The guise of the good is the thesis that an agent can only want, or intentionally do or pursue something, if and because this seems good to the agent in some respect or other. Bernard Williams criticizes the guise of the good in Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy. In this paper I reconstruct and assess his hitherto unnoticed critical remarks. Williams's opposition is based on the idea that it takes an “extra step” to go from desiring or pursuing something to thinking of it as good. To show this, he employs an argument from elimination (with two strands: an argument from personal ends and an argument from immediate ends), and a separate argument which I call the one-desire argument. I review and reject two types of answers to Williams's objections: answers that explore different varieties of what it can mean to “think of as good,” and answers that focus on different varieties of goodness under the guise of which one can desire something. I then consider whether a different, but nearby thesis, namely the guise of normative reasons, can accommodate Williams's objections, concluding that this alternative also fails. I end by looking at how this debate might move forward.

中文翻译：

---

伯纳德·威廉姆斯以善为幌子

善的幌子是这样的论点：代理人只能想要、或有意做或追求某事，如果并且因为这在某些方面对代理人来说似乎是好的。伯纳德·威廉姆斯在《伦理学和哲学的局限性》中批评了善的幌子。在本文中，我重构并评估了他迄今为止未被注意到的批评言论。威廉姆斯的反对意见是基于这样的想法：从渴望或追求某物到认为它是好的，需要“额外的一步”。为了证明这一点，他使用了一个来自消除的论证（有两条线索：来自个人目的的论证和来自直接目的的论证），以及一个单独的论证，我称之为单一欲望论证。对于威廉姆斯的反对意见，我回顾并拒绝了两种类型的答案：探索“认为是好的”的不同含义的答案，以及关注在人们可以渴望某物的幌子下的不同种类的善的答案。然后我考虑一个不同但相近的论点，即规范性理由的幌子，是否可以容纳威廉姆斯的反对意见，得出的结论是这种替代方案也失败了。最后，我将探讨这场辩论将如何向前发展。