This excellent book was recommended to me, while I was looking for resources that would introduce the classic problem of free will.

Strictly speaking, it is not an introduction at all; characteristic of modern philosophy, it is a deconstruction of the concept of moral autonomy. This deconstruction takes the form of a Nietzschean reconstruction of the history of this concept.

The similarity to Nietzsche doesn’t end there - for the author, the ground upon which our modern structures of moral autonomy rest, is the area ploughed by the ancient Greeks. The author makes the same historical demarcation that Nietzsche insisted on – namely, that the true genius of the ancient Greeks lay in their tragedians; and that this genius was appropriated by the burgeoning philosophers, beginning with Plato, inaugurating a history of conceptual development, refinement, and revocation that has eventually dovetailed into something resembling our modern concepts.

What is the purpose of this historical reconstruction – or, to remain with Nietzsche, this genealogical investigation into our cherished heritage of moral autonomy? The author avers that philosophers tend to lack a sense of history – that they use concepts without an appreciation of the modulating soil from which these concepts gain their sustenance. This is, of course, a point that has been well taken since the beginning of the last century. The difference is the brilliant exegesis that author conducts within these pages - he successfully argues that, simply because the lived concepts that percolated within the words of the ancient dramatists had not been consciously elucidated in philosophical discourse, this did not mean that these concepts were absent of their force. It is in the link between these unspoken concepts and their elucidation at the beginning of the philosophical tradition, that the author's interpretive energies are focused.

The modern concept of moral autonomy is shown to be the latest stage in a long process of development that has its roots in the lived, 'primitive' concepts that were dramatized in ancient tragedy. An incipient philosophy of action is evidenced - questions of moral responsibility, the specter of fate, and the evolution of moral autonomy from a much earlier shame-based honor society are all brought to light to showcase the distinction between 'what we think, and what we think we think.' The point is that, we actually think much like the ancient Greeks themselves thought about such matters; where the difference lies is the changing nature of self-interpretation i.e. what we think we think; and this, the author avers, is the result of the historical development of philosophy.

The blurb mentions that Williams is regarded as 'an analytic philosopher with the soul of a humanist', which is accurate praise. The author's vast erudition and clarity of thought is evidenced throughout by the tightly-packed sentences that abound in this book. I am now much more curious to read his other works - if they are half as enlightening as this book, I shall be well-served.

4.5

Such a pleasure to read. Interesting contrast between the early greek writers and Plato and Aristotle.
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"... Plato, Aristotle, Kant, Hegel are all on the same side, all believing in one way or another that the universe or history or the structure of human reason can, when properly understood, yield a pattern that makes sense of human life and human aspirations. Sophocles and Thucydides, by contrast, are alike in leaving us with no such sense. Each of them represents human beings as dealing sensibly, foolishly, sometimes catastrophically, sometimes nobly, with a world that is only partially intelligible to human agency and in itself is not necessarily well adjusted to ethical aspirations." (164)
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"Greek tragedy precisely refused to present human beings who are ideally in harmony with their word, and has no room for a world that, if it were understood well enough, could instruct us how to be in harmony with it. There is gap between what the tragic character is, concretely and continently, and the ways in which the world acts upon him." (165)
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"We have to acknowledge the hideous costs of many human achievements that we value, including this reflective sense itself, and recognize that there is no redemptive Hegelian history or universal Leibnizian cost-benefit analysis to show that it will come out well enough in the end." (166)

Williams brilliantly skewers theories it seemingly would have never occurred to anyone to believe and which apparently no one >has< believed since the book was published in the early nineties. Why is this book then so captivating? I cannot tell you but it is....also it has somehow diminished my longtime geek love for Immanuel Kant and there is inexplicable pleasure in this as well.

Maybe this was too airy, abstract, and specialized for me, but I still enjoyed meeting again my old friends from college--Oedipus, Odysseus, Antigone, Homer, Aeschylus, Aristotle, and that set. The theme seems to be that the ancient Greeks were not so different from us as is sometimes supposed. I didn't know anyone supposed such nonsense. The book does include a striking account of the difference between shame and guilt: guilt comes from acts that arouse anger, resentment, or indignation in others; shame comes from acts that arouse contempt, derision, or avoidance.

This is a stunning book. It, for me, brings to the fore the importance of character and how much that can do to shape us as humans, both egoistically and with regards to others. The sections on Ajax, who cannot live with himself anymore, are particularly powerful. This book made a great impression on me, I think it's important and I imagine I'll read it again and again and again. And I have no interest in Greek Drama and until last year couldn't see any value in Greek Philosophy whatsoever. But Williams does what he always does, and he shows how important some old ideas are, not just trapped in time, but for us.

This is a superb treatment of some key issues in classical thought. The issues of will, shame, and autonomy are treated in great depth from a philosophical perspective. Addressing such fundamental and important issues, Williams explains modern conceptions so that the reader can more clearly discern the differences between ancient and modern modes of perception. This is one of the best, most informative, and most thought-provoking books that I've ever read and I will never part with it.

Williams challenges the commonplace assumption that the framework of ethical thinking of modernity represents a progression from that of the ancient Greeks. He works to uncover the commonsense notions about moral experience that we share with the Greeks so as to evince that ‘what we think about moral obligations etc.’ is not always what ‘we think we think’. Williams intends to point out the extent to which our intuitive responses and everyday practice belie the ruling notions of morality systems and in so doing dispel ‘our illusions’ about the superiority of the modern world’s grasp on moral thought and language. Generally, Williams is critical of post-Platonic theoretical frameworks that obscure contingent ethical experience and of demands of rationality that negate or minimize the role of moral feeling. He deploys an analysis of literary texts that acknowledges that significant intuitions about factual moral experience are best expressed in literary fiction: ‘Why not take examples from life? It’s a good question, and it has a short answer: what philosophers will lay before themselves and their readers as an alternative to literature will not be life, but bad literature.’ (p.13)

overstates his case in some places, but a productive enough book for thinking through the differences between the ethical world of the greeks and us moderns. academic moral philosophy is still kinda the pits though.... at the very least furnishes some good examples and thought figures.

um filósofo da modernidade diz que os os filósofos modernos não prestam (episódio 784920753279)

I wish I could rate this book with 3,5 stars. Sometimes it is good and captures all your attention, and sometimes it is not very interesting.

I’ve read a lot of thinkers in this genre (Oxford adjacent, Greek revival). So I was familiar with many of the philosophers Williams’ refers to, but entirely out of my element in the realm of Greek tragedy on which the book heavily focuses. This was an incredibly startling read and I’ll be sitting with its conclusions and insights for modernity in the years to come