 3, 2007, pp. 312-325.
HARRISON, R (ed.). “Rational Action”. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980.
HENDERSON (et. al.). “The Living Anonymous Kidney Donor: Lunatic or Saint?”. American Journal of Transplantation, 3, 2, 2003, pp. 203-13.
HERMAN, B. “The practice of moral judgment”. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1993.
_____. Morality and Everyday Life. Proceedings and Addresses of the American Philosophical Association, 74, 2, 2000, pp. 29-46.
JENKINS, M. P. “Bernard Williams”. Chesham: Acumen, 2006.
KAGAN, S. “The Limits of Morality”. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989.
KANT, I (1785). “Groundwork of The metaphysics of morals”. In: Gregor, M. (ed.). Practical Philosophy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996.
_____ (1788). “Critique of Practical Reason”. In: Gregor, M. (ed.). Practical Philosophy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996.
_____ (1797). “The Metaphysics of Morals”. In: Gregor, M. (ed.). Practical Philosophy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996.
LEVI, Primo (1947). “É isto um Homem?”. Tradução para o português de Luigi Del Re. Rio de Janeiro: Rocco, 1988.
LICHTENBERG, J. “Negative Duties, Positive Duties, and the New Harms”. Ethics, 120, 3, 2010, pp. 557-578.
MACFARQUHAR, L. “Strangers Drowning: Impossible Idealism, Drastic Choices, and the Urge to Help”. New York: Penguin Books, 2015.
MCDOWELL, John. “Might There Be External Reasons?”. In: ALTHAM, J.E.J; HARRISON, R (eds.), 1995, pp. 68-85.
MILLGRAM, E (ed.). Varieties of Practical Reasoning. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2001.
pp. 91-97.
MURPHY, L. B. “Moral demands in nonideal theory”. New York: Oxford University Press, 2000.
NAGEL, T. “Equality and partiality”. New York: Oxford University Press, 1991.
_____. “The View from Nowhere”. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986.
NUSSBAUM, M. C. “The fragility of goodness: luck and ethics in Greek tragedy and philosophy”. Rev. ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001.
_____. “Why Practice Needs Ethical Theory: Particularism, Principle, and Bad Behavior”. In: BURTON, S. J. (ed.). The Path of the Law and its Influence. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000, pp. 50–86.
PARFIT, D. “On what matters“. Vol. 1. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011.
PLATO. “Crito”. In: Cooper, J.M (ed.). Plato: Complete Works, Indianapolis: Hackett, 1997.
RAWLS, J .“Political Liberalism”. New York: Columbia University Press, 1993.
_____. “Justice as Fairness: a Restatement”. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2001.
SCANLON, T. “The Difficulty of Tolerance: Essays in Political Philosophy”. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003.
_____. “What We Owe to Each Other”. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1998.
SCHEFFLER, S. “Human Morality”. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994.
SIDGWICK, H. “The Methods of Ethics”. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 1907.
SINGER, P. “Famine, Affluence, and Morality“. Philosophy & Public Affairs, 1, 3, 1972, pp. 229-43.
_____. “Practical Ethics”. 3ª ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011.
SMART, J.; WILLIAMS, B. “Utilitarianism For and Against”. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1973.
SWANTON, C. Virtue ethics: a pluralistic view. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005.
WILLIAMS, B. “Ethics and the limits of philosophy“. London: Routledge, 1985.
_____. “Morality: an introduction to ethics”. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1972.
_____. “Moral Luck”. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981.
_____. “Postscript: Some Further Notes on Internal and External Reasons”. In: Millgran, E. (ed.), 2001, pp. 91-97.
_____. “Making Sense of Humanity, and other Philosophical Papers”. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995.
_____. “Persons, Character and Morality”. In RORTY, A. O. (ed.). The Identities of Persons. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1976a. Reprinted in: Moral Luck. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981, pp. 1-19.
_____. “Moral Luck”. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, 1, 1976b, pp. 115-135.
Reprinted in: Moral Luck. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981, pp. 20-39.
______. “Internal and External Reasons”. In: HARRISON, R (ed.), 1980, pp. 17-28.
Reprinted in: Moral Luck. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981, pp. 101-113.
______. “Internal Reasons and the Obscurity of Blame”. In: Williams, B, 1995, pp. 33-45.
WOLF, S. Moral Saints. The Journal of Philosophy, 79, 8, 1982, pp. 419-439.
_____. Morality and Partiality. Philosophical Perspectives, 6, 1992, pp. 243-259.
Downloads
Published
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2025 Revista Kriterion
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
