Summary of this website
1. Williams' well-known integrity objection criticized the utilitarian way of viewing two cases in which agents' integrity should have authority in deliberation but is ignored in utilitarian negative responsibility.
2. The heart of Williams' integrity objection is the gap between the utilitarian impartial viewpoint and the internal viewpoint, which causes utilitarianism to fail to make sense of the value of integrity, which makes sense in the internal viewpoint.
3. The major objection to the integrity objection is that internal viewpoint should be regulated by the impartial viewpoint. According to moralists, opposing utility calculus based on integrity is egoism.
4. This objection can be answered by the primacy of the internal viewpoint in ethics: as Williams' reason internalism shows, the impartial viewpoint itself does not have any effect on agents in ethics. In other words, the impartial viewpoint itself cannot guide our internal viewpoints.
Bibliography
UFA Williams, B. [1973]. ‘A Critique of Utilitarianism’ in Smart, J. J. C. & Williams, Bernard (1973). Utilitarianism For and Against. Cambridge U. P.
ML Williams, B. [1982]. Moral Luck: Philosophical Papers 1973-1980, Cambridge U.P.
ELP Williams, B. [1985/2011]. Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy, Routledge Classics, Routledge.
MSH Williams, B. [1995a]. Making Sense of Humanity: And Other Philosophical Papers 1982-1993, Cambridge U. P.
WME Williams, B. [1995b]. “Replies” in World, Mind, and Ethics: Essays on the ethical philosophy of Bernard Williams, J. E. J. Altham and Ross Harrison (eds.), with. Cambridge: Cambridge U. P. pp.185-224.
PHD Williams, B. [2006]. Philosophy as a Humanistic Discipline. Princeton: Princeton U. P.
Brink, D. [1986]. ‘Utilitarian Morality and the Personal Point of View’, The Journal of Philosophy, Vol.83, No.8 (Aug., 1986), pp.417-438
Davis, N. [1980]. ‘Utilitarianism and Responsibility’, Ratio 22 (1):15
Harris, J. [1974]. ‘Williams on negative responsibility and integrity’, Philosophical Quarterly 24 (96):265-273.