Bernard Williams

In her influential and challenging paper “Skepticism about Practical Reason” Christine Korsgaard sets out to refute an important strand of Humean scepticism as it concerns a Kantian understanding of practical reason.1 Korsgaard distinguishes two components of scepticism about practical reason. The first, which she refers to as content scepticism, argues that reason cannot of itself provide any “substantive guidance to choice and action” (SPR, 311). In its classical formulation, as stated by Hume, it is argued that reason cannot determine our ends. Our ends are determined by our desires and reason is limited to the role of identifying the relevant means to these ends. The second component, which Korsgaard calls motivational scepticism, suggests doubt about the scope of reason as a motive. The claim here, as Korsgaard interprets Hume’s view on this matter, is that “all reasoning that has motivational influence must start from a passion, that being the only possible source of motivation” (SPR, 314).2 Korsgaard’s fundamental objective in “Skepticism about Practical Reason” is to show that motivational scepticism must always be based on content scepticism. In other words, according to Korsgaard, motivational scepticism has no independent force. In this paper I argue that Korsgaard’s attempt to discredit motivational scepticism is unsuccessful.


Reprinted in P. Russell, THE LIMITS OF FREE WILL: SELECTED ESSAYS (Oxford: 2017): 121-133.

Agent-regret seems to give rise to a philosophical puzzle. If we grant that we are not morally responsible for consequences outside of our control (the 'Standard View'), then agent-regret—which involves self-reproach and a desire to make amends for consequences outside one's control—appears rationally indefensible. But despite its apparent indefensibility, agent-regret still seems like a reasonable response to bad moral luck. I argue here that the puzzle can be resolved if we appreciate the role that agent-regret plays in a larger social practice that helps us deal with bad moral luck. That agent-regret is a component in a social practice limits the questions that we can reasonably ask about it. While we can ask whether an experience of agent-regret is rational given the norms of this practice, we cannot ask the question that motivates the puzzle of agent-regret, viz. whether agent-regret is rationally defensible according to the Standard View.

In "Freedom and Resentment" P.F. Strawson, famously, advances a strong form of naturalism that aims to discredit kcepticism about moral responsibility by way of approaching these issues through an account of our reactive attitudes. However, even those who follow Strawson's general strategy on this subject accept that his strong naturalist program needs to be substantially modified, if not rejected. One of the most influential and important efforts to revise and reconstruct the Strawsonian program along these lines has been provided by R. Jay Wallace, who presents a "narrower" construal of our reactive attitudes in his own account of what is involved in holding an agent responsible.  In this paper I argue that Wallace's narrow construal of responsibility comes at too high a cost and that naturalists of a broadly Strawsonian cast should reject it. Related to this point, I argue that Wallace's narrow conception of responsibility is a product of his effort to construct his account within the confines of "the morality system" (i.e. as described by Bernard Williams) and that this way of construing responsibility leads into series of unnecessary and misleading oppositions. A more plausible middle path, I maintain, can be found between Strawson's excessively strong naturalist program and Wallace's narrow and restrictive view of responsibility.

In this paper I deal with the concept of "practical identity " and its role in our moral lives. Starting from the notion of integrity, as introduced by Bernard Williams, I add discussion of materials from Gary Watson and Harry Frankfurt to elucidate some features of the concept. Finally, I apply it to a case of practical ethics to show its usefulness.

This paper makes an initial attempt to redescribe the failure of racial equality in America by making use of the idea of tragedy. I offer a reading of Antigone to stabilize the appropriateness of three ideas in support of reading the history of race in America as tragic: the problem of one thought too many, pollution, and the question, "was it worth it?" I argue, following James Baldwin, that the tragedy of race in America is initiated by the idea of white people who think they are white and that this conviction, initializes the impact of the above three ideas resulting in a society of people lacking in, as defined by Bernard Williams, agent-regret, and, thus, lacking shame.

