Bernard Williams

Toward the goal of reorienting ethics away from rigid systems and toward the individual, a noted philosopher criticizes systematic moral theory from Kant on and elucidates a provocative alternate view

Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy

Thomas Nagel

Christine M. Korsgaard

Raymond Geuss

Gerald Allan Cohen

Christine Marion Korsgaard

Korsgaard, Christine Marion Korsgaard

Korsgaard's discussion of the source of normativity is followed by commentary from four distinguished philosophers.

The Sources of Normativity

The author is a philosopher, but much of his book is directed to writers such as Homer and the tragedians, whom he discusses as poets and not just materials for philosophy. At the center of his study is the question of how we can understand Greek tragedy at all, when its world is so far from ours.

Shame and Necessity

Williams Bernard

Moral Luck centres on questions of moral philosophy and the theory of rational action. That whole area has of course been strikingly reinvigorated over the last decade, and philosophers have both broadened and deepened their concerns in a way that now makes much earlier moral and political philosophy look sterile and trivial.

Philosophical Papers 1973-1980

Moral Luck

J. J. C. Smart

A serious and controversial work in which the authors contribute essays from opposite points of view on utilitarian assumptions, arguments and ideals.

For and Against

Utilitarianism

Freedom

Bernard Williams was one of the most important philosophers of the past fifty years, but he was also a distinguished critic and essayist with an elegant style and a rare ability to communicate complex ideas to a wide public. This is the first collection of Williams's popular essays and reviews. Williams writes about a broad range of subjects, from philosophy to science, the humanities, economics, feminism, and pornography. Included are reviews of major books such as John Rawls’s Theory of Justice, Richard Rorty’s Consequences of Pragmatism, and Martha Nussbaum’s Therapy of Desire. But many of these essays extend beyond philosophy, providing an intellectual tour through the past half century, from C. S. Lewis to Noam Chomsky. No matter the subject, readers see a first-class mind grappling with landmark books in "real time," before critical consensus had formed and ossified.

1959–2002

Essays and Reviews

Bernard Williams's remarkable essay on morality confronts the problems of writing moral philosophy, and offers a stimulating alternative to more systematic accounts that seem nevertheless to have left all the important issues somewhere off the page. Williams explains, analyzes and distinguishes a number of key positions, from the purely amoral to notions of subjective or relative morality, testing their coherence before going on to explore the nature of "goodness" in relation to responsibilities and choice, roles, standards, and human nature.

An Introduction to Ethics

Morality

"This collection is the work of an exceptional thinker--an insightful philosopher who was also an acute observer of the world. Williams has a virtually unerring eye for the specious, for the concealed premise, and for overblown rhetoric, which he brings to light with a mordant wit, tinged at times with a wry sympathy for his target."--Charles Taylor, McGill University "Bernard Williams lit up philosophy; teaching us what it is, what it has been, and what it might become. In these essays, he takes a stand on the major intellectual currents of his time. With his characteristic clarity, insight, and humor, Williams is here the philosopher-witness, offering us a penetrating view of an age."--Jonathan Lear, University of Chicago "'How clean a smell he has managed to leave behind!' George Orwell wrote of Gandhi. The same could be said of Bernard Williams, and with the same touch of wonder. Great minds--and Williams stood at the pinnacle of intellectual distinction--often veer into positions that come to seem, with the passage of time, extravagant, self-indulgent, or cruel. But Williams's acute intelligence--high-spirited, supple, and wide-ranging--was unfailingly in the service of decency, clarity, and an ethical life rooted not in abstract principles but in the tangled circumstances of the everyday. These elegant, witty essays and reviews, still astonishingly alive, are at once deeply pleasurable and deeply important."--Stephen Greenblatt, author of "The Swerve" "One of the foremost twentieth-century philosophers, Bernard Williams was also an acute critic of contemporary thought and letters. This well-chosen collection of essays and reviews is packed with arguments and insights, ranging across topics as diverse as the logic of abortion and whether the idea of God has any meaning. Richly enjoyable as well as consistently illuminating, this will be a feast of ideas for all who care about the intellectual condition of the culture."--John Gray, professor emeritus, London School of Economics "These essays represent philosophical, intellectual, and social commentary at its very best. But what will be most valued by many different kinds of reader is the perfectly clear, agreeable, plain-speaking tone of the writing, and the unpretentious wisdom with which Bernard Williams addresses such a variety of subjects."--Barry Stroud, University of California, Berkeley

