March 2014
"His own experience may have reinforced his scepticism about the value of philosophy. He produced several scintillating philosophical refutations of utilitarianism, for instance. He was confident that, intellectually, he had killed off the doctrine. "The day cannot be too far off," he wrote, "on which we hear no more of it."
But what has happened in the more than 40 years since Williams predicted utilitarianism's imminent demise? It has gone from strength to strength, serenely unaffected by his evisceration. It remains central to economic and political theory. Most government policies are implemented on utilitarian grounds. Even within the area of moral philosophy, many of the weightiest tomes — those by philosophers such as Derek Parfit, for example — are written with an explicitly utilitarian emphasis.
It would be hard to blame Williams for concluding that philosophical argument is just not a very effective way of changing the way people think on ethical matters."
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