A Plea For Principles

Bernard Williams is considered as a typically moral skeptic in the contemporary research area of philosophy and ethics. However, his moral skepticism is different from different from deconstructionist skepticism and postmodernist skepticism and postmodernism. Williams's moral skepticism focuses on the issues whether ethical theories are reasonable and whether ethical theories have the authority.The dissertation will discuss Williams's doubt of ethical theories, challenge Williams's moral skepticism by comparing with other theorists'thoughts and provide a justification for principled ethics. My thesis is divided into four parts:With the growing influence of Williams's thought, the quantitative research work in relation to him has mushroomed. In Chapter 1 of this thesis, I will summarize a number of those research books and papers, in order to represent the current situation of the study about Williams's thought and dig out the hidden problems.Chapter 2 is the main part to analyze Williams's comments on ethical theories in different levels, including meta-ethical theory, contractualism and utilitarianism, and the authority of ethical theories.The anti-theory attitude is not merely held by Williams but also by other theorists. Some mainly considered alternative ethical thoughts to principled ethics, as casuistry, particularism and virtue ethics, will be inspected in Chapter 3.After the mentioned studies above, I will raise the core viewpoint in Chapter 4 that principled ethics is practicable and effective, meanwhile the considered alternative, virtue ethics, is an armchair strategist or another form principled ethics.