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

His moral philosophy

Williams' books and papers include studies of René Descartes and Ancient Greek philosophy, as well as more detailed attacks on utilitarianism and Kantianism.

Related Topics:
René Descartes - Ancient Greek - Utilitarianism - Kantianism

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Williams was a systems destroyer, attacking all "isms" with equal vigour. He turned his back on the meta-ethics studied by most moral philosophers trained in the Western analytic tradition — "What is the Good?" and "What does the word 'ought' mean?" — and concentrated instead on practical ethics. Williams tried to address the question of how to live a good life, with the emphasis on how to live it, not how to write an essay about it. He focused on the complexity, the "moral luck", of everyday life, and was highly critical of many of the moral philosophy textbooks with their dry examples frequently encountered by philosophy undergraduates.

Related Topics:
Meta-ethics - Practical ethics

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In ' (1972), he wrote that "whereas most moral philosophy at most times has been empty and boring . . . contemporary moral philosophy has found an original way of being boring, which is by not discussing issues at all". The study of morality, he argued, should be vital and compelling. He wanted to find a moral philosophy that was accountable to psychology and to history, to politics and to culture. In his rejection of morality as what he called "a peculiar institution", by which he meant a discrete and separable domain of human thought, Williams resembled the 19th-century German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche. Williams greatly admired Nietzsche, often saying he wished he could quote Nietzsche on every page he wrote.

Related Topics:
Morality - Psychology - History - Politics - Culture - 19th-century - German - Friedrich Nietzsche

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Although Williams' disdain for reductionism sometimes made him appear a moral relativist, he was far from that. He believed, like the Ancient Greeks, that the so-called "fat" moral concepts, like courage and cruelty, were real. What is brave and what is cruel is not relative, he argued. We do know these things when we see them.

Related Topics:
Moral relativist - Courage - Cruelty

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His last book, Truth And Truthfulness (2002), examines how philosophers Richard Rorty, Jacques Derrida and other followers of what he considered political correctness "sneer at any purported truth as ludicrously naive because it is, inevitably, distorted by power, class bias and ideology," wrote The Guardian in Williams' obituary. Unusually for a philosophy book, The Guardian said, Truth and Truthfulness makes the reader laugh, then want to cry. http://www.guardian.co.uk/obituaries/story/0,3604,976477,00.html

Related Topics:
Richard Rorty - Jacques Derrida - Political correctness - Truth - Power - Class - Ideology

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