In her book Epiphanies (2022), Sophie Grace Chappell points to ethical experience as the driving force in our ethical lives. Encounters with value in experience generate normative reasons for attitudes and actions that are independent of any motivation the experiencer might have. This is an interpretation of normative reasons that Bernard Williams referred to as “external.” While disagreeing with Williams by claiming the existence of such reasons, Chappell follows him in rejecting systematic moral theory. This paper argues that this combination of views fails to explain the normative significance of values encountered in experience. It suggests that a structure provided by systematic moral theory is needed to account for the reason-giving power of ethical experience.
