ABSTRACT
Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy is by fairly common consent Bernard Williams’ greatest work. It certainly serves as the locus classicus for his ideas in moral philosophy. When Williams first began to write in this area, in the early 1960s, the subject had for some time been embroiled in abstract second-order debates about moral language, for instance about whether an act of moral condemnation, such as telling someone, “It was reprehensible of you to do that,” involved making any genuine assertion. Williams was keen to re-establish contact with the real concerns that animate our ordinary ethical experience. Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy is in many respects the culmination of a wonderfully successful crusade to do just that. It shows admirably how much moral philosophy can achieve. There is a profound irony, therefore, in the fact that one of the main themes of the book, advertised in the second half of its title, is how little moral philosophy can achieve. In particular, moral philosophy cannot deliver the very thing that might have been expected of it, a theory to guide ethical reasoning. What it can do is to assist the self-understanding of those whose ethical reasoning already has guidance from elsewhere. That is, it can help to provide a critique of lived ethical experience. And that, as alluded to in the first half of the book's title, is precisely what Williams wants it to do in these pages.
