"Ethical life is important, but it can see that things other than itself are important. It contains motivations that indeed serve these other ends but at the same time be seen from within that life as part of what make it worth living."

I remember reading this book as a 19-year old undergraduate and finding it difficult to imagine what exactly drew people to Williams. I have to say, returning to it now, that whatever its pitfalls might be in terms of specific arguments, a sin which I found much more condemnable back then, Williams has also begun to occupy a place in my heart. I re-read this for the ethics-class I'm teaching, and I just wish that I can convey to them the depth, and in a sense, the un-complexity of the ideas here -- at least better than I did to myself back then!

This is an interesting book in which Williams makes some profound and deep observations, not just about ethics but, as the title implies, about the ability of philosophy to understand, create or comment on ethics. In the end I got a lot from it, but it does have one very major flaw. Williams has a flowery style of writing that make some sections impenetrable until you have read them several times. His habit of writing elongated sentences with lots of sub clauses can make it difficult to follow and reminded me of reading 19th century French novels. It takes some time to get used to and I could not help feeling it could all be so much easier to read! However, he makes many profound and powerful points you will find nowhere else.

2019 update: I've just re-read this and can't help feeling I was a little unfair when I first reviewed it. It's not a light read, but requires concentration and mine tends to waver. But there is a lot here to think about. If I read it from scratch now it would be 4 stars. I would suggest if you do read it, and you have the version I read published by Routledge with the "Commentary on the Text" by AW Moore at the end - read this first as it gives some help understanding Williams.

Le debut était prometteur, intéressant même (purée). Puis Williams s'est répète pendant 300 pages, à attaqué des theories très travaillés avec les pires contres arguments pour arriver à une conclusion tellement basique que ça aurait pu être son intro (je me remettrai jamais de la "confiance" éthique je pense

Really disappointed by this one. Was preceded by its reputation, but I found it, in the end, very abstract in the bad sense of the term, unpractical, unprincipled.

I have to say, though, that I came very late to moral philosophy, because it seemed entirely... fake, to me, for lack of a better term. Either outright implausible, or more detrimental to our understanding of morality than illuminating of it in any way. This changed all of a sudden when I first read After Virtue which lead me to Bernard Williams, but I did not get much out of the latter.

I do like some ideas presented here, such as the idea that our problem is really not to restrict the sources for our intuition of morality, but that we should get it where and when we can. But you don't need a whole book to say this.

DNF. I got assigned this book in college but never read it. I ended up reading some secondary literature on Williams’s views instead, which I found intensely interesting. But as I get older I find I have less and less patience with the highly elliptical and not very rigorous style of these original works. Just give me the damn bottom line! It doesn’t help that, despite being “analytical” (or at least within that tradition), philosophy in general is just not very clear. I used to think it was my fault for not being smart enough or working hard enough to understand. I now think these guys are just not the clearest writers.

That being said, Williams really was a deeply interesting thinker with good ideas. I just no longer want to read him (or others) directly.

Not an easy read - Williams doesn't make much of an effort to be clear nor to provide thorough explanations of his concepts/ideas - but certainly worth it. William's brilliance and his iconoclastic proclivity make the book both provoking and exciting (to the extent an academic book on ethics can be so...). Moreover, I tend to find many of his most radical claims sound and, despite having some problems with a couple of Williams' arguments, I'm quite sympathetic to project as a whole.
Most of all, the critique of utilitarianism and deontology as free-floating, divorced of practice, and ignorant of character and personal commitments and dispositions seems quite valid to me. As does the consequent view that ethical theory should serve not to guide ethical reasoning but to examine lived experience and to promote self-understanding.
I also find valuable and sound Williams invective against the pervasiveness of moral talk and arguments. As he claims, many of the valid reasons that justify everyday behaviour and social organisation are grounded on non-ethical considerations. Putting everything in terms of moral obligation mystifies much of social life and prevents more acute critique.
I am not, however, so convinced by - and actually not sure if I fully grasped - Williams' relativism. His view of moral objectivity - which I find semi-compelling - does seem to imply some form of moral relativism. But his distinction between real and notional confrontation - devised to elide the most common arguments against relativism - doesn't seem to be helpful. It still leaves moral relativism exposed to accusations of it being a cop out for moral responsibility.
Despite this apparent (quite relevant) flaw, the book is a must read for all those interested in moral philosophy. It's an ambitious overview and meta-analysis that, even if one disagrees with the arguments, puts everything in perspective.

