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In this paper Jonathan Lear points out something that those of us who were trained in the Anglo-American philosophical tradition know very well: psychoanalysis has had no impact on philosophy in Britain. Lear gives a detailed account of the sorts of concerns that have dominated philosophy in Britain and offers some speculation about why psychoanalysis has had so little impact; I will have more to say about this later. However, there is one philosopher upon whom psychoanalysis has had some impact, and in the area in which one might expect it. Bernard Williams, in his book Shame and Necessity, argues that psychoanalysis might form the basis for a morally neutral theory of human nature that could provide the sort of concept of human happiness that would support an empirically-based ethical theory. Empirical in the sense that the account of human happiness is based on a detailed and well-grounded theory about what actually makes people happy as opposed to over-simplified theories such as those held by the Utilitarians, empirical in the sense that the connection between fact and value, always a difficult problem to solve, can be made in a psychological thus empirical way, and empirical in the sense that the connection between fact and value is not covertly blurred, again as both Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill do, thus guaranteeing that certain facts imply that we ought to adopt certain values and committing the naturalistic fallacy.
Lear points out that ethical theories generally founder by building morality into the theories of human nature upon which they rest. Plato, for example, in his three-part theory of the soul makes it clear that reason dictates that one must be virtuous. It is part of what it is to be a reasonable person. Lear wants to avoid this by having a theory of human nature which is value neutral, but which can offer a thorough-going theory about how human beings actually work that will generate a persuasive picture of human happiness upon which an e