The article examines whether realist theory should adopt a philosophical anarchist position concerning political obligation. The conclusions are mixed. Drawing on a distinction between strong and weak theories of political obligation (in the terminology of the paper, strong theories are committed to morality-based theorizing while weak theories depart from it), the article argues that philosophical anarchism and realist theory are natural allies against strong theories of political obligation but they must part company when it comes to weak theories because it is exactly their departure from morality-based theorizing that can make weak theories especially appealing to realists. In addition, two further objections can be raised against philosophical anarchism on realist grounds: first, philosophical anarchists are drawn to undesirably sweeping conclusions about the non-existence of legitimate political authority or the extreme scarcity of genuine political relations by their Kantian or Lockean background assumptions and, second, Simmons seems to have an implicit weak theory of political obligation which could be, ironically, much more appealing to realists than his overall Lockean anarchism or his sweeping criticism of weak theories. All in all, can a realist be an anarchist? Probably, but definitely not on philosophical anarchist grounds.

Artykuł stanowi uzupełnienie debaty na temat wartościowania nieśmiertelności poprzez wskazanie na możliwość zastosowania w dyskusji na jej temat wczesnej filozofii Martina Heideggera. Interpretacji poddane zostało opowiadanie Jorge Louisa
Borgesa Nieśmiertelny, stanowiące kontekst rozważań oraz ramę polemiki z tekstami
Bernarda Williamsa i Johna Martina Fischera dotyczącymi nieśmiertelności. Zabieg
ten ma na celu przejście od dominującej w pracach wspomnianych myślicieli perspektywy ontycznej do rozważań ontologicznych.

Much of the literature on the desirability of immortality (inspired by B. Williams) has considered whether the goods of mortal life would be exhausted in an immortal life (whether, i.e., immortality would necessarily end in tedium). However, there has been very little discussion of whether the bads of mortal life would also be exhausted in an immortal life, and more generally, how good immortal life would be on balance, particularly in comparison to a mortal life. Here I argue that there are compelling reasons to favor a mortal over an immortal life because a mortal life offers a higher ceiling for well-being and assigns our agency a greater role in how our lives turn out.

What is it to have a reason to do something? is one sort of question; what is it we have reason to do? is another.  These questions are often explored separately.  But our answers to them may not be independent:  what reasons are may have implications for what reasons there are.  So the door is opened to a troubling tension—the account of what reasons are that is most plausible in its own right could entail a view of what we have reason to do that is independently implausible.  In fact, it looks like this is the case.

The first half of this book develops and defends a version of a desire-based, internalist, account of what normative reasons are.  But does that account entail that there are no moral reasons that apply to all of us, regardless of what we happen to desire?  It may look obvious that it does—that a bullet must be bitten somewhere.  If what we have reason to do depends on what we antecedently desire, corrected only for misinformation and procedural irrationalities, and if desires differ from person to person, there seems to be no basis for assuming that everyone has reason to be moral.  But the bullet may yet be avoided.  The second half of this book shows how:  it builds on Kant’s argument for his formula of humanity to provide an internalist defense of universal moral reasons.  In doing so, it provides a more satisfying answer to the age-old question:  why be moral?

In writings about the Holocaust, both Primo Levi and Hannah Arendt appeal to a concept of shame that extends the reach of the concept in a dramatic way. In its more familiar uses, we experience shame because of a failing of our own (I refer to this as “self-incurred shame”) or because of the failing of another with whom we share membership of a significant group (“other-incurred shame”).  Levi ascribes shame to those soldiers who came across Auschwitz in early 1945; and Arendt writes of an “elemental shame,” the “shame at being human.” Neither case fits the familiar models.This article provides an analysis of both “self-incurred” and “other-incurred shame” in order to reach an understanding of the importance of Levi and Arendt’s extension of the concept and of the challenges it poses.  It also explores the relationship between shame and responsibility and defends a notion of collective guilt. At various points, it engages with the work of Gabriele Taylor, Bernard Williams, Max Scheler,  and David Velleman.

