Table Of ContentLuck, Value, and Commitment
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Luck, Value, and
Commitment
Themes from the Ethics of Bernard Williams
Edited by
Ulrike Heuer
and Gerald Lang
1
1
Great Clarendon Street, Oxford OX2 6DP,
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First published 2012
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ISBN: 978–0–19–959932–5
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CONTENTS
Preface vii
List of Contributors ix
Introduction 1
U lrike H euer and G erald L ang
ETHICAL THEORY
1. Theory versus Anti-theory in Ethics 19
B rad H ooker
2. The Inescapability of Consequentialism 41
P hilip P ettit
3. ‘One Thought Too Many’: Love, Morality, and the Ordering
of Commitment 71
S usan W olf
MORAL LUCK
4. Being Responsible, Taking Responsibility, and Penumbral
Agency 95
D avid E noch
5. Agency and Luck 133
J oseph R az
vi / Contents
6. Justifi cation, Regret, and Moral Complaint: Looking Forward
and Looking Backward on (and in) Human Life 163
R . J ay W allace
REASONS AND ‘OUGHT’
7. A Puzzle about Internal Reasons 195
M ichael S mith
8. Thick Concepts and Internal Reasons 219
U lrike H euer
9. Williams on Ought 247
J ohn B roome
INTUITIONISM AND MORAL KNOWLEDGE
10. McDowell, Williams, and Intuitionism 269
J onathan D ancy
POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY
11. Discrimination, Partial Concern, and Arbitrariness 293
G erald L ang
Index 333
PREFACE
This collection of essays bears a signifi cant relation to the papers presented at
the Themes from the Ethics of Bernard Williams Conference, which was held
at the University of Leeds in the summer of 2009, under the auspices of the
newly established Centre for Ethics and Metaethics in the Department of Philo-
sophy at Leeds. We would like to reiterate our thanks to all the speakers,
respondents, and delegates who helped to make that conference so stimulat-
ing and enjoyable; to the British Academy, the Analysis Trust, and the Society
of Applied Philosophy for their generous fi nancial assistance; and to Jon R obson
for local organizational help.
We also thank our colleagues, Matthew Kieran and Aaron Meskin, for vari-
ous types of encouragement and advice along the way; and Adrian Moore,
B ernard Williams’s literary executor, and Patricia Williams for further advice
about the volume. Last, but by no means least, we would like to thank Peter
Momtchiloff at Oxford University Press for the enthusiasm, helpfulness, and
patience he has displayed throughout this project, and the anonymous readers
used by the Press.
Ulrike Heuer
Gerald Lang
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LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS
J ohn B roome is White’s Professor of Moral Philosophy at the University of
Oxford and a Fellow of Corpus Christi College. He has been Professor of Philo-
sophy at the University of St Andrews and Professor of Economics at the Uni-
versity of Bristol. He is the author of The Microeconomics of Capitalism , Weighing
Goods: Equality, Uncertainty and Time , Counting the Cost of Global Warming , Ethics out of
Economics , and W eighing Lives . He now works on rationality and reasoning, and on
the ethics of climate change.
J onathan D ancy is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Texas at Austin.
Previously he taught in Britain, fi rst at the University of Keele and then at the
University of Reading. He has worked mainly in epistemology, moral philosophy,
and the philosophy of action, and has a special interest in George Berkeley and in
the history of twentieth-century ethics. His books include M oral Reasons (Blackwell
1993), Practical Reality (OUP 2000), and E thics Without Principles (OUP 2004).
D avid E noch teaches Philosophy and Law at the Hebrew University in Jerusa-
lem, working primarily in moral, political, and legal philosophy. His book Tak-
ing Morality Seriously: A Defense of Robust Realism has recently been published by
Oxford University Press.
U lrike H euer is a senior lecturer in Philosophy at the University of Leeds,
having worked previously at Columbia University and Barnard College, and at
the University of Pennsylvania. Her research is mainly in ethics and metaeth-
ics. She has published a number of articles on the nature of practical reasons
and values, and various problems in normative ethics.
B rad Hooker works for the University of Reading. HisI deal Code, Real World: A
Rule-consequentialist Theory of Morality was published by Oxford University Press
in 2000.
