|
 Building
a home philosophy library
Lyn
May and Steve Deery
The
eighth in a series of articles advising on how to build your own
home philosophy library.
No.
8 Bernard Williams, Morality: An Introduction to Ethics
Were
our forefathers convinced by ? Apparently not. The next two thousand years can be
seen as an accumulation of competing moral positions, with supporters
and detractors creating ever more complex arguments. In addition
to alternative systems of living the moral life there has been a
search for the ultimate na ture of morals - what is the metaphysical
status of moral value? It is unsurprising then that far from providing
a guide to life many philosophical arguments paralyse the enquirer
with uncertainty and complexity. Morality clears out some
of the accumulated clutter of the last two thousand years.
Although
Bernard Williams is no supporter of moral objectivism a key concern
of Morality is the varieties of moral subjectivism - the
view that there are no moral values independent of human experience
- that have dominated moral thinking in recent times. He claims
many such views are confused and he attempts to make coherent what
other writers have often made virtually incomprehensible. There
is nothing superfluous in this book; he neither indulges himself,
nor bores the reader - reason enough to recommend it.
Having
made subjectivism coherent he thinks it leaves us with a problem
that demands resolution. How are we to distinguish moral claims
from the non-moral? For example there are some statements that are
either true or false regardless of what we believe. Statements like
'it is raining' have a subject matter independent of the thought.
However, subjective moral claims do not mirror the world in the
way empirical facts are said to. So while the first thought has
content, the moral claim 'apartheid is wrong' seems not to. Yet
despite this we still feel as though moral claims like this
mirror something, and are not something freely created.
Even
though Williams' clarifies some of the key issues in moral philosophy
the reader may still remain unconvinced that ethical arguments have
any application in the real world.
Morality:
An introduction to ethics, Bernard Williams (Cambridge
University Press) £7.95/$11.95
A
new book will be featured at the beginning of July 2001.
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