Liu Jiabao: Self-indulgence and self-reflection: Reflection and transcendence of Williams' concept of practical contemplation

Williams argues that acting for integrity is free from accusations of moral self-indulgence. In order to argue this view, he points out that the precondition for the validity of this accusation is the reflexive character of the deliberation. This article argues that Williams's positioning of this premise is not precise enough. By discerning the different ways in which reflexivity is presented, the root cause of the accusation should be located in the hypocrisy of self-concern. Unlike Williams, who is concerned only with the so-called typical practice of virtuous action, this article attempts to dispel Williams's skepticism and denial of reflexive deliberation, revealing and arguing for a reflexive contemplation obscured by his discourse. This way of contemplation brings the Confucian tradition of self-cultivation into the vision of moral psychology and will provide inspiration for the inherent understanding of Western ethics.

Moral self-indulgence; reflexivity; sincerity; practical deliberation

Williams has conceived cases to refute utilitarianism, one of which goes like this: Jim, a botanist, is on an expedition somewhere in South America when he stumbles upon a local military leader who is about to shoot 20 Indians, allegedly rebels. The military chief proposed that if Jim was willing to personally shoot any of the rebels, the remaining 19 could be spared. Following general utilitarian principles, it is clear that accepting the offer is the right choice Jim can make. However, killing a person in this case is likely to be an act for Jim that violates his powerful personal commitment (in this case, not to kill).

In response, Williams points out that we don't always need to follow the demands of utilitarianism at the expense of breaking our personal commitments. Williams proposed the concept of "integrity" to express a person acting according to his deep commitment or life plan. In the above context, utilitarian choice is the opposite of acting out of integrity. Arguably, here Williams presents a critique of utilitarianism based on integrity. Many utilitarian proponents of Williams' criticism have defended it from various angles, and some have even accused Williams of not being valid. The topics of interest in this article stem from some of the discussions associated with this.

Some utilitarians argue that a person who insists on his integrity in this context will be reduced to a "moral self-indulgence." If Jim rejects the chief's offer on the grounds that it is morally repulsive to shoot one of the rebels, utilitarians will speculate that people like Jim who maintain personal integrity generally have the idea that "even if others will undoubtedly commit evil acts in the world, at least that kind of behavior is not produced through himself." ”

From this, utilitarians accuse an actor like Jim of actually adopting an active attitude toward his own virtues, and that he is inappropriately indulging in his own moral innocence. If this accusation holds, it will clearly weaken or even destroy Williams' integrity-based critique of utilitarianism. Williams wrote a lengthy paper ("Utilitarianism and Moral Self-Indulgence") to respond to this accusation. This article is not concerned with the controversy between Williams and utilitarianism, but rather focuses on his understanding of moral self-indulgence, which has recurred in his later philosophical treatises. This involves important questions about how to understand the practical deliberation of the virtuous. In particular, is a virtuous person (supposedly) aware of himself as virtuous? Under what conditions is this self-awareness or introspection justified? Where does it occupy in moral psychology? This article will discuss these issues with Williams.

The first section of this article restates the basic idea of Williams' response to the accusation of "moral self-indulgence." Williams argues that an accusation is not valid because the action for integrity does not satisfy the necessary conditions for the accusation to be established a (the action is motivated by a second-order motive). In section II, this article will examine in detail the conditions under which the accusation of self-indulgence is valid b, and point out that there are still ambiguities in Williams' interpretation of b, and that in order for the accusation of "moral self-indulgence" to hold true, we need to add or clarify an important conditionc. In the third section, this article will indicate that Williams' interpretation of condition b, as well as the author's additions and clarifications to it, will point to a question of particular concern to Williams, namely, how to understand the practical contemplation of the virtuous. Combined with Williams' analysis of Aristotle's practical deliberations, I will further present Williams' views on this issue. Finally, this article will look at the practice of self-cultivation and the corresponding significance of self-examination, review the general understanding orientation of Western ethics represented by Williams, and attempt to propose other possible aspects of practical deliberation that have been obscured by it.

