Abstract

The subject of this dissertation is an approach to moral philosophy that the writer refers to as analytic moral philosophy and the challenge to it issued by Bernard Williams. ;Identification of the analytic approach in moral philosophy proceeds in three stages. In the first, it is identified by means of a survey of the views of some of its early proponents. From Moore's critique of naturalism, the survey traces a succession of meta-ethical doctrines for which various figures have argued in the course of the development of analytic moral philosophy. The second stage considers some fundamental principles that define its approach. One is the general separation observed within analytic moral philosophy between meta-ethics and normative ethics. A second defines how morality in general is to be conceived. Analytic moral philosophers, though preoccupied with the concerns of meta-ethics, still have need of some conception of what morality, or ethical life, is, for meta-ethics is a discourse about the language of morals. In the third stage, these two principals of analytic moral philosophy are examined as they figure in the work of a current representative, R. M. Hare. ;Next, the writer develops a criticism of the analytic approach in moral philosophy that draws on the work of Williams. It is argued that Williams departs from the analytic approach not only by rejecting some of its key principles but also by suggesting an approach to moral philosophy that does not depend on them. In his recent Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy, he rejects the current assumption that moral philosophy should strive to produce an ethical theory and nurtures a deep skepticism about the possibility of a philosophical ethics, but he also suggests a more plausible picture of substantive ethical thought than that entertained in ethical theories. Central to Williams' moral philosophy is the idea that ethical life is rooted in human dispositions. In the present work, this idea is developed and defended against several objections. Finally, consideration is given to a role for philosophy appropriate to the dispositional conception of ethical life and to the picture of ethical thinking developed here.