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Bernard Williams
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For other people named Bernard Williams, see Bernard Williams
(disambiguation).

Bernard Williams

Born
21 September 1929
Westcliff-on-Sea, Essex, England
Died
10 June 2003 (aged73)
Rome, Italy
Causeof death
Heart failure, multiple myeloma
Education
BA (1951), Greats, Balliol College, Oxford
Spouse(s)
Shirley Williams, ne 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

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.[1][2]
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."[3][4]
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."[5] 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."[6]
Contents [hide]
1
Life
1.1
Early life and education
1.2
First marriage, London
1.3

Cambridge, second marriage

1.4
Berkeley, Oxford
1.5
Royal commissions, committees
1.6
Opera
1.7
Honours and death
2
Writing
2.1
Approach to ethics
2.2
Critique of Kant
2.3
Critique of utilitarianism
2.4
Reasons for action
2.5
Truth
3
Legacy
4
Publications
5
Notes
6
References
7
Further reading

Life[edit]

Early life and education[edit]

Chigwell School, Epping Forest, Essex

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.[7]
Shirley Williams, 2009[8]
Williams was born in Westcliff-on-Sea, a suburb of Southend, Essex, to Hilda
Amy Williams, ne Day, a personal assistant, and Owen Pasley Denny
Williams, chief maintenance surveyor for the Ministry of Works.[9][10] He was
educated at Chigwell School, an independent school, where he first
discovered philosophy.[11][12] Reading D. H. Lawrence led him to ethics and the
problems of the self.[13] 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."[14]
Awarded a scholarship to Oxford, Williams read Greats (pure Classics
followed bt Ancient History and philosophy) at Balliol. Among his influences at
Oxford were WS Watt, R Meiggs, Elizabeth Anscombe, Eric Dodds, Eduard
Fraenkel, David Pears and Gilbert Ryle.[15] He shone in the first part of the
course, the pure classics being (particularly fond of writing Latin verses in the
style of Ovid) and graduated in 1951 with a congratulatory firstin the second
part of the course and a prize fellowship at All Souls.[12][16]
After Oxford, Williams spent his two-year national service flying Spitfires in
Canada for the Royal Air Force. While on leave in New York, he became
close to Shirley Brittain Catlin (born 1930), daughter of the novelist Vera
Brittain and the political scientist George Catlin.[11] They had already been
friends at Oxford. Catlin had moved to New York to study economics at
Columbia University on a Fulbright scholarship.[7]
Williams returned to England to take up his fellowship at All Souls and in 1954
became a fellow at New College, Oxford, a position he held until 1959.[17] He
and Catlin continued seeing each other. She began working for the Daily

Mirror and sought election as a Labour MP. Williams, also a member of the
Labour Party, helped her with the 1954 by-election in Harwich in which she
was an unsuccessful candidate.[18][15]

First marriage, London[edit]

Shirley Williams, 2011

Williams and Catlin were married in London in July 1955 at St James's,

Spanish Place, near Marylebone High Street, followed by a honeymoon in
Lesbos, Greece.[19]
The couple moved into a very basic ground-floor apartment in London, on
Clarendon Road, Notting Hill. Given how hard it was to find decent housing,
they decided instead to share with Helge Rubinstein and her husband, the
literary agent Hilary Rubinstein, who at the time was working for his uncle,
Victor Gollancz. In 1955 the four of them bought a four-storey, sevenbedroom house in Phillimore Place, Kensington, for 6,800, a home they
lived in together for 14 years.[20] Williams described it as one of the happiest
periods of his life.[11]
In 1958 Williams spent a term teaching at the University of Ghana in Legon.
When he returned to England in 1959, he was appointed lecturer in
philosophy at University College London.[21] In 1961, after four miscarriages in
four years, Shirley Williams gave birth to their daughter, Rebecca.[22]
Williams was a visiting professor at Princeton University in 1963,[15] and was
appointed Professor of Philosophy at Bedford College, London, in 1964. His
wife was elected to parliament that year as the Labour member for Hitchin in
Hertfordshire.[23] The Sunday Times described the couple two years later as
"the New Left at its most able, most generous, and sometimes most
eccentric." Andy Beckett wrote that they "entertained refugees from eastern
Europe and politicians from Africa, and drank sherry in noteworthy
quantities."[24] Shirley Williams became a junior minister and, in 1971, Shadow
Home Secretary. Several newspapers saw her as a future prime minister.[25]
She went on to co-found a new centrist party in 1981, the Social Democratic

Party; Williams left the Labour Party to join the SDP, although he later
returned to Labour.[15]

Cambridge, second marriage[edit]

Williams spent over 20 years at King's College, Cambridge, eight of them as provost.