First- and second-order motivation and integrity

Williams first clarified that the utilitarian accusation of "moral self-indulgence" is intended to be valid, and that this "self-indulgence" cannot simply be understood as some kind of "anti-utilitarian" equivalent. The accusation of "moral self-indulgence" must require "independent power." That is, an act should not be accused of moral self-indulgence simply because it was acted in an anti-utilitarian manner. Williams goes on to argue that the independent force that makes this accusation valid is that morally self-indulgent behavior involves a certain "reflexive" concern.

When a person acts directly on the basis of generosity or loyalty, it does not actually provoke any accusations of self-indulgence. "But once we begin to suspect that his actions are motivated by his concern for his own generosity or loyalty, on the basis of reinforcing or maintaining his self-image (portraying himself as a generous or loyal person), then that accusation is induced." When a person acts directly in terms of generosity or loyalty, his or her actions are motivated by a motive that comes directly from generosity or loyalty, and such motivation can be called a first-order motivation. And when a person consciously focuses on their own generosity or loyalty, that "attention" becomes a second-order motivation. It can be said that this second-order motive was directed rather than out of his generosity or loyalty, so Williams called it a reflexive motive. The suspicious thing about this reflexive second-order motivation is that the actor is more concerned with himself than with others who might benefit from his actions. We can summarize Williams's point of view as follows:

Condition a: What is necessary for the accusation of "moral self-indulgence" to be established is that an action involves a second-order motive.

Although Williams also notes that the distinction between first- and second-order motivations is not always clear at the conceptual and psychological levels, he insists that we can make this distinction in general. If this distinction is possible, then the next question is what are the conditions that make second-order motivation exist. Williams had a detailed and interesting discussion of this.

Williams points out that what makes it possible for a person to hold some kind of second-order motivation is that he possesses the concept of his first-order motivation. When someone acts in a moral way, doesn't he necessarily hold the concept of a corresponding moral motive? Williams' answer was no. In this respect, Williams's claim differs significantly from the Kantian view of moral philosophy.

According to Kant' understanding, actions that are truly morally valuable must be made out of moral obligation, not merely "moral obligation." In the view of Kantists such as Barbara Herman, Kant's emphasis on acting out of moral obligation requires that the action taken by the actor not only objectively appear moral, but that "moral considerations must determine how the actor conceives his behavior", although the motives for his action may be multiple and not limited to pure moral obligation. But Williams reminds us of the fact that a person may be motivated to act by some moral motive, and the actor is not self-aware of it.

Here, the "mobility" of the actors is particularly noteworthy. Williams argues that in this case, it is the motivation that acts on the actor, rather than the actor consciously acting "with" some moral obligation or virtue consideration, and this dynamic characteristic is the main point of Williams's understanding of man's practical action. The Kantians, of course, saw this action as a manifestation of the actor's lack of autonomy due to emotion, but this did not prevent Williams from classifying such action as typical of the action of the virtuous. In this line of thinking, the actor may have no concept of a virtue motive, let alone "act" toward it in a second-order manner. However, its actions are objectively still acts that embody this virtue.

The concept of an actor holding a first-order motivation is a necessary, but not sufficient, condition for the formation of its second-order motivation. Williams suggests two situations for this: First, although the actor knows a certain virtue motive, the concept of this motive does not appear in his thoughts at the time of his action. For example, someone knows the concept of "generosity", but in the process of fighting for righteousness and wealth, he does not consciously realize that what he does can be classified as "generous"; second, even if the actor realizes that he is "generous" when he acts, his motivation for action does not stem from such a sense of self. In these cases, although the actor holds a first-order motive, he does not form a corresponding reflexive second-order motivation.

So, does acting for integrity satisfy condition a? In fact, through the above analysis, Williams already has sufficient reason to respond to utilitarian accusations. He pointed out that integrity, unlike many virtues, has no motives attached to it: for virtues such as generosity and bravery, they can either form a corresponding motivation on their own, or in a given situation enable the actor to express certain motives in a desired way, but there is no particular motive for integrity.

What he means is that wholeness is nothing more than a formal concept, and that in practical action, what makes wholeness manifest is the planning, commitment, or tendency with which a person deeply identifies, and that these plans, commitments, or tendencies are the substance of the formal framework that fills the formal framework of "integrity," which is the motivation for action.