This essay attempts an ‘internalist’ explication of political legitimacy. That is, a philosophically articulated and normatively compelling account, which nonetheless appeals only to resources that are (at least in principle) available to relevantly-affected agents, and not to external (even if eminently endorsable) moral constraints. Internalist accounts are implicit in the political theories of David Hume, Adam Smith, and Max Weber, but are not adequately explicated by any of them. An internalist account of legitimacy is explicitly put forward in the later work of Bernard Williams, but his presentation is somewhat obscure, and insufficiently developed to be serviceable. This essay therefore seeks to go beyond Williams – in particular by drawing on work by James C. Scott, Michael Rosen, Lisa Wedeen, and Sally Haslanger – to articulate a minimalist form of critical theory that enables the construction of an adequate internalist account of legitimacy. In turn I seek to show that internalists can engage in radical social critique of unjust structures, without needing to posit external moral values, raising the question of whether internalism is in fact all that we need.

In this paper I want to show how Bernard Williams contributed, especially with his 'turn' in Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy, to overcoming the dichotomy between analytic and continental philosophy, creating a style of reflection in which conceptual analysis is deeply connected with historical awareness. The idea of genealogy, taken from Nietzsche but heavily modified by Williams, then emerged in books such as Shame and Necessity and Truth and Truthfulness, as an efficacious method for reflection in theoretical and practical philosophy.

Both the genetic endowment we have been equipped with, and the environment we had to be born and raised in, were not-and never are-for us to choose; both are pure luck, a random ticket in this enormously inventive cosmic lottery of existence. If it is luck that has makes us the persons we are, and since our decisions and choices depend largely on the kind of persons we are, it seems that everything we do or fail to do may only be attributed to luck. This paper focuses on criminal behavior, with special emphasis on Tarde's and Lombroso's views, to discuss free will and agency, and their interplay with moral luck, that is, the fixed boundaries set by our nature and the circumstances that surround us.

Gettier problems have become a kind of benchmark challenge that any proposed analysis of knowledge must overcome. Over the last fifty years philosophers have developed other, similar examples which, when applied to various accounts of knowledge, show exactly what Gettier seemed to: there can be cases where someone fulfills the " classic " set of necessary and sufficient conditions, justified true belief, but does not have knowledge. Linda Zagzebski argues that Gettier problems-and the immense literature of similar counterexamples that have emerged-follow a specific structure in the way they show that a given analysis is not sufficient for knowledge. These problems show that, despite being justified, a belief was true only accidentally or by luck. From this she has developed a kind of recipe for forming counterexamples to any proposed analysis of knowledge, where being justified does not guarantee true belief. Agreeing​ ​ that luck/accidentality is what is at work in Gettier problems, many epistemologists have attempted to answer Gettier's challenge by making it a condition of knowledge that luck not interfere. These 'anti-luck' analyses require that true beliefs be formed without interference by relevant forms of luck. 1 I argue that the failure of anti-luck JTB analyses to successfully escape Zagzebski (or Gettier) comes in their treatment of justified yet ​ false​ beliefs. If an analysis cannot form justified yet false beliefs, then it is not subject to Zagzebski's recipe. However, it is then also not of the form that Zagzebski/Gettier are targeting.

Appeals to a ‘tradition’ stretching back to Thucydides have been central to the recent emergence of realism in political theory. This article asks what work these appeals to tradition are doing and whether they are consistent with contemporary political realism’s contextualist commitments. I argue that they are not and that realists also have independent epistemic reasons to attend to contextualist worries. Ultimately, I make the case for an account of the realist tradition that is at once consistent with moderate contextualist commitments and that preserves the classificatory and analytical value of tradition-building.

