The Archimedean Point

On Amoralism
在这一章中，Williams讨论了Amoralism&Relativism；此外，在另一本书中Morality：An introduction中亦有集中的相关论述。两篇对照来读，不难发现相隔十三年，Williams的立场并没有大的转变，只不过将当年的批评推进了一步（并且做出了ethical/morality的区分）。在Morality中，Williams逐步分析了the amoralist的观点，指出the amoralist最终不可能彻底摆脱道德；而在ELP中，Williams简化了当年的细致分析，将问题分作三个部分：Against what? To Whom?& From What? 最终，我们来到了Williams所谓的The Archimedean Point.
我仅根据前面三个问题，结合M中的相关的论述做一个简单的整理，当然，这篇读书笔记不可能涵盖所有相关内容。
1.Against what? Against morality/the ethical life/consideration.
Amoralism is accompanied with ethical skepticism. What is ethical skepticism? Williams defines the conception by comparisons:
Ethical skepticism& Other skepticism :1) Ethical skepticism raises question.-->2) and the questions cannot be treated by the same mothds.-->3)ethical skepticism is to be skeptical about the force of ethical considerations rather than knowledge. 
Even ethical skepticism is taken in this way, it doesn't necessarily imply that the amoralist goes against consideration--he just suspends moral judgement. 
But, it is doubtful that the ethical skeptic could bring that off—engage himself to use the ethical vocabulary, but with regard to every ethical question, suspend judgment. There are difficulties in the very idea of doing that. It is hard, for instance, to use the vocabulary of promising and at the same time to sustain the position that there is nothing decisive to be said, for or against, on the question whether one ought to keep promises. Moreover, the skeptic has to act, and if he includes himself in the world of ethical discourse at all, then what he does must be taken as expressing thoughts he has within that world.
The motivations the amoralist could be left with constitute one thing that the ethical claims might seek a justification against. Yet it is a mistake to think that there is some objective presumption in favor of the nonethical life, that ethical skepticism is the natural state, and that the person we have been imagining is what we all would want to be if there were no justification for the ethical life and we had discovered that there was none.
2. To Whom?
The justification he(the amoralist) is looking for is in fact designed for the people who are largely within the ethical world, and the aim of the discourse is not to deal with someone who probably will not listen to it, but to reassure, strengthen, and give insight to those who will.
Williams discussed Plato's view of the necessity to make ethical justification into the force. 
Even though it is possible for us to discuss a problem without the shared ethical system, 
Yet for the most part this is not possible, because rational conversation between two parties, as an actual event, needs something to hold it together.
It is hardly possible for most of us to live outside the ethical life, however, it is possible that an indvidual is able to live outside it. Then we need to know how can an individual justify the ethical life from the ground up.
3. From where
In the ethical life... we would need to find a point of leverage in the idea of rational action. That idea in itself, as we have seen, does not immediately display a commitment to the ethicalIf they are right, then there is what I have called an Archimedean point: something to which even the amoralist or the skeptic is committed but which, properly thought through, will show us that he is irrational, or unreasonable, or at any rate mistaken.
And 'where is the ponit', the question remians to be answered in C3&C4.
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在Morality中，Williams根据amoralist拒绝morality的过程，给出了更为细致的分析，但大体上的步骤是类似的：Amoralist所要做的，就是给我们提供一种替代伦理生活的可能性。但是事实证明，这种生活是不存在的；然而从其对moral consideration的态度、他人的态度再到行事动机，总不可能是完全与道德隔绝的。
Amoralist宣称对一切moral consideration是不管不顾的；但是如果我们询问amoralist的动机，只要他还有在乎的东西（诸如权力或者快乐），因此他就仍然是寄生于道德体系之上的。如果amoralist所抵触的是旁人的态度也是不行的，因为那些都间接或直接地与道德有关。
1） indifferent
He is indifferent to moral considerations, but there are things that he cares about, and he has some real preferences and aims. They might be, presumably, pleasure or power; or they might be something much odder, such as some passion for collecting things.…Presumably such things as his caring about other people's interests, having any inclination to tell the truth or keep promises if it does not suit him to do so, being disposed to reject courses of action on the ground that they are unfair or dishonourable or selfish. These are some of the substantial materials of morality
2）it's all right
 In one way, it is possible for a man to think it 'all right' for everyone to behave selfinterestedly, without his having got into any distinctively moral territory of thought at all: if, roughly, 'it's all right' means 'I am not going to moralize about it'. He will be in some moral territory if 'all right' means something like 'permitted', for that would carry implications such as 'people ought not to interfere with other people's pursuit of their own interests', and that is not a thought which, as an amoralist, he can have... What he cannot consistently do is resent it or disapprove of it, for these are attitudes within the moral system...This illustrates, as do many of his activities, the obvious fact that this man is a parasite on the moral system, and he and his satisfactions could not exist as they do unless others operated differently.
或许amoralist会提出，这一切皆不过是“social conditioning”，刨除环境的影响，所谓的basic impulse才是构成人的真正根本，Williams又反驳道，如果basic基于生物学意义上，那么这本身就是与道德无关的论题；如果说basic指的是在极端条件下人所有暴露出来的种种，那么问题又在于，我们实际上在讨论道德的时候，是罕有这种情况出现的。 
还有一种人，做事完全不考虑道德与否，但Walliams认为， 
It does not follow from this that having sympathetic concern for others is a necessary condition of being in the world of morality, that the way sketched is the only way into morality. 
故而，
The model is meant to suggest just one thing: that if we grant a man with even a minimal concern for others, then we do not have to ascribe to him any fundamentally new kind of thought or experience to include him in the world of morality, but only what is recognizably an extension of what he already has. He is not very far into it, and it is an extensive territory: as we saw in drawing up the amoralist, you have to travel quite a long way to get out of it.But the man with the extended sympathies, the ability to think about the needs of people beyond his own immediate involvement, is recognizably in it.