Luck, Mystery and Supremacy: D. Z. Phillips Reads Nagel and Williams on Morality

This paper critically examines D. Z. Phillips’ critical examination of Nagel's and Williams's famous exchange about moral luck. It argues that Phillips fails properly to identify the fundamental issues at stake in the exchange – particularly with respect to the role of scepticism, of the picture of the will as an extensionless point, and of the putative supremacy of morality – and so fails to recognise a certain commonality of interest between himself and those he criticises.