Essays and Reviews, 1959-2002

Plato

M. J. Levett

Myles Burnyeat

M J Levett's elegant translation of Theaetetus, first published in 1928, is here revised by Myles Burnyeat to reflect contemporary standards of accuracy while retainingn the style, imagery, and idiomatic speech for which the Levett translation is unparalleled. Bernard Williams's concise introduction illuminates the powerful argument of this complex dialogue and illustrates its connections to contemporary metaphysical and epistemological concerns.

Theaetetus

What does it mean to be truthful? What role does truth play in our lives? What do we lose if we reject truthfulness? No philosopher is better suited to answer these questions than Bernard Williams. Writing with his characteristic combination of passion and elegant simplicity, he explores the value of truth and finds it to be both less and more than we might imagine. Modern culture exhibits two attitudes toward truth: suspicion of being deceived (no one wants to be fooled) and skepticism that objective truth exists at all (no one wants to be naive). This tension between a demand for truthfulness and the doubt that there is any truth to be found is not an abstract paradox. It has political consequences and signals a danger that our intellectual activities, particularly in the humanities, may tear themselves to pieces. Williams's approach, in the tradition of Nietzsche's genealogy, blends philosophy, history, and a fictional account of how the human concern with truth might have arisen. Without denying that we should worry about the contingency of much that we take for granted, he defends truth as an intellectual objective and a cultural value. He identifies two basic virtues of truth, Accuracy and Sincerity, the first of which aims at finding out the truth and the second at telling it. He describes different psychological and social forms that these virtues have taken and asks what ideas can make best sense of them today. Truth and Truthfulness presents a powerful challenge to the fashionable belief that truth has no value, but equally to the traditional faith that its value guarantees itself. Bernard Williams shows us that when we lose a sense of the value of truth, we lose a lot both politically and personally, and may well lose everything.

An Essay in Genealogy

Truth and Truthfulness

Colección de ensayos que aborda algunos temas nucleares de la teoría política moderna como, justicia, libertad e igualdad; la naturaleza y el significado del liberalismo; la tolerancia; el poder y el miedo al poder; la democracia; y la naturaleza de la filosofía política misma. Como tema central se observa la necesidad de que los filósofos políticos se involucren más directamente con las realidades de la vida política, no únicamente con las teorías de otros filósofos.

En El Principio Era La Accion.: Realismo y Moralismo En El Argumento Politico.

Ertürk Demirel

soykütük üzerine bir inceleme

Hakikat ve hakikatlilik

Bernard Williams, who died in 2003, was one of the most influential moral philosophers of his generation. A lifelong opera lover, his articles and essays, talks for the BBC, contributions to the Grove Dictionary of Opera, and program notes for the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, and the English National Opera, generated a devoted following. This elegant volume brings together these widely scattered and largely unobtainable pieces, including two that have not been previously published. It covers an engaging range of topics from Mozart to Wagner, including sparkling essays on specific operas by those composers as well as Verdi, Puccini, Strauss, Debussy, Janacek, and Tippett. Reflecting Williams's brilliance, passion, and clarity of mind, these essays engage with, and illustrate, the enduring appeal of opera as an art form.

On Opera

Before his death in 2003, Bernard Williams planned to publish a collection of historical essays, focusing primarily on the ancient world. This posthumous volume brings together a much wider selection, written over some forty years. His legacy lives on in this masterful work, the first collection ever published of Williams's essays on the history of philosophy. The subjects range from the sixth century B.C. to the twentieth A.D., from Homer to Wittgenstein by way of Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Descartes, Hume, Sidgwick, Collingwood, and Nietzsche. Often one would be hard put to say which part is history, which philosophy. Both are involved throughout, because this is the history of philosophy written philosophically. Historical exposition goes hand in hand with philosophical scrutiny. Insights into the past counteract blind acceptance of present assumptions. In his touching and illuminating introduction, Myles Burnyeat writes of these essays: "They show a depth of commitment to the history of philosophy seldom to be found nowadays in a thinker so prominent on the contemporary philosophical scene." The result celebrates the interest and importance to philosophy today of its near and distant past. The Sense of the Past is one of three collections of essays by Bernard Williams published by Princeton University Press since his death. In the Beginning Was the Deed: Realism and Moralism in Political Argument, selected, edited, and with an introduction by Geoffrey Hawthorn, and Philosophy as a Humanistic Discipline, selected, edited, and with an introduction by A. W. Moore, make up the trio.