This book is a must-read for anyone interested in ethics or moral philosophy. Williams clarifies the problems and practice of ethics in a way that gets rid of the obscurity that seems to come with contemporary moral philosophy and ethics. In what is a fairly short book, he covers an impressive range of subjects and offers a number of compelling arguments, particularly those in favour of Aristotelian ethics, those against Kantian morality and on the fact/value distinction.

One thing I occasionally found irritating was Williams's writing style. It regularly switches from being pithy, lucid, and stylish to being overly convoluted and opaque. He also has an over-fondness for commas; this tendency of Williams's writing made it a struggle to pay attention to his message at times and caused me to have to re-read his sentences more often than I usual. However, this is a minor issue and he makes up for this with impressive clarity on some topics.

All in all, whether you agree or disagree with Williams (here I disagree with Williams much, but I agree with him much more), the book is too well argued and goes against the grain of so much contemporary ethical and moral philosophy that it should not be ignored.

https://www.klagge.net/post/my-may-ju...

Williams' Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy is a deceptively easy read. There is a great deal going on in Williams' book, and a great deal that is positive. His critique of 'morality' and the notion of obligation is forceful, and his separation of 'ethics' from 'morality' is prudent and well formed. Ultimately though, Williams position leaves one in a difficult position. His focus on deliberative priority, and first person decision making fails to question how/why certain individuals deliberate or reflect in certain manners, and gives one no normative authority to claim that certain ways of thinking/reflecting are misguided or wrong (i.e. sexist/racists/speciest deliberations etc.).

It is uncommon to read a modern book—one published in the last fifty years, say—that stands fully equal to more ancient ones. This is hardly surprising, as we rarely read the dross of several centuries past whereas that of our own time often confronts us. What Bernard Williams has written is therefore remarkable; that what he has written is a work of moral philosophy, written within, if also against, the insalubrious milieu of modern philosophical writing, is even more so.

The book is amenable to the student, since it contains an overview of past ethical thought as well as Williams’ own ideas. Nor are the two separate, for it is in that overview, occupying the first half of the book, that he discovers the basis of the proposals that he elaborates in the second half. Those proposals are expressed concisely enough in the book: they consist in a considered development of Aristotle’s view, that ethics are a matter of the qualities needed to live well in a community as opposed to a theoretical study of obligations.

The vigour of Williams’s opposition to the latter conception, which he terms “morality” as opposed to “ethics”, becomes apparent in the final chapter. In it, he sets out his belief that this “peculiar institution”, whether in the mould of Plato, Kant or Mill, is ultimately a pernicious one. That, when one reaches this conclusion, one is neither astonished nor depressed is a testament to how well the book is argued and written.

Williams is also a pleasure to read. His writing is imbued with a confidence that bespeaks flexibility; it suggests he would rather be wrong than evasive. Occasionally he dismisses philosophical opponents with wit—his remark that “Moore’s philosophy is marked by an affectation of modest caution, which clogged his prose with qualifications but rarely restrained him from wild error” is particularly sharp, as is his rebuke of Peter Singer in a footnote—but he never papers over a gap in his own argumentation with a joke.

The result of all this is a genuine contribution to the field of moral philosophy, even if it is one that places sharp limits on what the field can hope to achieve. It is also persuasive evidence that, even today, philosophers can offer worthy contributions to philosophy’s most resonant questions.

Still scintillating. Williams really cuts to the heart of things: the fact that so much of moral philosophy makes use of special pleading and strangely unintuitive concepts. The only philosopher of the standard variety worth respecting is Kant, and that's why he's so dangerous.