Examples in philosophy

Bernard Williams gives the following example that is meant to show something about 'reasons'. A man treats his wife badly:

I say 'You have a reason to be nicer to her'. He says, 'What reason?' I say, 'Because she is your wife.' He says - and he is a very hard case - 'I don't care. Don't you understand? I really do not care.' I try various things on him, and try to involve him in the business; and I find that he really is a hard case: there is nothing in his motivational set that gives him a reason to be nicer to his wife as things are.

This is from an essay called "Internal Reasons and the Obscurity of Blame."
This is....so weird.