In 1967, at the age of 38, Williams became the Knightbridge Professor of

Philosophy at the University of Cambridge and a fellow of King's College.[17]
According to Jane O'Grady, Williams was central to the decision by King's in
1972 to admit women, one of three all-male undergraduate colleges to do so
that year.[26] Martha Nussbaum wrote that he was "as close to being a feminist
as a powerful man of his generation could be." In both his first and second
marriages, he supported his wives in their careers and helped with the
children more than was common for men at the time.[5] In the 1970s, when
Nussbaum's thesis supervisor, G. E. L. Owen, was harassing female
students, and she decided nevertheless to support him, Williams told her,
during a walk along the backs at Cambridge: "[Y]ou know, there is a price you
are paying for this support and encouragement. Your dignity is being held
hostage. You really don't have to put up with this."[27]
Shirley Williams's political career (the House of Commons regularly sat until
10 pm) meant that the couple spent a lot of time apart. They bought a house
in Furneux Pelham, Hertfordshire, near the border with north Cambridgeshire,
while she lived in Phillimore Place during the week to be close to the Houses
of Parliament. Sunday was often the only day they were together.[28][29] The
differences in their personal values he was an atheist, she a Catholic
placed a further strain on their relationship.[n 1] It reached breaking point in
1970 when Williams formed a relationship with Patricia Law Skinner, a
commissioning editor for Cambridge University Press and wife of the historian
Quentin Skinner.[9][30] She had approached Williams to write the opposing view
of utilitarianism for Utilitarianism: For and Against with J. J. C. Smart (1973),
and they had fallen in love.[11]

Williams and Skinner began living together in 1971.[15] He obtained a divorce

in 1974 (at Shirley William's request, the marriage was later annulled).[28][11]
Patricia Williams married him that year, and the couple went on to have two
sons, Jacob in 1975 and Jonathan in 1980.[9][15] Shirley Williams married the
political scientist Richard Neustadt in 1987.[24]

Berkeley, Oxford[edit]

University of California, Berkeley

In 1979 Williams was elected Provost of King's, a position he held until 1987.
He spent a semester in 1986 at the University of California, Berkeley as Mills
Visiting Professor and in 1988 left England to become Monroe Deutsch
Professor of Philosophy there, announcing to the media that he was leaving
as part of the "brain drain" of British academics to America. He was also
Sather Professor of Classical Literature at Berkeley in 1989; Shame and
Necessity (1995) grew out of his six Sather lectures.[17][13]
Williams returned to England in 1990 as White's Professor of Moral
Philosophy at Oxford and fellow of Corpus Christi. His sons had been "at sea"
in California, he said, not knowing what was expected of them, and he had
been unable to help.[13] He regretted having made his departure from England
so public; he had been persuaded to do so to highlight Britain's relatively low
academic salaries.[n 2] When he retired in 1996, he took up a fellowship again
at All Souls.[11]

Royal commissions, committees[edit]

All Souls College, Oxford

Williams served on several royal commissions and government committees:

the Public Schools Commission (19651970), drug abuse (1971), gambling
(19761978), the Committee on Obscenity and Film Censorship (1979), and
the Commission on Social Justice (19931994). "I did all the major vices," he
said.[16][31] While on the gambling commission, one of his recommendations,
ignored at the time, was for a national lottery.[13] (John Major's government
introduced one in 1994.)
Mary Warnock described Williams's report on pornography in 1979, as chair
of the Committee on Obscenity and Film Censorship, as "agreeable, actually
compulsive to read."[32] It relied on a "harm condition" that "no conduct should
be suppressed by law unless it can be shown to harm someone," and
concluded that so long as children were protected from pornography, adults
should be free to read and watch it as they see fit.[33][11][34] The report rejected
the view that pornography tends to cause sexual offences.[35] Two cases in
particular were highlighted, the Moors Murders and the Cambridge Rapist,
where the influence of pornography had been discussed during the trials. The
report argued that both cases appeared to be "more consistent with preexisting traits being reflected both in a choice of reading matter and in the
acts committed against others."[36]