Bernard Williams influentially attacked ethical theory. This paper assesses arguments for the ‘anti-theory’ position in ethics, including mainly arguments put forward by Williams but also arguments put forward by others. The paper begins by discussing what is supposed to be theory in ethics, what ethical intuitions are taken to be by those involved in the theory versus anti-theory debate. Then the paper responds to all of the following objections to ethical theory. Ethical theory is mistaken to prize principles, mistaken to prize rationalism, and mistaken to presume or prize foundational unity. Ethical theory is mistaken to presume morality is deeply impartial, mistaken to presume to tell agents how to deliberate, mistaken to presume or prize ethical codifiability, mistaken to presume value commensurability, and mistaken to eliminate ethical dilemmas.

Some moral theories — particularly versions of impartial maximizing act-consequentialism such as act-utilitarianism — have been accused of making overly severe demands on agents. This paper aims to clarify what exactly this line of objection is supposed to be, by distinguishing it from some other but closely related objections. The final part of the paper acknowledges some difficulties the demandingness objection poses for my rule-consequentialism.

I argue that the idea of virtue has become central after the Fifties in both Anglo-Saxon and German moral philosophy  and that this revival has come together with recognition of the legitimacy of discussion of issues in normative ethics, something that philosophers both on the Continent and in the Anglo-Saxon world used to overlook in the first half of the twentieth-century. I point at examples such as Stuart Hampshire and Elizabeth Anscombe as proof of the centrality of virtue ethics in the first phase of the normative turn. I also argue that, far from being a radical alternative to ‘modern moral philosophy’ as its proponents believe, virtue ethics is precisely moral argument of the kind both Kantian ethics at its best and less dogmatic versions of utilitarianism have brought to the fore of philosophical discussion.

In this paper I consider Bernard Williams' characterization of thin and thick concepts, and compare it with Ryle's discussion of the notion of a thick description.  (This appears in my edited volume 'Thick Concepts' (OUP, 2013), pp. 60-77.)

Examines various arguments about whether and under what circumstances political violence can be justified and how they can be employed in thinking ethically about violence. It begins by looking at arguments about the justifiability of violence that draw on major ethical theories such as deontology, utilitarianism and consequentialism. It then discusses more specific considerations and arguments concerning obligations to obey the law, the relationship between violence and reason, and between violence and democracy, and whether our duties and obligations regarding the use of violence are universal in scope or are limited by national, religious, community and class affiliation. Finally, it makes some novel suggestions about the overall purpose and conduct of discussions about the justifiability of violence in political theory and philosophy.

John Rawls’ gamification of justice leads him – along with many other monist political philosophers, not least Ronald Dworkin – to fail to take politics seriously enough. I begin with why we consider games frivolous and then show how Rawls’ theory of justice is not merely analogous to a game, as he himself seems to claim, but is in fact a kind of game. As such, it is harmful to political practice in two ways: one as regards the citizens who participate directly in it, and the other as regards those who do no more than follow it. Similar harms, I then argue, come from taking politics too seriously, which is the attitude I ascribe to pluralist political philosophers such as Isaiah Berlin, Stuart Hampshire, and Bernard Williams. To them, the plural, incommensurable nature of values means that they cannot be reconciled and so that politics must be a matter of negotiating dirty, and often tragic, compromises. What we need instead, I conclude, is a third way, one that is neither monist nor pluralist but in-between the two extremes.

Bernard Williams' critic to utilitarianism allows us to analyze the most controversial aspects of this ethical theory. After a brief sketch of the main ideas of utilitarianism, we are going to show some of the main problems of that philosophy. The critical line we are going to follow is the one proposed by Bernard Williams, and other important objections to utilitarianism are not going to be discussed. One aspect of Williams' critic we are going to focus particularly on is the concept of moral integrity, starting from two examples that Williams make to analyze the main aspects of utilitarian doctrine. We will conclude that most of the arguments that utilitarianist thinkers see as a strength of their theory are actually its greatest limits.

