Bernard Williams and the Nature of Moral Reflection
In Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy, Bernard Williams offers an unsettling critique of modern moral philosophy, a critique that calls for a radical reorientation that would have us start again leaving behind much or most or what has been done from the time of the flowering of classical philosophy. However, like moral philosophy itself, Williams' critique reaches beyond the theoretical to matters of practical concern. Moral philosophy since the time of Socrates has endeavoured to answer the question, “How should one live?” (1). Williams' critique is unsettling not simply or primarily because it implies that philosophy has much less to contribute to answering this question than Socrates and most philosophers since his time have thought. Rather, it is unsettling because it implies that Socrates' view that an unexamined life is not worth living, together with his assumption, shared by most moral philosophers since his time, that determining how one should live requires that one step back and reflect on the values governing one's life (19ff.), is either seriously misleading (110 and 116) or mistaken (168).