Opera[edit]
Williams enjoyed opera from an early age, particularly Mozart and Wagner.
Patricia Williams writes that he attended performances of the Carl Rosa
Company and Sadler's Wells as a teenager.[37] In an essay on Wagner, he
described having been reduced to a "virtually uncontrollable state" during a
performance by Jon Vickers as Tristan at Covent Garden.[38] He served on the
board of the English National Opera from 1968 to 1986,[15] and wrote an entry,
"The Nature of Opera," for The New Grove Dictionary of Opera.[13][39] A

collection of his essays, On Opera, was published posthumously in 2006,

edited by Patricia Williams.[40][41]

Honours and death[edit]

Williams became a fellow of the British Academy in 1971 and an honorary
member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1983. The
following year he was made a syndic of the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge
and later the chair. In 1993 he was elected to a fellowship of the Royal
Society of Arts, and in 1999 he was knighted. Several universities awarded
him honorary doctorates, including Yale and Harvard.[15][17]
Williams died of heart failure on 10 June 2003 while on holiday in Rome; he
had been diagnosed in 1999 with multiple myeloma, a form of cancer.[15][42] He
was survived by his wife, their two sons, and his daughter from his first
marriage.[16] He was cremated in Rome.[15]

Writing[edit]

Approach to ethics[edit]
A. W. Moore writes that Williams' work lies within the analytic tradition,
although less typical of it "in its breadth, in its erudition, and above all in its
profound humanity":
Although he was never a vigorous apologist for that tradition, he always
maintained the standards of clarity and rigour which it prizes, and his work is
a model of all that is best in the tradition. It is brilliant, deep, and imaginative.
It is also extraordinarily tight. There cannot be many critics of his work who
have not thought of some objection to what he says, only to find, on looking
for a relevant quotation to turn into a target, that Williams carefully presents
his views in a way that precisely anticipates the objection.[42]
Williams did not produce any ethical theory or system; several commentators
noted, unfairly in the view of his supporters, that he was largely a critic. Moore
writes that Williams was unaffected by this criticism: "He simply refused to
allow philosophical system-building to eclipse the subtlety and variety of
human ethical experience."[15] He equated ethical theories with "a tidiness, a
systematicity, and an economy of ideas," writes Moore, that were not up to
describing human lives and motives. Williams tried not to lose touch "with the
real concerns that animate our ordinary ethical experience," unlike much of
the "arid, ahistorical, second-order" debates about ethics in philosophy
departments.[42][43]
In his first book, Morality: An Introduction to Ethics (1972), Williams wrote that
whereas "most moral philosophy at most times has been empty and boring...
[c]ontemporary moral philosophy has found an original way of being boring,
which is by not discussing moral issues at all."[44][45] He argued that the study
of ethics should be vital, compelling and difficult, and he sought an approach
that was accountable to psychology and history.[2][46]

Williams was not an ethical realist; unlike scientific knowledge, which can
approach an "absolute conception of reality," an ethical judgment rests on a
point of view.[47][48] He argued that the "thick" ethical concepts, such as
kindness and cruelty, express a "union of fact and value."[49][50] The idea that
our values are not "in the world" was liberating: "[A] radical form of freedom
may be found in the fact that we cannot be forced by the world to accept one
set of values rather than another."[51][52][53]

Critique of Kant[edit]

Immanuel Kant (17241804)

Williams's work throughout the 1970s and 1980s, in Morality: An Introduction

to Ethics (1972), Problems of the Self (1973), Utilitarianism: For and Against
with J. J. C. Smart (1973), Moral Luck (1981) and Ethics and the Limits of
Philosophy (1985), outlined his attacks on the twin pillars of ethics:
utilitarianism and the moral philosophy of the 18th-century German
philosopher Immanuel Kant. Nussbaum wrote that his work "denounced the
trivial and evasive way in which moral philosophy was being practised in
England under the aegis of those two dominant theories."[5] Both theories
simplified the moral life, she wrote, neglecting emotions and personal
attachments and how sheer luck shapes our choices.[54][55] (Williams said in
1996: "Roughly, if it isn't about obligation or consequences, it doesn't count.")
[13]