Foot argues that there are certain things that all human beings - perhaps all rational agents - need.  This gives a sense in which certain values and disvalues can be called 'objective'.  I suggest that, with certain relatively minor adjustments, her argument can be made cogent but that it cannot be used to show that there are objective answers to questions about what one should do when values conflict.  If Foot's own virtue ethics, utilitarianism, Kantian ethics or any other first-order moral system were to be established as objectively valid, this would require some completely different form of argumentation. 


Almost sixty years ago Philippa Foot published an article that began: To many people it seems that the most notable advance in moral philosophy during the past fifty years or so has been the refutation of naturalism; and they are a little shocked that at this late date such an issue should be reopened. It is easy to understand their attitude: given certain apparently unquestionable assumptions, it would be about as sensible to try to reintroduce naturalism as to try to square the circle. Those who see it like this have satisfied themselves that they know in advance that any naturalistic theory must have a catch in it somewhere, and are put out at having to waste more time exposing an old fallacy. This paper is an attempt to persuade them to look critically at the premises on which their arguments are based. 1 The paper in question was one of a number written by Foot around the time that were highly successful in reopening the issue of naturalism in ethics. Nowadays no one can just take it for granted that naturalism has been refuted, that there is a sharp distinction (or indeed any clear distinction) between fact and value or that it is impossible to derive an 'ought' from an 'is'. This is not to say that the naturalists have been completely victorious, of course; only that naturalism is today a live option. I shall argue that Foot's paper contains an important insight and an equally important mistake; and that the insight and the mistake are linked. I believe that the thinking behind it has influenced the subsequent course of moral philosophy to a quite remarkable extent and that this has been in some ways beneficial and in some ways harmful – not surprisingly, if I am right in seeing it as containing both truth and error. I do not want to exaggerate the influence of this one paper 2 but I do not know of any other that so neatly encapsulates the coupled insight and mistake. The anti-naturalism that Foot is attacking she characterises as follows: It would not be an exaggeration to say that the whole of moral philosophy, as it is now widely taught, rests on a contrast between statements of fact and evaluations, which runs something like this: The truth or falsity of statements of fact is shewn by means of evidence; and what counts as evidence is laid down in the meaning of the expressions occurring in the statement of fact … It follows that no two people can make the same statement and count completely different things as evidence; in the end one at least of them could be convicted of linguistic ignorance. It also follows that if a man is given good evidence for a factual conclusion he cannot just refuse to accept the conclusion on the ground that in his scheme of things this evidence is not evidence at all. 3 But, on the view she is criticising, [w]ith evaluations, however, it is different. An evaluation is not connected logically with the factual statements on which it is based. One man may say that a thing is good because of some fact about it, and another may refuse to take that fact as any evidence, for nothing is laid down in the meaning of 'good' which connects it with one piece of 'evidence' rather than another. It follows that a moral eccentric could argue to moral conclusions from quite idiosyncratic premises; he could say, for instance, that a man was a good man because he clasped and unclasped his hands and never turned NNE after

Williams’s famous argument against immortality rests on the idea that immortality cannot be desirable, at least for human beings, and his contention has spawned a cottage industry of responses. As I will intend to show, the arguments over his view rest on both a difference of temperament and a difference in the sense of desire being used. The former concerns a difference in whether one takes a forward-looking or a backward-looking perspective on personal identity; the latter a distinction between our normal desire to continue living and the kind of desire implied in desiring immortality. Showing that there is some sense of identity and desire that support Williams’s conclusion goes some way toward providing support for his argument, if not a full-fledged defense of it.

