WORK
Moral Luck (Book)
Williams's 1981 collection containing the essays that reshaped moral philosophy — Moral Luck, Persons, Character and Morality, Internal and External Reasons, and the work where the critique of systematic ethics crystallized into a distinctive philosophical position.
Moral Luck: Philosophical Papers 1973–1980 gathered essays Williams had published across the previous decade, and the collection proved more influential than any single piece could have been. The volume contains the 1976 essay 'Moral Luck' (the companion to Thomas Nagel's paper of the same title), 'Persons, Character and Morality' (the essay that introduced ground projects and the one thought too many critique), 'Internal and External Reasons' (the foundational essay for Williams's metaethical position), and 'Ethical Consistency' (where moral remainder received its most extensive early treatment). Together the essays constitute a sustained critique of systematic moral theory and an alternative vision of ethical life that takes particularity, contingency, and residue seriously.
In The You On AI Field Guide
The collection appeared at a moment when English-language moral philosophy was dominated by two systematic projects: utilitarianism (Smart, Singer, Harsanyi) and Kantianism (Rawls, Nagel, Nozick from adjacent directions). Williams's essays did not attempt to