Morality and Agency: Themes from Bernard Williams

Bernard Williams (1929–2003) was one of the great philosophical figures of the second half of the twentieth century. This collection, devoted to Williams’s ethical thought, is divided into two sections. The chapters in the first section deal with Williams’s attempts to explore theoretical options beyond the confines of what he called “the morality system.” These chapters show how, through a critical confrontation with this system, Williams found new ways to think about moral obligation, morally relevant emotions such as shame, the relevance of the history of philosophy, and also how these new ways of thinking are linked to Williams’s novel metaethical ideas concerning the possibility and limits of moral knowledge. In the book’s second section, readers will find chapters related to Williams’s discussions of freedom and responsibility, the role of luck in our moral lives, and agents’ practical reasons. Williams’s concerns about the morality system still loom large here. For example, Williams was skeptical about the prospects of putting our responsibility practices, and the conception of free will with which they are associated, on a firm footing. But as more than one author shows, Williams’s skepticism is largely confined to conceptions of free will and responsibility that are conditioned by the morality system’s uneasiness with luck. Williams has a more vindicatory story to tell about the prospects for freedom and responsibility once these concepts have been untethered from the assumptions of this system.