Thus, actors who insist on maintaining integrity do not hold a concept of motivation corresponding to "integrity". It's not hard to imagine, for example, that Jim, who rejected the army leader, might not have known what "integrity" was. According to the above analysis, since it is impossible for an actor to hold a first-order motivation corresponding to integrity, let alone a reflexive second-order motivation. Thus, Williams argues that there is no such thing as "one's concern for one's own integrity", and that the accusation of "moral self-indulgence" of the actor is unlikely to be established.

In fact, Williams' defense of "moral self-indulgence" can now be declared complete. His discussion doesn't stop there, though, as he looks to further explore the conditions of this self-indulgence, which is where this article focuses.

Second, the problem of reflexivity self-concern

According to condition a, we position the condition under which the accusation of "moral self-indulgence" is valid as the existence of a second-order motive, but is the existence of a second-order motive necessarily sufficient to subject an action to the accusation of moral self-indulgence? Williams doesn't think so. That is, condition a is only a necessary condition for the establishment of the accusation, not a sufficient one. So what is it that decisively leads to moral self-indulgence? Using the example of "generosity," Williams categorizes many situations in which action contemplation embodies second-order motivations.

Williams points out that when we say that a person "cares about generosity," there are different understandings of this, and they correspond to different situations.

The first understanding is: "In the sense that a generous thing is what any generous person cares about doing, he is very concerned about doing a generous thing." According to this understanding, the person is actually concerned with "doing generous things", and the concept of "generosity" may not have yet entered the minds of the actors. It is possible that the so-called "he cares about generosity" here is merely a description of the mental state of the person's behavior from the perspective of a bystander, which has been mentioned in the previous section.

The second understanding is that he is concerned with making his actions conform to the actions of generous people as role models, and his thoughts are: "If I am going to be a generous person, what should I do." If the man's actions are motivated by the answer to this question, then it is clear that his actions contain some sort of second-order motive, and that second-order motivation has some reflexiveness. Understood in this way, it seems understandable that this person may therefore do generous things. There is a third understanding of "he cares about generosity", which may mean that the actor has disproportionately focused his attention on whether he himself expressed a tendency to be generous, rather than how his actions brought about changes in the external world. It is the situation under the third understanding that gives rise to moral accusations of self-indulgence.

So what is it that distinguishes the third understanding from the second? According to Williams, the behavior also requires an element of self-esteem if it includes second-order motivation. Williams does not say this explicitly, but we can reasonably infer from its text that he believes that this is what is necessary to make the accusation of "moral self-indulgence" valid.

Condition b: The sufficient necessary condition for the accusation of "moral self-indulgence" to be established is that there is some self-esteem in the second-order motive of an action.

The crux of the matter here is, how to understand the element of "self-esteem"? Williams emphasized the reflexivant characteristics of second-order motivation. "It seems to me that there is a line between self-concern and other-concern that is fundamental to any morality or, indeed, to any sound life, and that reflexivity involves a reversal within that line." Williams further explained that this "reversal" is not just about a reversal of attention, but more importantly, a reversal of attention direction. According to this understanding, it can be said that the "distortion" of the direction of attention, "from focusing on others to focusing on self", is the key element that makes second-order motivation subject to accusations of "moral self-indulgence".

Back to the example of "generosity" above. A related question is, since in the second case the behavior already carries a certain reflexive second-order motivation and the shift in attention has already taken place, why is this not considered "moral self-indulgence"? On the face of it, one possible explanation is that, according to the second understanding, the actor is still concerned with how to act generously, provided that the ideal generosity is used as an example.

That is to say, the focus of the actor's attention at this time is not directed at himself in a radical and exclusive way. In fact, Williams argues that even the second moral reflection picture already contains "great distortions" (perhaps Williams does not think that this distortion is serious). Further, the difference between the two understandings is that, in the third case, there is a decisive distortion in the direction of attention and "some difference in the final result". This "difference in results" is mainly reflected in the fact that the actor pays the price for virtue when it is not reversed, and does not pay so unconditionally after the reversal. In short, when an actor focuses on himself, his or her actions may be deformed or "discounted." From this, we can amend condition b to read as follows Williams' own interpretation:

Condition b': Sufficient necessity for the accusation of "moral self-indulgence" to be established is that there is a certain self-esteem in the second-order motivation of an action, which causes the actor to invert from focusing on others to focusing on his own moral image, and even deforming in the actual results of action.

