Thick Concept Centralism and Objectivity

This chapter defends the objectivity of ethics against Bernard Williams’ claim to the contrary. According to Williams, understandings of ethics through the thick concepts (such as patience, humility, justice) are relative to “insider perspectives.” A form of relativism threatens. This defence is illustrated by an interpretation of Nietzsche who transcends the insider perspective in his attack on “slave morality.” On the interpretation offered, Nietzsche can be read as an objectivist (suitably understood) about virtue and vice. Much vice in particular is, for example, expressive of resentment, psychoanalytically understood; is reactive and weak and in the service of a morality that is altruistic in a highly problematic sense. My interpretation of Nietzsche, I argue, has implications for the Williams’ critique. It allows for a way of transcending the “insider perspective” by appeal to the human sciences, an appeal that Nietzsche’s own form of naturalism in ethics itself makes.