Kieran Setiya

In ‘Philosophy as a Humanistic Discipline’, Bernard Williams argued that philosophy has a distinctive relationship with history, and not just the history of philosophy. He had in mind, especially, moral and political thought. For Williams, changes in ethical outlook are typically driven by social and cultural forces distinct from the power of rational argument. When an ethical idea prevails over time, holders of the outlook it supplants often have ‘have [no] reason to recognize the transition as an improvement’ (Williams 2000: 486). By their lights, the arguments for change are question-begging. In this respect, Williams believed, the history of ethics is unlike the history of modern science, whose telling typically vindicates later scientists on terms compelling to their predecessors.

This chapter argues for the role of personal acquaintance in both love and concern for individuals as such. We cannot love those we know only by schematic description, and recent treatments of contractualism, aggregation, and the trolley problem, by Johann Frick and Caspar Hare, rely on forms of concern for others that personal acquaintance makes rational but mere description does not. The challenge is to say what personal acquaintance is and why it matters in the way it does. This challenge is addressed through the work of Emmanuel Levinas, who dwells on the moral significance of the face-to-face relation. It is because we relate to them in this way that other human beings make distinctive claims on us. An ethics of personal acquaintance adapted from Levinas sheds light not only on beneficence and love but on the basis of human values and the value of human life.

Michael Bratman’s theory of intention owes part of its remarkable influence to the appearance of modularity: that its moral psychology, and its conception of the norms that govern intention, can be combined with different comprehensive theories of practical reason. But this appearance is deceptive. Tracing Bratman’s evolving thoughts about the norms of rationality for intention, this chapter shows that his earlier theory is defective, while his later theory commits him to a comprehensive form of rationalism in ethics – a picture of just the kind he has criticized in others.