4 - The Problem of Contingency

Summary

In his Lecture on Ethics, Ludwig Wittgenstein remarks, ‘if a man could write a book on Ethics which really was a book on Ethics, this book would, with an explosion, destroy all the other books in the world’ (1965, 7). This is because, in Wittgenstein's view, ethical writing in the 20th century was too often affiliated with specific political-economic projects or religious traditions. To overcome this situation, moral philosophers and value theorists sought to disentangle ethics from these shadows. But, in doing so, moral theory became bogged down in second-order bickering of the kind surveyed in the past two chapters. Bernard Williams was heavy hearted when he considered this development. Although generally in favour of the project of moral theory, he was disconcerted by the prevailing efforts of moral realism, purposefully labelling them a ‘peculiar institution’. Derik Parfit captures this attitude well; he writes that ‘Williams has a real target here. Many philosophers had hoped to find moral argument, or truths, that could not fail to motivate us. Williams, realistically, rejects that hope’ (Parfit 1997, 111). Williams lamented that morality had come to be encumbered by modernity. Like Socrates, for whom philosophy was not, and could not be, a discipline, Williams asked directly whether moral inquiry could make good on its aspirations. Ultimately, he concluded that it could not. Rather, it was better to find another way to achieve his aspiration.

Williams’ alternative path sought to avoid the shackles of moral realism. The result was Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy. An iconoclastic in temperament – John McDowell (1986) described it as a ‘polemic against a theoretical aspiration for philosophical ethics’ – Williams’ prime target is obligation and duty-based conceptions of ethical thought that are unconditionally binding due to their objective grounding, which, while ‘not an invention of philosophers’, is nevertheless reinforced by a particular kind of philosophical thought (2006a, 174). As Williams writes, ‘many philosophical mistakes are woven into morality’ (2006a, 196). For example, a derivative of moral reductionism is how objectively apparent obligations diminish the character and power of persons to act in a way that genuinely respects their moral powers, judgement and integrity. Williams directs his scepticism towards the purported authority of Kantian, utilitarian and Aristotelian ethical theory, and finds these traditions unsatisfactory.