It is worth asking if the third scenario implies that the actor will "discount" the generosity of his actions, then how can it be said that he does care about his own generosity? I think this is a question that Williams should have asked further. The answer is that when the actor in such a situation reflexively focuses on himself, he is actually concerned only with his own moral image; if objectively speaking his actions are not generous enough, then his actions show that he is actually just appearing to be generous (to himself or to others). When the actor is not really generous by focusing only on his superficial image of generosity, we can say that he is merely deceiving himself.

In this way, in the third case, the actor may be accused of moral self-indulgence not so much because his reflexive second-order motivation contains some element of self-esteem or disproportionate attention to himself, but rather because he or she contains some element of self-deception in his self-attention. Based on this, we can correct the conditions revealed by Williams as follows:

Condition C: The sufficient necessary condition for the accusation of "moral self-indulgence" to be established is that there is self-deception in the second-order motive of an action.

But at least in Williams' treatise on moral self-indulgence, he does not clearly define the conditions under which that accusation is valid by self-deception. On the face of it, perhaps we can think of condition c as an expandable interpretation of condition b or b'. But when we explicitly look at reflexive second-order motivations with a clear eye on "self-deception," we will see that the introduction of this new condition will provide substantial clarification or correction of the condition Williams discussed. With the clarification of this condition, we can see that, while we agree with Williams that a virtuous action does not always need to be self-aware of the concept of virtue, and does not always need to contain reflexivity, it is not necessarily problematic to include reflexivity (even if it is very thorough reflexiveness), reflexivity self-attention does not necessarily lead to "discounting" in the practice of virtue, and that the result of "discounting" should be attributed more precisely to self-deception rather than to some definition of reflexivity self-concern." Self-esteem".

Overall, Williams argues that moral self-indulgence is misguided because the actor is directing his attention to himself, but now we see that the impropriety of the actor is not that he is too focused on himself, but, on the contrary, that he is not able to sincerely and thoroughly pay attention to and reflect on himself. If a person sincerely reflects on whether he is a generous person, then, although there is still a gap between him and the generous man who acts without reluctance, at least in terms of generosity, his actions will be nothing short, and his self-attention will be blameless in terms of the reflexiveness of his motives. This is explained in detail in section IV.

Third, the practical contemplation of virtuous action

Williams's defense strategy against accusations of moral self-indulgence is that he acknowledges the validity of this accusation in general, but he denies the use of this accusation for actions motivated by integrity. Williams could have responded to this accusation crisply and neatly, but why would he have to go out of his way to discuss the further conditions of self-indulgence? Its intention is reflected in the following paragraph:

These comments on reflexivity and moral motivation relate to the claim that an issue that is both difficult and important, and that has not been adequately studied, is: How do we describe the moral tendencies exhibited in the deliberative thoughts of an actor? ...... One of my claims on this topic is... Although the generous man is characterized in part by what enters his deliberations, those things are not reflections on his generosity.

Williams argues that a typical person with the virtue of generosity does not presuppose "I am a generous person" as a premise for his deliberations, and his deliberative approach is more likely to be "I want to help...". In this regard, Williams' focus is consistent with any view of vigilance against moral self-indulgence. The concept of "generosity" was recognized as already containing a certain kind of reflection, and Williams was particularly wary of the reflective or reflexive elements of it. Williams argues that the question of how to describe the typical way of thinking of the virtuous actor, although difficult and important, has not been fully studied, and his subsequent works repeatedly return to this topic, which is why this article has spared no ink to engage in the above-mentioned slightly technical discussion with Williams.

