- Paperback: 248 pages
- Publisher: Harvard University Press (1 July 1985)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 067426858X
- ISBN-13: 978-0674268586
- Product Dimensions: 23.3 x 15.3 x 1.8 cm
- Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 1,465,724 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- See Complete Table of Contents
Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy (Routledge Classics)
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Review
'Williams's discussions are much to be valued: his explicitness and argumentative ingenuity focus the issues more sharply, and at greater depth, than any comparable work I know...One of the most interesting contributions of recent years, not only to ethics but to philosophy.' - John McDowell, Mind
'This is a superior book, glittering with intelligence and style.' - Thomas Nagel, Journal of Philosophy
'Bernard Williams has a greater force of thought, deployed over a wider horizon, than anyone else I have ever listened to.' John Dunn - The Times Higher Education Supplement
'Who has not asked—if only when depressed—"How should I live, and how can I find out?" To read this book is to be taken through one of the most sophisticated discussions available of such questions by an engaging, sceptical often wryly witty and extraordinary subtle professional.' - Ronald de Sousa, New York Times Book Review
'Bernard Williams’s book is better read not as an introduction to ethics, but as an attempt to take stock of the present state of the subject. As such, it is a splendid piece of work. It illuminatingly maps the various tendencies and difficulties which they encounter…Such stocktaking is much needed. Bernard Williams is probably the philosopher best placed to undertake it, and he has done it admirably.' - Richard Norman, Times Higher Education Supplement
'Remarkably lively and enjoyable…It is a very rich book, containing excellent descriptions of a variety of moral theories, and innumerable and often witty observations on topics encountered on the way.' - Philippa Foot, Times Literary Supplement
'Williams's discussions are much to be valued: his explicitness and argumentative ingenuity focus the issues more sharply, and at greater depth, than any comparable work I know...One of the most interesting contributions of recent years, not only to ethics but to philosophy.' - John McDowell, Mind
--This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.
John McDowell, Mind
'One of the most interesting contributions of recent years, not only to ethics but to philosophy'
--This text refers to an alternate
Paperback
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First Sentence
IT IS NOT a trivial question, Socrates said: what we are talking about is how one should live. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index
IT IS NOT a trivial question, Socrates said: what we are talking about is how one should live. Read the first page
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Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
32 of 35 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
This is a very interesting book. It is very sceptical about the role of philosophy in ethics, but still shows confidence about the possibility of thinking about important things in ethics. The style is very different from the typical philosophical book; Williams focuses on the topics he finds important, rather than giving an elaborate discussion of every aspect in the history of Morality. Thereby we are given insight into how the subject should be discussed according to Williams. His main target are universalistic moral philosophers who try to give an ultimate foundation for ethics - for instance Immanuel Kant, R.M. Hare, John Rawls and Aristoteles. The aim of philosophy shouldn't be to establish moral principles, but to find good reasons and thereby confidence for living a good and flourishing life. The most important question throughout the book is Socrates': How should one live. The result is a fascinating, mostly critical, book about moral philosophy. Since its publication in 1985 it has had immense influence on the philosophy of ethics.
2 of 3 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
I know that many people say that it is Shame and Necessity (Sather Classical Lectures) but this is the indispensable Williams book in my opinion. Best overview of his thought and now with a superb commentary.
2 of 3 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
A short, powerful and accessible book that succeeds in articulating both a (selective) history of the "peculiar institution" of morality and its continued failure to secure for itself the foundations - or Archimedean point - upon which it can ground itself.
A strangely negative reviewer has written above that "Describing Osama Bin Laden as unethical just doesn't seem to capture everything we would want to say". Well, that may well be true but such a complaint is not an argument - only yet another voice asking for an apparently unobtainable ethical foundation from which we can utter the most stringent of our moral judgments with the confidence that what we are doing has some meaning above and beyond an expression of emotion.
A strangely negative reviewer has written above that "Describing Osama Bin Laden as unethical just doesn't seem to capture everything we would want to say". Well, that may well be true but such a complaint is not an argument - only yet another voice asking for an apparently unobtainable ethical foundation from which we can utter the most stringent of our moral judgments with the confidence that what we are doing has some meaning above and beyond an expression of emotion.
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