The Humean theory of motivation maintains that cognitive states like beliefs lack motivating force. If an agent were to be motivated to perform an action, s/he would necessarily have a preceding desire Φ and a means-end belief that by Ψ-ing she would be able to satisfy Φ. Although different accounts of this theory have been provided so far, in this paper we will examine the account according to which satisfying the preceding desire is the only basis for motivating someone to choose actions. This paper attempts to show that although the Humean theory of motivation as described above is considered a standard view in explaining intentional actions, it may encounter considerable difficulties to make plausible distinctions between the right and wrong kinds of motivations. In order to demonstrate that, we will first explain Bernard Williams’ Humean view and then discuss that ordinary people not only draw distinctions between de re and de dicto motivations, and between self-regarding and other-regarding motivations, but also think that moral agents normally have reasons to be motivated according to the right kind of these motivations in the relevant circumstances. Finally, we shall design a thought experiment to illustrate the point more strikingly. It seems that a plausible theory of motivation in meta-ethics should accommodate these intuitive and common-sensical sorts of distinctions, while the Humean theory of motivation lacks this feature.

This paper puts forward an account of blame combining two ideas that are usually set up against each other: that blame performs an important function, and that blame is justified by the moral reasons making people blameworthy rather than by its functionality. The paper argues that blame could not have developed in a purely instrumental form, and that its functionality itself demands that its functionality be effaced in favour of non-instrumental reasons for blame – its functionality is self-effacing. This notion is sharpened and it is shown how it offers an alternative to instrumentalist or consequentialist accounts of blame which preserves their animating insight while avoiding their weaknesses by recasting that insight in an explanatory role. This not only allows one to do better justice to the authority and autonomy of non-instrumental reasons for blame, but also reveals that autonomy to be a precondition of blame's functionality. Unlike rival accounts, it also avoids the "alienation effect" that renders blame unstable under reflection by undercutting the authority of the moral reasons which enable it to perform its function in the first place. It instead yields a vindicatory explanation that strengthens our confidence in those moral reasons.

Is the idea of the voluntary important? Those who think so tend to regard it as an idea that can be metaphysically deepened through a theory about voluntary action, while those who think it a superficial idea that cannot coherently be deepened tend to neglect it as unimportant. Parting company with both camps, I argue that the idea of the voluntary is at once important and superficial-it is an essentially superficial notion that performs important functions, but can only perform them if we refrain from deepening it. After elaborating the contrast between superficial and deepened ideas of the voluntary, I identify the important functions that the superficial idea performs in relation to demands for fairness and freedom. I then suggest that theories trying to deepen the idea exemplify a problematic moralization of psychology-they warp psychological ideas to ensure that moral demands can be met. I offer a three-tier model of the problematic dynamics this creates, and show why the pressure to deepen the idea should be resisted. On this basis, I take stock of what an idea of the voluntary worth having should look like, and what residual tensions with moral ideas this leaves us with.

Conceptual engineering is thought to face an ‘implementation challenge’: the challenge of securing uptake of engineered concepts. But is the fact that implementation is challenging really a defect to be overcome? What kind of picture of political life would be implied by making engineering easy to implement? We contend that the ambition to obviate the implementation challenge goes against the very idea of liberal democratic politics. On the picture we draw, the implementation challenge can be overcome by institutionalizing control over conceptual uptake, and there are contexts—such as professions that depend on coordinated conceptual innovation—in which there are good reasons to institutionalize control in this fashion. But the liberal fear of this power to control conceptual uptake ending up in the wrong hands, combined with the democratic demand for freedom of thought as a precondition of genuine consent, yields a liberal democratic rationale for keeping implementation challenging.

If ethical reflection on which concepts to use has an avatar, it must be Nietzsche, who took more seriously than most the question of what concepts one should live by, and regarded many of our inherited concepts as deeply problematic. Moreover, his eschewal of traditional attempts to derive the one right set of concepts from timeless rational foundations renders his conceptual ethics strikingly modern, raising the prospect of a Nietzschean alternative to Wittgensteinian non-foundationalism. Yet Nietzsche appears to engage in two seemingly contrary modes of concept evaluation: one looks to concepts’ effects, the other to what concepts express. I offer an account of the expressive character of concepts which unifies these two modes and accounts for Nietzsche’s seemingly bifurcating interests. His fundamental concern is with the effects concepts are likely to have going forward, and it is precisely this concern that motivates his preoccupation with what concepts express. He evaluates concepts by asking for whom they have a point, working back from a concept via the need it fills to the conditions that engender that need and thereby render the concept pointful. For a concept to be pointful is for it to serve the concerns of its users through its effects. But even when it is not pointful, a concept expresses the presuppositions of its pointfulness, which we can work back to by asking who would have need of such a concept. What emerges is a powerful approach to conceptual ethics that looks beyond the formal virtues and vices of concepts at the presuppositions we buy into by using them.