In his essay Act like a virtuous man, Williams attempts to gain a deeper understanding of these issues. He focused on how to understand what Aristotle considered a necessary condition for virtuous action—that virtuous action must be made by choice and chosen to do so by itself. When Aristotle proposed this condition, he intended to define virtuous action in terms of the appropriate practical contemplation of the actor, thereby excluding action which appeared virtuous with other ill intentions but mistakenly.

Williams asked, what is "choosing to do that because of itself"? Does this mean that the virtuous man makes that choice because he regards a virtuous action (which Williams referred to as v action) as a chooses V acts qua V acts? Looking back at the previous discussion, Williams' answer is clearly no. "The brave rarely choose to do something because it is brave, and the humble never chooses humility because the action is humble." Of course, he also acknowledges certain exceptions, such as his awareness that righteous people usually do righteous things because something is just. Williams then considered other explanations, such as "chosen by oneself" to "choose to do so because of nobility" or "phronesis to do so because of one's own", which are correct in a sense, but the problem is that these explanations can be applied equally to any kind of virtuous action, and they do not reveal from the content of the actor's deliberations what belongs only to a certain virtue tendency.

The answer given by Williams is that the action of virtue (V action) should be acted for some X reason, and that the specific content of this X reason must be prescribed after taking into account the tendencies of a particular virtue, and importantly, X is not generally the same as V itself. What he means is that for a virtuous actor, when faced with a certain situation, certain things will naturally be included in his deliberations and considerations because he has such virtues.

In response to Williams' above views, Chen Jiaying put forward a similar proposition and made an extended exposition of its ethical implications. Chen Jiaying pointed out that virtuous people often do not act virtuously based on so-called "moral considerations", but embody virtue as if they were instinctive. However, he emphasizes that the act of realizing virtue is not in fact instinctive, but according to nature, which is ultimately cultivated.

Williams argues that the corresponding explanation is more complicated in terms of executive virtues such as bravery, because the typical brave person does not even choose to do something brave for a reason X (related to bravery) himself. "For example, bravery or self-control, they are more about helping to achieve other goals than about containing goals themselves." The brave are those who are able to stand up fearlessly in the face of dangerous situations, and it is precisely "despite some danger that still..." The first part in this quotation mark brings out the bravery. Perhaps we can understand Williams's idea that the brave differ from the cowardly not in the positive sense that he does it because of something itself, but that he is less swayed by fear in the face of danger.

From the above overview of Williams's practical deliberations on virtued action, we can see that what Williams sought to clarify is that, typically, the conceptual grasp or reflection of a virtue does not actually appear in the corresponding deliberation of the actor.

Fourth, self-reflection: another kind of practical reflection

In The Limits of Ethics and Philosophy, we can also see Williams's interpretation of the subject of this article. Now let's focus on these interpretations and return to the question of moral self-indulgence. Williams points out that when we associate virtue with self-awareness, this can lead to misunderstandings about how virtue affects deliberation. It is fine if the cultivation of virtue is discussed in the third person; however, it is doubtful if one pays attention to one's own virtue in the first person.

By doing this in the first person, the cultivation of virtue inevitably makes one suspicious, suspecting that it is priggishness or self-deception. It's not just that thinking about problems this way is thinking about yourself rather than thinking about the world and others... The problem with treating virtue cultivation as first-person, as deliberative practice, is that your thinking is not self-directed enough. Thinking about what state you might be in in terms of virtue is not just thinking about your behavior, it is different from thinking about words that you can or should think about your behavior: it is more about thinking about what others will say or comment about how you think about your own behavior, and if this shows the main content of your deliberations, it really seems to be leading ethical considerations in the wrong direction. All of this tells us, however, that it is not that virtue is not an important ethical concept, but that the importance of an ethical concept does not lie in the fact that it is in itself the content of first-person contemplation.

Williams, in his contemplation of virtuous behavior, strives to avoid some element of self-consciousness or reflection, and thus offers a critique of the objectified way of thinking about one's virtues in an almost "self-indulgent" manner, and some of his diagnoses are consistent with our analysis in the second section above. Thus Williams tends to think that the virtue of thinking about himself in the first person must always stop at some kind of self-deceptive reflexive thinking. Overall, Williams is deeply skeptical of his virtues of focusing on his own virtues in a "reflexive" way. The question we have to ask is that, even if we admit that Williams's understanding of the way in which the so-called typical virtuous behavior is contemplated is appropriate, is the reflexive concern for virtue in the first person necessarily problematic in the cultivation of his so-called virtue?

