On Bernard Williams' Criticism To Utilitarianism

Utilitarianism as one of the most important ethical theories has been disputed widely since its birthday. While it revived in the mid-late 20th century, utilitarianism got unprecedented criticism. Bernard Williams, the well-known English philosopher and ethicist, played a very important role in this criticism wave. His critical opinions on utilitarianism are from a quite special visual angle with deep and precise analysis.Williams was a leading influence in philosophical ethics in the latter half of the twentieth century, but little study of his moral philosophy has been made in China, so I try to introduce his criticism on utilitarianism and show some part of his ethical attitude and academic viewpoint in this paper. Williams starts his criticism from utilitarianism's consequentialism frame, and he finds that utilitarianism has another basic principle—negative responsibility principle, which is as disputable as its Greatest Happiness Principle. He thinks the negative responsibility principle alienate a man in a real sense from his actions and the source of his action in his own convictions. And this is to neglect the extent to which his actions and his decisions have to be seen as the actions and decisions which flow from the projects and attitudes with which he is most closely identified. He tells us this is an attack on people's integrity. As a humanistic philosopher, Williams pays special attention to human's character and quality. His criticism is also on basis of his concern of person.There are three chapters in this paper. After the Introduction, in which I summarize the object matter of the paper, chapter two mainly introduces Williams' biography. I try to give a brief introduction to his significant books, and present the development of his idea. As the most important part of this paper, Chapter three focuses on the criticism itself. The main target is to account for three factors: what's the limitation of utilitarianism's "Happiness"? What does consequentialism mean, and should I be responsible for other person's action? Then, is rule- utilitarianism possible? The last chapter is about comments and responses to Williams' criticism.