Kant's Grundlegung zur Metaphysik der Sitten (1785) expounded a moral

system based on the categorical imperative, one formulation of which is: "Act
only according to that maxim through which you can at the same time will that
it become a universal law."[n 3] Rational agents must act on "principles of pure

rational agency," writes Moore; that is, principles that regulate all rational
agents. But Williams distingished between thinking and acting. To think
rationally is to think in a way compatible with belief in the truth, and "what is
takes for one to believe the truth is the same as what it takes for anyone else
to believe the truth," writes Moore. But one can act rationally by satisfying
one's own desires (internal reasons for action), and what it takes to do that
may not be what it takes for anyone else to satisfy theirs. Kant's approach to
treating thinking and acting alike is wrong, according to Williams.[57]
Williams argued that Kant had given the "purest, deepest and most thorough
representation of morality,"[58] but that the "honourable instincts of Kantianism
to defend the individuality of individuals against the agglomerative
indifference of Utilitarianism" may not be effective against the Kantian
"abstract character of persons as moral agents." We should not be expected
to act as though we are not who we are in the circumstances in which we find
ourselves.[59]

Critique of utilitarianism[edit]
Further information: Act utilitarianism, Rule utilitarianism, and Preference
utilitarianism
Williams set out the case against utilitarianisma consequentialist position
the simplest version of which is that actions are right only insofar as they
promote the greatest happiness of the greatest number in Utilitarianism: For
and Against (1973) with J. J. C. Smart. One of the book's thought
experiments involves Jim, a botanist doing research in a South American
country led by a brutal dictator. Jim finds himself in a small town facing 20
captured Indian rebels. The captain who has arrested them says that if Jim
will kill one, the others will be released in honour of Jim's status as a guest,
but if he does not, they will all be killed. Simple act utilitarianism would favour
Jim killing one of the men.[60]
Williams argued that there is a crucial distinction between a person being
killed by Jim, and being killed by the captain because of an act or omission of
Jim's. The captain, if he chooses to kill, is not simply the medium of an effect
Jim is having on the world. He is the moral actor, the person with the
intentions and projects. The utilitarian loses that distinction, turning us into
empty vessels by means of which consequences occur. Williams argued that
moral decisions must preserve our psychological identity and integrity.[61][62]
We should reject any system that reduces moral decisions to a few
algorithms.[63]

Reasons for action[edit]

Further information: Internalism and externalism Reasons
Williams argued that there are only internal reasons for action: "A has a
reason to iff A has some desire the satisfaction of which will be served by
his -ing."[64][65] An external reason would be "A has reason to ," even if

nothing in A's "subjective motivational set" would be furthered by her -ing.

Williams argued that it is meaningless to say that there are external reasons;
reason alone does not move people to action.[66][67][68][69]
Sophie Grace Chappell argues that, without external reasons for action, it
becomes impossible to maintain that the same set of moral reasons applies
to all agents equally.[70] In cases where someone has no internal reason to do
what others see as the right thing, they cannot be blamed for failing to do it,
because internal reasons are the only reasons, and blame, Williams wrote,
"involves treating the person who is blamed like someone who had a reason
to do the right thing but did not do it."[71][72]

Truth[edit]
In his final completed book, Truth and Truthfulness: An Essay in Genealogy
(2002), Williams identifies the two basic values of truth as accuracy and
sincerity, and tries to address the gulf between the demand for truth and the
doubt that any such thing exists.[73] Jane O'Grady wrote in a Guardian obituary
of Williams that the book is an examination of those who "sneer at any
purported truth as ludicrously naive because it is, inevitably, distorted by
power, class bias and ideology."[26]
The debt to Nietzsche is clear, most obviously in the adoption of a
genealogical method as a tool of explanation and critique. Although part of
Williams's intention was to attack those he felt denied the value of truth, the
book cautions that, to understand it simply in that sense, would be to miss
part of its purpose; rather, as Kenneth Baker wrote, it is "Williams' reflection
on the moral cost of the intellectual vogue for dispensing with the concept of
truth."[39]

Legacy[edit]

Williams did not propose any systematic philosophical theory; indeed, he was
suspicious of any such attempt.[74] He became known for his dialectical
powers, although he was suspicious of them too. Alan Code wrote that
Williams had never been "impressed by the display of mere dialectical
cleverness, least of all in moral philosophy":
On the contrary, one of the most notable features of his philosophical outlook
was an unwavering insistence on a series of points that may seem obvious
but which are nevertheless all-too-frequently neglected: that moral or ethical
thought is part of human life; that in writing about it, philosophers are writing
about something of genuine importance; that it is not easy to say anything
worth saying about the subject; that what moral philosophers write is
answerable to the realities of human history, psychology, and social affairs;
and that mere cleverness is indeed not the relevant measure of value."[17]
Being in Williams's presence is at times painful because of that intensity of
aliveness, which challenges the friend to something or other, and yet it was,
and is, not terribly clear to what. To authenticity, I now think: to being and