Williams's vigilance against self-awareness or over-reflection negated or at least obscured the practice of self-reflexively cultivating one's own virtues. In his exposition of Aristotle's ethics of virtue, an important intention of Williams was to emphasize that virtue is not an object reality that can be contemplated in a way that is scientifically neutral to the perspective of the virtuous, and that the way in which a particular virtue is contemplated must be grasped by the particular tendencies and perspectives of the virtuous.

However, like Aristotle, Williams was committed to grasping the fulfillment of the virtues of the typical virtuous man, and thus this philosophical picture often overlooks the practical contemplation of those who are committed to consciously cultivating and elevating their own virtues. With a similar understanding, Aristotle objected to the counting of "shame" as a virtue, on the grounds that shame meant that the actor had done something wrong and therefore could not be counted as a virtue. In contrast, in the Confucian tradition, how one gradually approaches the state of perfection of virtue through self-examination is a central part of one's thought and practice. According to this, Liang Shuming believes that instead of classifying Confucianism as a philosophy, it is better to classify it as a kind of "cultivation of cultivation".

Williams is not entirely unaware of the positive effect of introspection on the practice of virtue in certain situations, but in his opinion it is not the typical way of contemplation of the virtuous. If, from the point of view of self-cultivation and virtue, since human virtue is always cultivated, and since the mature state of virtue is by no means easily attainable by ordinary people, then a state of intermediateness that is not perfected, a state of process from imperfection of virtue to perfection, although it is not a typical state of virtue realization, is a more immediate state and a very common situation as far as self-cultivation practice is concerned. The typical state of clinging to the so-called virtue is excessive attachment to the qualitative difference between the virtuous and the undeserved, and it is still a certain contemplative understanding of the practice of virtue, ignoring the practice in the sense of self-cultivation.

Corresponding to the above intermediate state, there should be a reflexive practical consideration. If we look at the history of Confucianism alone, some people may say that such a kind of inspection province, which points to self-cultivation and morality, has only become the mainstream in Song Ming Science, and with the decline of such a Taoist tradition of practice, this kind of inspection province has naturally been forgotten.

It is true that this tells some important historical facts, but what I want to emphasize is that this kind of self-cultivation of inspection is probably not just a special result of a certain era and culture, but is typically embodied in a passage by Zengzi: "My three provinces and my body: seeking for others and not being loyal? Friends and not convinced? Can't get used to it? The experience of similar introspection is clearly not confined to the cultural traditions of one time and one place. If we admit that self-examination is an important way of reflection, or even in a sense exemplary reflection, then it has to be said that for Williams and even the mainstream moral psychology of the contemporary West, such a kind of reflection is often obscured or ignored. From their point of view, the question that may be raised about this way of deliberation is whether this kind of introspection is a kind of practical deliberation.

First of all, is this kind of self-examination practical? It obviously contains a sober examination of the self, and it may also contain a contemplative examination of virtue itself, but its ultimate orientation is not merely a contemplative self-consciousness, nor an intellectual cognition, and since it is always concerned with whether virtue is fully realized, it ultimately points to practice. Of course, some of the self-cultivation work related to this may appear as a "playing situation" that is divorced from actual action, but that is only its biased way of presenting.

Introspection does not stop at contemplation; it does not produce a theoretical proposition or comprehension. Second, further doubt is that even if we admit that it is not a contemplative contemplation or theoretical cognition, can this be counted as a kind of contemplation? This suspicion probably arises because we usually understand deliberation as pointing to an action, and mainstream Western philosophical ethics usually understands deliberation as a decision-making consideration of how to proceed to the next action. Williams also noticed this, realizing that when an actor thinks about what state he is in in terms of virtue, he no longer pays attention to his actions.

However, introspection may not necessarily point to an action, but it does point to the actor himself. The practical focus of this kind of contemplation is not on specific actions, but on the actor, on the cultivation of self-virtue, and on changing temperament.

