Abstract
Despite being one of the most well-known of his ideas, Bernard Williams’s “relativism of distance” has received surprisingly little sustained critical attention. Furthermore, what attention it has received has been predominantly negative: critics by turn find the relativism of distance perplexing, theoretically flawed, implausible, or even incoherent. By contrast this essay seeks to offer a defence of Williams on this score. It argues that, when properly understood, the relativism of distance is both cogent and plausible. In turn, it can be defended from the criticisms so far levelled against it (in particular by Miranda Fricker). The paper concludes by considering the wider significance of Williams’s position.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Journal | EUROPEAN JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY |
| Publication status | Accepted/In press - 2025 |