Essays in the History of Philosophy

The Sense of the Past

Bernard Arthur Owen Williams

This collection of historical essays range from the 6th century BC to the 20th century AD, from Homer to Collingwood by way of Socrates, Plato and Aristotle, Descartes, Hume and Nietzsche. This is the history of philosophy written philosophically. Insights into the past counteract blind acceptance of present assumptions.

This is a volume of philosophical studies, centred on problems of personal identity and extending to related topics in the philosophy of mind and moral philosophy.

Philosophical Papers 1956–1972

Problems of the Self

Descartes has often been called the 'father of modern philosophy'.His attempts to find foundations for knowledge, and to reconcile the existence of the soul with the emerging science of his time, are among the most influential and widely studied in the history of philosophy. This is a classic and challenging introduction to Descartes by one of the most distinguished modern philosophers. Bernard Williams not only analyzes Descartes' project of founding knowledge on certainty, but uncovers the philosophical motives for his search. With acute insight, he demonstrates how Descartes' Meditations are not merely a description but the very enactment of philosophical thought and discovery. Williams covers all of the key areas of Descartes' thought, including God, the will, the possibility of knowledge, and the mind and its place in nature. He also makes profound contributions to the theory of knowledge, metaphysics and philosophy generally. This is essential reading for any student of philosophy. This reissue includes a new foreword by John Cottingham.

The Project of Pure Enquiry

Descartes

What can--and what can't--philosophy do? What are its ethical risks--and its possible rewards? How does it differ from science? In Philosophy as a Humanistic Discipline, Bernard Williams addresses these questions and presents a striking vision of philosophy as fundamentally different from science in its aims and methods even though there is still in philosophy "something that counts as getting it right." Written with his distinctive combination of rigor, imagination, depth, and humanism, the book amply demonstrates why Williams was one of the greatest philosophers of the twentieth century. Spanning his career from his first publication to one of his last lectures, the book's previously unpublished or uncollected essays address metaphysics, epistemology, and ethics, as well as the scope and limits of philosophy itself. The essays are unified by Williams's constant concern that philosophy maintain contact with the human problems that animate it in the first place. As the book's editor, A. W. Moore, writes in his introduction, the title essay is "a kind of manifesto for Williams's conception of his own life's work." It is where he most directly asks "what philosophy can and cannot contribute to the project of making sense of things"--answering that what philosophy can best help make sense of is "being human." Philosophy as a Humanistic Discipline is one of three posthumous books by Williams to be published by Princeton University Press. In the Beginning Was the Deed: Realism and Moralism in Political Argument was published in the fall of 2005. The Sense of the Past: Essays in the History of Philosophy is being published shortly after the present volume.

Philosophy as a Humanistic Discipline

Descartes has often been called the 'father of modern philosophy'. His attempts to find foundations for knowledge, and to reconcile the existence of the soul with the emerging science of his time, are among the most influential and widely studied in the history of philosophy. This is a classic and challenging introduction to Descartes by one of the most distinguished modern philosophers. Bernard Williams not only analyzes Descartes' project of founding knowledge on certainty, but uncovers the philosophical motives for his search. With acute insight, he demonstrates how Descartes' Meditations are not merely a description but the very enactment of philosophical thought and discovery. Williams covers all of the key areas of Descartes' thought, including God, the will, the possibility of knowledge, and the mind and its place in nature. He also makes profound contributions to the theory of knowledge, metaphysics and philosophy generally. With a new foreword by John Cottingham.

Bernard Williams

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