In this paper, I identify a central problem for conceptual engineering: the problem of showing concept-users why they should recognise the authority of the concepts advocated by engineers. I argue that this authority problem cannot generally be solved by appealing to the increased precision, consistency, or other theoretical virtues of engineered concepts. Outside contexts in which we anyway already aim to realise theoretical virtues, solving the authority problem requires engineering to take a functional turn and attend to the functions of concepts. But this then presents us with the problem of how to specify a concept’s function. I argue that extant solutions to this function specification problem are unsatisfactory for engineering purposes, because the functions they identify fail to reliably bestow authority on concepts, and hence fail to solve the authority problem. What is required is an authoritative notion of conceptual function: an account of the functions of concepts which simultaneously shows why concepts fulfilling such functions should be recognised as having authority. I offer an account that meets this combination of demands by specifying the functions of concepts in terms of how they tie in with our present concerns.

Bernard Williams thought that philosophy should address real human concerns felt beyond academic philosophy. But what wider concerns are addressed by Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy, a book he introduces as being ‘principally about how things are in moral philosophy’? In this article, we argue that Williams responded to the concerns of his day indirectly, refraining from explicitly claiming wider cultural relevance, but hinting at it in the pair of epigraphs that opens the main text. This was Williams’s solution to what he perceived as the stylistic problem of how to pursue philosophy as cultural critique. Taking the epigraphs as interpretative keys to the wider resonances of the book, we show how they reveal Williams’s philosophical concerns—with the primacy of character over method, the obligation to follow orders, and the possibility of combining truth, truthfulness, and a meaningful life in a disillusioned world—to be recognisably rooted in the cultural concerns of post-war Britain. In the light of its epigraphs, the book emerges as the critique of a philosophical tradition’s inadequacies to the special difficulties of its cultural moment.

Spontanément, le monde me paraît centré sur moi et sur le moment présent. Spontanément, ma vie et ce qui arrive présentement me paraissent aussi jouir d’une forme de privilège : je leur accorde naturellement une certaine importance et toujours plus d’importance qu’à ce qui arrive à des gens très éloignés, ou à une époque très distante. Spontanément enfin, le monde m’apparaît chargé de qualités sensibles : la pomme verte que je déguste me semble intrinsèquement verte, intrinsèquement délicieuse.

Je suis cependant capable de m’élever au-dessus de ce point de vue subjectif pour considérer le monde plus objectivement. Du point de vue objectif — on parle parfois du point de vue de Sirius, de l’éternité, de l’univers ou même du point de vue de nulle part — le moment présent et moi-même n’avons rien qui nous distingue fondamentalement des autres personnes et des autres moments. A fortiori, nous ne jouissons d’aucun privilège et nous pouvons apparaître totalement dénués d’importance. Du point de vue objectif, de la même manière, les qualités sensibles peuvent sembler irréelles ou au mieux, simplement subjectives : la couleur et la valeur gustative de la pomme ne seraient jamais dans celle-ci, mais au mieux dans l’esprit de celui qui les contemple.

Très souvent en conflit, les points de vue subjectifs et objectifs ont donné lieu à des conceptions philosophiques apparemment antagonistes aussi bien en métaphysique, qu’en philosophie de l’esprit, en épistémologie ou en philosophie morale. Même si elle a rarement fait l’objet d’une étude approfondie (il n’existe pas plus de quatre monographies consacrées exclusivement, ou presque exclusivement à ce sujet : Nagel (1993) and Moore (2000), auxquelles on peut à la limite ajouter McGinn (1983) and Williams (2011)), l’opposition entre les deux points de vue traverse ainsi presque tous les champs de la philosophie contemporaine, qu’elle soit analytique ou continentale.

