*** Welcome to piglix ***

Bernard Williams

Sir Bernard Williams
BernardWilliams.jpg
Born (1929-09-21)21 September 1929
Westcliff-on-Sea, Essex, England
Died 10 June 2003(2003-06-10) (aged 73)
Rome, Italy
Cause of death Heart failure, multiple myeloma
Education Chigwell School
Alma mater Balliol College, Oxford
Spouse(s) Shirley Williams, née Catlin (m. 1955; d. 1974)
Patricia Williams (m. 1974)
Era 20th-century philosophy
Region Western philosophy
School Analytic philosophy
Institutions All Souls College, Oxford
New College, Oxford
University College London
Bedford College, London
King's College, Cambridge
University of California, Berkeley
Corpus Christi College, Oxford
Main interests
Moral philosophy
Notable ideas
Internal reasons for action, moral luck

Sir Bernard Arthur Owen Williams, FBA (21 September 1929 – 10 June 2003) was an English moral philosopher. His publications include Problems of the Self (1973), Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy (1985), Shame and Necessity (1993), and Truth and Truthfulness (2002). He was knighted in 1999.

As Knightbridge Professor of Philosophy at the University of Cambridge and Deutsch Professor of Philosophy at the University of California, Berkeley, Williams became known for his efforts to reorient the study of moral philosophy to psychology, history, and in particular to the Greeks. Described by Colin McGinn as an "analytical philosopher with the soul of a general humanist," he was sceptical about attempts to create a foundation for moral philosophy. Martha Nussbaum wrote that he demanded of philosophy that it "come to terms with, and contain, the difficulty and complexity of human life."

Williams was a strong supporter of women in academia; according to Nussbaum, he was "as close to being a feminist as a powerful man of his generation could be." He was also famously sharp in conversation. Gilbert Ryle, one of Williams's mentors at Oxford, said that he "understands what you're going to say better than you understand it yourself, and sees all the possible objections to it, and all the possible answers to all the possible objections, before you've got to the end of your own sentence."

The young Bernard was in perpetual intellectual motion, like a dragonfly hovering above a sea of ideas. Everyone he encountered, every event that occurred were material for his insight and his wit.

Williams was born in Westcliff-on-Sea, a suburb of Southend, Essex, to Hilda Amy Williams, née Day, a personal assistant, and Owen Pasley Denny Williams, chief maintenance surveyor for the Ministry of Works. He was educated at Chigwell School, an independent school, where he first discovered philosophy. Reading D. H. Lawrence led him to ethics and the problems of the self. In his first book, Morality: An Introduction to Ethics (1972), he quoted with approval Lawrence's advice to "[f]ind your deepest impulse, and follow that."


...
Wikipedia

...