For an ethics concerned with virtue, how to achieve virtue formation or self-transformation is the proper meaning of its question, and this related discussion can also be found in Aristotle's writings. Williams was skeptical that this virtue cultivation could be carried out in a reflexive way. However, as discussed above, if we distinguish between the sincerity and hypocrisy of reflexivity, then we will hopefully save this reflexivity of practical contemplation from misunderstanding and doubt about it.

As a reflexive contemplation, the first normative condition lies not in its instrumental rationality, as utilitarianism understands it; nor in its conformity with the universal laws of reason, as Kantianism believes, but in the sincerity of the actor's concern for his virtues. The premise, of course, is that the actor has a basic understanding and identification with the virtues. This reflexive deliberation is sometimes presented as a retrospective reflection on whether one reviews one's words and deeds in accordance with a virtue; it can also be forward-guiding, i.e., one can consciously devote oneself to the corresponding practical activity concerning others for the practical purpose of attaining one's own virtue, as in the second case of "generosity" in the second section above. Unlike Williams, who understands this situation as containing "distortion," I do not see any incompatibility in this picture between the actor's focus on his own virtue and his focus on the effects of the action.

Below, I will review Williams' assertion about two moral ends, using this as an example to illustrate how this practical deliberation works.

Williams points out: "The benevolent, the good, the good, do the merciful, but they act in other described names, such as 'she needs this,' 'it will make him happy,' 'it will take away the pain.'" A description of virtue is not a description that appears under consideration. Williams's description of the deliberations of the benevolent is not without reason. However, if a person reflects on himself with the virtue of "benevolence" (at this time, the concept or name of "benevolence" must appear in the consideration of the actor), can it be said that the person will fall into some kind of self-indulgence? The virtue of "benevolence" must refer to others, and if this reflection is sincere, then there should be no barrier between the realization of one's own virtue and the care of others.

Thus, as far as the virtue of "benevolence" is concerned, although man appears to be directed at himself in the initial direction of reflection, in terms of the ultimate realization of his sincere deliberative practice, it must refer to the outward world. In fact, if there is so-called self-indulgence here, it is precisely the opposite of the demands of benevolence, because it must be the result of the actor's selfish intention to cut himself off from the world around him. In the process of self-reflection and practice, the practitioner's virtue practice is expected to gradually move from sleepy knowledge to doing what the heart desires. This practice of introspection also applies to the above-mentioned virtues of "generosity" and "loyalty" and "faith."

Williams had a typological understanding of the virtues. In his view, the reflexive understanding of certain types of virtues is conducive to the practice of that virtue, but for certain other types of virtues this introspection must be misleading, and his example in this regard is "modest". He has asserted more than once that it is notorious that humble people never choose humility because an action is humble. Williams did not give any explanation for this assertion. Here we may try to speculate on the rationale for Williams' assertion. Williams may argue that humility implies, first and foremost, a direct, unreflective attitude toward oneself, and that if this attitude of evaluation leads to an action, then the action must be a natural outpouring of one's attitude of evaluation.

When a person acts humbly for the sake of humility, he at best shows humility without real humility. If so, the question remains, if one consciously behaves in the name of humility, must it be problematic? I'm afraid not. The actor may sincerely try to make himself humble, but at the same time he may also be in a stage where humility has not yet become his stability. Thus, as exemplified in the Zhou Yi as the so-called "humble gentleman, humble and self-musing" (Zhou Yi Qian gua), at least as far as virtue cultivation is concerned, a person reminds himself of humility in the first person and regulates his actions (reflexive contemplation plays a guiding role here), which does not lead to self-deception or self-indulgence.

In general, Williams tends to be skeptical and negative about a person's conscious contemplation of one's own virtues, and this article attempts to point out that this reflexive introspection is of positive value in the sense of self-cultivation.

The author of this article is Liu Jiabao, a lecturer in the Department of Philosophy, Shaanxi Normal University. Originally published in Philosophical Dynamics, No. 4, 2021. Please refer to the original text for notes and references. If there is any infringement, please contact. Welcome to @文以 preaching