How did Bernard Williams challenge Immanuel Kant’s view that moral status depends only on a person’s will?

Bernard Williams challenged the Kantian view that an individual’s moral status is immune to external circumstances and depends solely on the quality of their will. While Immanuel Kant argued that moral worth is determined by the internal exercise of reason and the will—independent of contingent outcomes—Williams contended that people are often morally vulnerable to factors beyond their control.12

To illustrate this, Williams introduced the concept of moral luck. He argued that our moral assessments of others frequently involve factors that are subject to chance, such as the consequences of our actions or the circumstances in which we find ourselves. Drawing on examples from Greek tragedy, such as Oedipus, Williams suggested that individuals can be held morally accountable for outcomes they did not intend or could not have foreseen, thereby rejecting the idea that moral status is entirely insulated from the contingencies of human life.1