Bernard Williams

Sir Bernard Arthur Owen Williams (September 21, 1929 – June 10, 2003) was an English moral philosopher, noted by The Times as the "most brilliant and most important British moral philosopher of his time." http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,60-712787,00.html

Related Topics:
September 21 - 1929 - June 10 - 2003 - English - Moral philosopher - The Times

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Williams spent over 50 years seeking answers to one question: What does it mean to live well? This was a question few analytic philosophers had explored, preferring instead to focus on the issue of moral obligation. For Williams, moral obligation, insofar as the phrase had any meaning, had to be compatible with the pursuit of self-interest and the good life.

Related Topics:
Moral obligation - Self-interest

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As Knightbridge Professor of Philosophy at the University of Cambridge for over a decade, and the Provost of King's College, Cambridge for almost as long, Williams became known internationally for his attempt to return the study of moral philosophy to its foundations: to history and culture, politics and psychology and, in particular, to the Greeks. Described as an "analytic philosopher with the soul of a humanist," http://www.nybooks.com/articles/article-preview?article_id=16188 he saw himself as a synthesist, drawing together ideas from fields that seemed increasingly unable to communicate effectively with one another. He rejected scientific and evolutionary reductionism, once calling reductionists "the ones I really do dislike" because, he said, they are morally unimaginative. http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2002/09/22/RV77987.DTL For Williams, complexity was beautiful, meaningful and irreducible.

Related Topics:
University of Cambridge - King's College, Cambridge - History - Culture - Politics - Psychology - Analytic philosopher - Humanist - Synthesist - Evolutionary - Reductionism - Beautiful

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He became known as a great supporter of women in academia, seeing in women the possibility of that synthesis of reason and emotion that he felt eluded analytic philosophy. The American philosopher Martha Nussbaum said Williams was "as close to being a feminist as a powerful man of his generation could be." http://www.bostonreview.net/BR28.5/nussbaum.html

Related Topics:
Academia - Reason - Emotion - Martha Nussbaum - Feminist

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