expressing oneself more courageously and clearly than one had done
heretofore.
Martha Nussbaum, 2015[40]
In 1996 Martin Hollis said that Williams had "a good claim to be the leading
British philosopher of his day," but that, although he had a "lovely eye for the
central questions," he had none of the answers.[13] Alan Thomas identified
Williams's contribution to ethics as an overarching scepticism about attempts
to create a foundation for moral philosophy, explicitly articulated in Ethics and
the Limits of Philosophy (1985) and Shame and Necessity (1993), in which he
argued that moral theories can never reflect the complexities of life,
particularly given the radical pluralism of modern societies.[75]
Learning to be yourself, to be authentic and to act with integrity, rather than
conforming to any external moral system, is arguably the fundamental motif of
Williams's work, according to Sophie Grace Chappell.[70] "If there's one theme
in all my work it's about authenticity and self-expression," Williams said in
2002. "It's the idea that some things are in some real sense really you, or
express what you and others aren't... The whole thing has been about
spelling out the notion of inner necessity."[11] He moved moral philosophy
away from the Kantian question, "What is my duty?", and back to the issue
that mattered to the Greeks: "How should we live?"[5]

Publications[edit]

Books

(with Alan Montefiore, eds.) British Analytical Philosophy, London: Routledge

& Kegan Paul, 1966.

Morality: An Introduction to Ethics, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,

1972.

Problems of the Self, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1973.

(with J. J. C. Smart) Utilitarianism: For and Against, Cambridge: Cambridge

University Press, 1973.

Descartes: The Project of Pure Inquiry, London: Pelican Books, 1978.

Moral Luck: Philosophical Papers 1973-1980, Cambridge: Cambridge

University Press, 1981.

(with Amartya Sen) Utilitarianism and Beyond, Cambridge: Cambridge

University Press, 1982.

Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy, Cambridge: Harvard University Press,

1985.

Shame and Necessity, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993.

Making Sense of Humanity, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995.

The Great Philosophers: Plato, Abingdon: Routledge, 1998.

Truth and Truthfulness: An Essay in Genealogy, Princeton: Princeton

University Press, 2002.
Posthumously published

In the Beginning was the Deed: Realism and Moralism in Political Argument,
ed. Geoffrey Hawthorn, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005.
The Sense of the Past: Essays in the Philosophy Of History, ed. Myles
Burnyeat, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006.
Philosophy as a Humanistic Discipline, ed. A. W. Moore, Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 2006.
On Opera, ed. Patricia Williams, New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006.
Essays and Reviews: 19592002, Princeton: Princeton University Press
2014.

Selected papers

"Morality and the emotions," in Bernard Williams, Problems of the Self,

Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1973, 207229, first delivered in
1965 as Williams's inaugural lecture at Bedford College, London.
"The Makropulos Case: Reflections on the tedium of immortality", in Bernard
Williams, Problems of the Self, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1973.
"Pagan Justice and Christian Love," Apeiron 26(34), December 1993, 195
207.
"Cratylus's Theory of Names and Its Refutation," in Stephen Everson (ed.),
Language, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994.
"The Actus Reus of Dr. Caligari", Pennsylvania Law Review 142, May 1994,
16611673.
"Descartes and the Historiography of Philosophy," in John Cottingham (ed.),
Reason, Will and Sensation: Studies in Descartes's Metaphysics, Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1994.
"Acting as the Virtuous Person Acts," in Robert Heinaman (ed.), Aristotle and
Moral Realism, Westview Press, 1995.
"Ethics," in A. C. Grayling (ed.), Philosophy: A Guide Through the Subject,
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995.
"Identity and Identities," in Henry Harris (ed.), Identity: Essays Based on
Herbert Spencer Lectures Given in the University of Oxford, Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1995.
"Truth in Ethics," Ratio, 8(3), December 1995, 227236.
"On Hating and Despising Philosophy", London Review of Books, 18(8), 18
April 1996, 1718 (courtesy link).
"Contemporary Philosophy: A Second Look," in N. F. Bunnin (ed.), The
Blackwell Companion to Philosophy, Blackwell, 1996.
"History, Morality, and the Test of Reflection," in Onora O'Neill (ed.), The
Sources of Normativity, Cambridge University Press, 1996.
"Reasons, Values and the Theory of Persuasion," in Francesco Farina, Frank
Hahn and Stafano Vannucci (eds.), Ethics, Rationality and Economic
Behavior, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996.
"The Politics of Trust," in Patricia Yeager (ed.), The Geography of Identity,
Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1996.