Lorsque les points de vue subjectifs et objectifs sont incompatibles quel parti doit-on choisir? On pourrait sans plus de procès répondre « le point de vue objectif », et on serait en effet en bonne compagnie. C’est vraisemblablement le choix de la science moderne et des principales éthiques défendues actuellement, qu’elles soient utilitaristes (cf. Sidgwick (1907) et Lazari-Radek and Singer (2014)) ou kantiennes (cf. cependant Moore (2000) pour quelques nuances). C’est même le choix de la théologie catholique! Le Comminotorum de Vincent de Lerins rappelle ainsi qu’« Il faut veiller avec le plus grand soin à tenir pour vrai ce qui a été cru partout, toujours et par tous », c’est-à-dire ce qui ne dépend pas d’un point de vue subjectif particulier.

Comme nous l’avons vu avec l’exemple des qualités sensibles, favoriser le point de vue objectif risque cependant de nous éloigner considérablement du sens commun et de nous obliger à nier l’existence de choses en lesquelles nous semblons croire fermement. Certains philosophes ont aussi défendu l’idée qu’en minimisant l’importance ou la réalité de tout ce qui compte pour nous, le point de vue objectif menaçait de nous « déshumaniser » (Nagel 1993 ; Williams 2011 , 2000). Plus fondamentalement, on peut se demander s’il existe des raisons principielles de préférer le point de vue objectif au point de vue subjectif sur une question donnée et si leur conflit apparent ne peut pas, dans certains cas au moins, être « dépassé ».

Après une de brèves remarques historiques (section 1), nous chercherons à définir la notion de points de vue subjectifs et objectifs (section 2), puis à déterminer leurs valeurs respectives (sections 3 et 4) et les problèmes résultant de leur conflit lorsque celui-ci ne peut pas être dépassé (section 5). Nous nous demanderons enfin si l’idéal d’une conception absolument objective et exhaustive du monde, ou simplement celui d’une conception (non exhaustive) absolument objective, peuvent être atteints (sections 6-7).

In his paper "Wittgenstein and Idealism" Professor Williams proposed a 'model' for reading Wittgenstein's later philosophy which he claimed exposed its transcendental idealist character. By this he roughly meant that Wittgenstein's later position was idealistic to the extent that it disallowed the possibility of there being any independent reality that was not contaminated by our view things. And he thought it was transcendental in the sense that 'our view of things' is not something that we can explain or can locate in the world.
I argue that even if we accept Williams' interpretation of Wittgenstein it does not follow that the latter sponsored any form of transcendental idealism. I make this case in several stages and on two different platforms. Firstly, I give a brief description of the underlying basis of Williams' interpretation. Secondly, I defend the general thrust of it against a critique which issued from Malcolm. Finally, I argue that the views ascribed to Wittgenstein by Williams do not make him into a transcendental idealist. On the one hand, this case is made by showing that there is a non-trivial resemblance between Williams' Wittgenstein and Donald Davidson who is a self-styled realist. On the other hand, I set out exegetical reasons for thinking that if the continuity that Williams sees between the Tractatus and the later writings actually exists then it provides reason in itself not to regard Wittgenstein as an idealist.

In this article, I explore recent work on realist political theory and international politics. I discuss how scholarship on the topic emanates from two different fields — International Relations and political philosophy — and argue that there is a good case for greater engagement between them. I open by delineating various kinds of realism,
showing that the term covers a wide variety of methodological and political approaches. In particular, I suggest, it is important to recognize the difference between liberal and radical approaches. The remainder of the essay examines assorted examples of realist international political theorizing, work that ranges from attempts to rewrite the canon of 20th century political thought to contributions
to the vibrant global justice debates.