 Williams’ opposition to the fourth thesis, about the inescapability of morality, rests on the closely-related contrast he draws between moral considerations, and considerations about “importance”: “ethical life is important, but it can see that things other than itself are important” (1985: 184). This notion of importance is grounded, ultimately, in the fact “that each person has a life to lead” (1985: 186). What is important, in this sense, is whatever humans need to make it possible to lead what can reasonably be recognised as meaningful lives; the notion of importance is of ethical use because, and insofar as, it reflects the facts about “what we can understand men as needing and wanting” (1972: 95). The notion that moral obligation is inescapable is undermined by careful attention to this concept of importance, simply because reflection shows that the notion of moral obligation will have to be grounded in the notion of importance if it is to be grounded in anything that is not simply illusory. But if it is grounded in that, then it cannot itself be the only thing that matters. Hence moral obligation cannot be inescapable, which refutes the fourth thesis of the morality system; other considerations can sometimes override or trump an obligation without themselves being obligations, which refutes the fifth; and there can be no point in trying to represent every practically important consideration as a moral obligation, so that it is for instance a distortion for Ross (The Right and The Good, 21 ff.) to talk of “duties of gratitude” (1985: 181); which refutes the sixth.