"The Women of Trachis: Fictions, Pessimism, Ethics," in R. B. Louden and P.

Schollmeier (eds.), The Greeks and Us, Chicago: Chicago University Press,
1996.
"Toleration: An Impossible Virtue?" in David Heyd (ed.), Toleration: An
Exclusive Virtue, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996.
"Truth, Politics and Self-Deception," Social Research 63.3, Fall 1996.
"Moral Responsibility and Political Freedom," Cambridge Law Journal 56,
1997.
"Stoic Philosophy and the Emotions: Reply to Richard Sorabji," in R. Sorabji
(ed.), Aristotle and After, Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies,
Supplement 68, 1997.
"Tolerating the Intolerable," in Susan Mendus (ed.), The Politics of Toleration,
Edinburgh University Press, 1999.
"Philosophy As a Humanistic Discipline," Philosophy 75, October 2000, 477
496.
"Understanding Homer: Literature, History and Ideal Anthropology," in Neil
Roughley (ed.), Being Humans: Anthropological Universality and Particularity
in Transdisciplinary Perspectives, Walter de Gruyter, 2000.
"Why Philosophy Needs History", London Review of Books, 24(20), 17
October 2002 (courtesy link).

Notes[edit]
1

Jump up
^ Shirley Williams, 2002: "Ours was a very alive marriage, but there was
something of a strain that comes from two things. One is that we were both
too caught up in what we were respectively doing we didn't spend all that
much time together; the other, to be completely honest, is that I'm fairly
unjudgmental and I found Bernard's capacity for pretty sharp putting-down of
people he thought were stupid unacceptable.... He can be very painful
sometimes. He can eviscerate somebody. Those who are left behind are, as
it were, dead personalities."[11]
Jump up
^ Bernard Williams, 2002: "I was persuaded that there was a real problem
about academic conditions and that if my departure was publicized this would
bring these matters to public attention. It did a bit, but it made me seem
narky, and when I came back again in three years it looked rather absurd. I
came back for personal reasons it's harder to live out there with a family
than I supposed."[11]
Jump up
^ Kant: "Der categorische Imperativ ist also nur ein einziger, und zwar dieser:
"handle nur nach derjenigen Maxime, durch die due zugleich wollen kannst,
da sie ein allgemeines Gesezt werde."[56]

References[edit]
1

Jump up
^ Mark P. Jenkins, Bernard Williams, Abingdon: Routledge, 2014 [2006], 3.

^ Jump up to:
Colin Koopman, "Bernard Williams on Philosophy's Need for History," The
Review of Metaphysics, 64(1), September 2010, 330. JSTOR29765339
Jump up
^ Colin McGinn, "Isn't It the Truth?", The New York Review of Books, 10 April
2003.
Jump up
^ Martha C. Nussbaum, "Tragedies, hope, justice," in Daniel Callcut (ed.),
Reading Bernard Williams, Abingdon: Routledge, 2009, 213.
^ Jump up to:
a b c d Martha C. Nussbaum, "Tragedy and Justice", Boston Review, October/
November 2003.
Jump up
^ Bryan Magee, Confessions of a Philosopher, Modern Library, 1999, 83.
^ Jump up to:
a b Shirley Williams, Climbing the Bookshelves, London: Virago, 2009, 90.
Jump up
^ Shirley Williams 2009, 115.
^ Jump up to:
a b c Christopher Lehmann-Haupt, "Sir Bernard Williams, 73, Oxford
Philosopher, Dies", The New York Times, 14 June 2003.
Jump up
^ Supplement to the London Gazette, 10 June 1961, 4157.
^ Jump up to:
a b c d e f g h i j Stuart Jeffries, "The Quest for Truth", The Guardian, 30
November 2002.
^ Jump up to:
a b Bernard Williams, "A Mistrustful Animal: A Conversation with Bernard
Williams," in Alex Voorhoeve (ed.), Conversations on Ethics, Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2009, 196197.
^ Jump up to:
a b c d e f g John Davies, "A fugitive from the pigeonhole", Times Higher
Education, 1 November 1996.
Jump up
^ Bernard Williams, Morality: An Introduction to Ethics, Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1972, 79.
^ Jump up to:
a b c d e f g h i j k A. W. Moore, "Williams, Sir Bernard Arthur Owen (19292003),
philosopher", Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, January 2007.
^ Jump up to:
a b c "Professor Sir Bernard Williams", The Times, 14 June 2003.
^ Jump up to:
a b c d e Alan Code, Samuel Scheffler, Barry Stroud, "In Memoriam: Bernard A.
O. Williams", University of California.
a b

