This is Philosophy Bites with me Nigel Warburton and me David Edmonds.

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Almost anyone who met Bernard Williams, an English philosopher who died in 2003, was struck by his wit, his

conversational range, his brilliance.

He could out debate any of his contemporaries.

He wrote about many areas of philosophy, but what in particular was his

contribution to moral philosophy? What did he stand for? That's a question that's

actually quite hard to answer. But, says Oxford Professor Adrian Moore, in a way that's

precisely the point. Williams was an anti-theoretical philosopher, suspicious of simple and

overarching systems that purported to provide straightforward

and comprehensive solutions.

Adrian Moore, welcome to Philosophy Bites. Thank you very much, Nigel. The topic we're

going to focus on is Bernard Williams and ethics.

He's probably best known to students as a harsh critic of utilitarianism.

Indeed, Nigel, in some of his early work he spent a lot of time attacking utilitarianism.

Utilitarianism is a moral theory that says that we should judge actions according to their consequences and that an action is right or wrong depending

on whether its consequences maximize happiness or welfare or something along those lines. It's a nice, tidy systematic theory and it gives something

like a decision procedure for telling whether or not you should pursue a certain action.

But it was just the kind of thing that aroused his suspicion.

That sort of tidiness and systematicity

...