I'll accept that willpower means something like the conscious mind trying to reign in the subconscious. But when you use that to defend the "ethics as willpower" view, you're assuming that the subconscious usually wants to do immoral things, and the conscious mind is the source of morality.

On the contrary, my subconscious is at least as likely to propose moral actions as my conscious. My subconscious mind wants to be nice to people. If anything, it's my conscious mind that comes up with evil plans; and my subconscious that kicks back.

I agree. I'm not sure if you're accusing me of holding the position or not so just to be clear, I wasn't defending ethics as willpower - I was carving out a spot for willpower in ethics as taste. I'm not sure whether the conscious or unconscious is more likely to propose evil plans; only that both do sometimes (and thus the simple conscious/unconscious distinction is too simple).