6
7
8
9

10
11

12

13

14

15

16
17

18 Jump up
^ Shirley Williams 2009, 104, 114.
19 Jump up
^ Shirley Williams 2009, 116117.
20 Jump up
^ Shirley Williams 2009, 120, 136, 154.
21 Jump up
^ Shirley Williams 2009, 132.
22 Jump up
^ Shirley Williams, God and Caesar: Personal Reflections on Politics and
Religion, A&C Black, 2004, 17; Shirley Williams 2009, 132, 139.
23 Jump up
^ Shirley Williams 2009, 143, 155.
24 ^ Jump up to:
a b Andy Beckett, "Centre forward", The Guardian, 2 April 2005.
25 Jump up
^ Maya Oppenheim, "Baroness Shirley Williams: The Lib Dem co-founder
once predicted to become the first female prime minister of Britain", The
Independent, 11 February 2016.
26 ^ Jump up to:
a b Jane O'Grady, "Professor Sir Bernard Williams", The Guardian, 13 June
2003.
27 Jump up
^ Martha C. Nussbaum, "'Don't smile so much': Philosophy and Women in
the 1970s," in Linda Martn Alcoff (ed.), Singing in the Fire: Stories of Women
in Philosophy, Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2003 (93108),
100.
28 ^ Jump up to:
a b Shirley Williams 2009, 156157.
29 Jump up
^ "Shirley Williams: Views from the peer", Hertfordshire Life, 13 January
2010.
30 Jump up
^ Mike Peel, Shirley Williams: The Biography, London: Biteback Publishing,
2013, 157.
31 Jump up
^ "Bernard Williams", The Economist, 26 June 2003.
32 Jump up
^ Mary Warnock, "The Williams Report on Obscenity and Film Censorship",
The Political Quarterly, 51(3), July 1980 (341344), 341.
33 Jump up
^ Bernard Williams (ed.), Obscenity and Film Censorship: An Abridgement of
the Williams Report, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015 [1981],
69.

34 Jump up
^ "Professor Sir Bernard Williams", The Daily Telegraph, 14 June 2003.
35 Jump up
^ Anthony Skillen, "Offences Ranked: The Williams Report on Obscenity,"
Philosophy, 57(220), April 1982 (237245), 237. JSTOR4619562
36 Jump up
^ Williams report, 6.7, 85.
37 Jump up
^ Patricia Williams, "Editorial preface," On Opera, New Haven, Yale
University Press, 2006, 1.
38 Jump up
^ Williams, On Opera, 165; also see Bernard Williams, "Wagner & Politics",
The New York Review of Books, 2 November 2000.
39 ^ Jump up to:
a b Kenneth Baker, "Bernard Williams: Carrying the torch for truth", San
Francisco Chronicle, 22 September 2002.
40 ^ Jump up to:
a b Martha C. Nussbaum, "Moral (and Musical) Hazard", The New Rambler,
2015.
41 Jump up
^ Jerry Fodor, "Life in tune", The Times Literary Supplement, 17 January
2007.
42 ^ Jump up to:
a b c A. W. Moore, "Bernard Williams (1929-2003)", Philosophy Now, 2003.
43 Jump up
^ Larissa MacFarquhar, "How to be good", The New Yorker, 5 September
2011 (archived).
44 Jump up
^ Williams, Morality, 1972, xvii.
45 Jump up
^ Onora Nell, "Review: Morality: An Introduction to Ethics by Bernard
Williams," The Journal of Philosophy 72(12), 1975, 334339.
JSTOR2025133
46 Jump up
^ Bernard Williams, Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy, Abingdon:
Routledge, 2011 [Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1985], 193.
47 Jump up
^ Williams, Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy, 139, 154.
48 Jump up
^ A. W. Moore, "Realism and the Absolute Conception," in Alan Thomas (ed.),
Bernard Williams, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007, 2426.
49 Jump up
^ Williams, Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy, 143144.
50 Jump up
^ A. W. Moore, "Bernard Williams: Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy," in

51
52

53

54
55

56

57
58
59

60

61
62

63
64

John Shand (ed.), Central Works of Philosophy, Volume 5: The Twentieth

Century: Quine and After, Montreal: McGill-Queen's Press, 2006, 217.
Jump up
^ Williams, Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy, 142.
Jump up
^ Carol Rovane, "Did Williams Find the Truth in Relativism?" in Daniel Callcut
(ed.), Reading Bernard Williams, Abingdon: Routledge, 2009.
Jump up
^ Bernard Williams, "The Truth in Relativism," in Moral Luck: Philosophical
Papers 1973-1980, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981. First
published in Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, LXXV, 19741975, 215
228.
Jump up
^ Nussbaum 2009, 213.
Jump up
^ Bernard Williams, "Moral Luck," in Moral Luck, 1981, 2039. First published
in Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, supplementary volume 1, 1976,
115135.
Jump up
^ Immanuel Kant, Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals: A GermanEnglish edition, 1786 [1785], Mary Gregor and Jens Timmermann (eds.),
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011, 4:421, 7071.
Jump up
^ Moore 2006, 213.
Jump up
^ Williams, Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy, 194.
Jump up
^ Bernard Williams, "Persons, character and morality," in Amlie Oksenberg
Rorty (ed.), The Identities of Persons, Berkeley: University of California
Press, 1976 (197216), 200201, 215.
Jump up
^ J. J. C. Smart, Bernard Williams, Utilitarianism: For and Against,
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1973, 9899.
Jump up
^ Smart and Williams 1973, 109ff.
Jump up
^ Daniel Markovits, "The architecture of integrity," in Daniel Callcut (ed.),
Reading Bernard Williams, Abingdon: Routledge, 2009.
Jump up
^ Williams, Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy, 117.
Jump up
^ Bernard Williams, "Internal and external reasons," in Moral Luck, 1981
(101113), 101. First published in Ross Harrison (ed.), Rational action,
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979, 1728.

65 Jump up
^ John Skorupski, "Internal reasons and the scope of blame," in Alan Thomas
(ed.), Bernard Williams, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007, 74.
66 Jump up
^ Bernard Williams, "Internal Reasons and the Obscurity of Blame," 1989,
reprinted in Williams, Making Sense of Humanity, and Other Philosophical
Papers 19821993, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995, 3545.
67 Jump up
^ Bernard Williams, "Replies," in J. E. J. Altham, Ross Harrison (eds.), World,
Mind and Ethics: Essays on the Ethical Philosophy of Bernard Williams,
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995.
68 Jump up
^ Bernard Williams, "Postscript: Some Further Notes on Internal and External
Reasons," in Elijah Millgram (ed.), Varieties of Practical Reasoning,
Cambridge: MIT Press, 2001.
69 Jump up
^ Jenkins 2014, 89.
70 ^ Jump up to:
a b Sophie Grace Chappell, "Bernard Williams", Stanford Encyclopedia of
Philosophy, 8 November 2013 [1 February 2006].
71 Jump up
^ Williams 1989, in Making Sense of Humanity, 42.
72 Jump up
^ Skorupski 2007, 9394.
73 Jump up
^ David E. Cooper, Truth and Truthfulness: An Essay in Genealogy by
Bernard Williams," Philosophy, 78(305), July 2003, 411414.
JSTOR3752065
74 Jump up
^ Daniel Callcut, "Introduction," in Callcut 2009, 12.
75 Jump up
^ Alan Thomas, "Williams, Bernard," in Robert Audi (ed.), The Cambridge
Dictionary of Philosophy, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999 (2nd
edition), 975.

Further reading[edit]

Find more about

Bernard Williams
at Wikipedia's sister projects
Quotations from Wikiquote
Data from Wikidata

"The Spell of Linguistic Philosophy", Byran Magee interviews Bernard

Williams, BBC, 1977, from 00:03:32.

"Bernard Williams", London Review of Books.

"Bernard Williams", The New York Review of Books.
Nagel, Thomas. "Moral Luck", Mortal Questions, Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1979.
Nagel, Thomas. "Sir Bernard Williams", Encyclopaedia Britannica.
Perry, Alexandra; Herrera, Chris. The Moral Philosophy of Bernard
Williams, Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2011.

Academic offices
Precededby
Edmund Leach
Provost of King's College, Cambridge
19791987
Succeededby
Patrick Bateson
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Ethics
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Analytic philosophy

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