Biography

Sir Bernard Williams, in full Sir Bernard Arthur Owen Williams, (born Sept. 21, 1929, Westcliff, Essex, Eng.—died June 10, 2003, Rome, Italy), English philosopher, noted especially for his writings on ethics and the history of Western philosophy, both ancient and modern.

Williams was educated at Chigwell School, Essex, and Balliol College, Oxford. During the 1950s he served in the Royal Air Force (1951–53) and was a fellow of All Souls College and New College, Oxford. He was appointed Knightbridge Professor of Philosophy at the University of Cambridge in 1967 and Provost of King’s College, Cambridge, in 1979. He was Monroe Deutsch Professor of Philosophy at the University of California, Berkeley, from 1988 to 2003 and White’s Professor of Moral Philosophy at Oxford from 1990 to 1996.

....  [ Continues in Bernard Williams, by Thomas Nagel [Encyclopedia Britannica ]

Books

• Bernard Williams' Books: as available on Amazon.com

• Oxford Bibliographies Online

• 
  

Edited Books

Videos & Interviews

• Bernard Williams - "The Spell of Linguistic Philosophy"; Bryan Magee interviews Bernard Williams [BBC, 1977 ]

• Bernard Williams and A.J. Ayer on Wittgenstein, Truth, and Religion [1978]

• Bernard Williams on Utilitarianism -- Open University [1986]

• Bernard Williams on Descartes [1987] 

• Bernard Williams - Interview with  Michael Ignatieff for His Biography of Isaiah Berlin [November 1990] [Interview]

• Bernard Williams - The Human Prejudice (2002)   (1 of 8) [Walter E. Edge Lecture, Princeton University]

• Bernard Williams and Michael Sandel on Justice [The Connection [WBUR Boston & NPR] (2000)

• Bernard Williams, John Keane, and Annabel Brett on Freedom [In Our Time/BBC] (2002)

***

• THE USES OF PHILOSOPHY , An interview with Bernard Williams , THE CENTER MAGAZINE, November/December 1983, pp. 40-49

• MAN WITHOUT QUALITIES Interview with Bernard Williams [ First published in Cogito, Volume 8, Issue 1, 1994, pp. 3-19 ]

• A fugitive from the pigeonhole, Times Higher Educational Supplement, November 1, 1996 [Interview with John Davies]

• Seminar with Bernard Williams 25 November 1998 — Institute of Philosophy — KU Leuven [with Arnold Burms, André Van de Putte, Urbain Dhondt, & Frans De Wachter]

• Q & A / Bernard Williams / Carrying the torch for truth / Philosopher calculates the moral cost of rejecting the concept: Interview with Kenneth Baker, SFGate (September 2002).

• A Mistrustful Animal An Interview with Bernard Williams, December 2002. [Harvard Review 12.1: 2004]. Reprinted in    Conversations on Ethics.  Ed. by Alex Voorhoeve.

Miscellaneous Reviews by Williams

• Various reviews by Bernard Williams in London Review of Books

• Various reviews by Bernard Williams in New York Review of Books

****

• "Cosmic Philosopher", review of Robert Nozick's Philosophical Explanations [NYRB, February 1982]

• Auto-da-Fé, review of Richard Rorty's Consequences of Pragmatism (Essays 1972-1980) [NYRB, April 1983]

• Personal Identity, review of Derek Parfit's Reasons and Persons [LRB - June 1984]

• Resisting the Avalanche, review of Judith Shklar’s Ordinary Vices [[LRB, June 1985]

• Consequences, review  A Matter of Principle by Ronald Dworkin [LRB - April 1986]

• The Passion for Beyond, review of Thomas Nagel's The View from Nowhere [LRB, November 1986]

• "Getting It Right", review of Richard Rorty's Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity (LRB, November 1989). PDF

• Republican and Galilean, review of Charles Taylor's Sources of the Self: The Making of the Modern Identity [NYRB, November 1990]

• Terrestrial Thoughts, Extraterrestrial Science, review of Hilary Putnam's Realism with a Human Face  [LRB - October 1990]

•  Do Not Disturb, review of Martha Nussbaum's The Therapy of Desire [LRB, October 1994]

• "The End of Explanation", review of Thomas Nagel's The Last Word [NYRB, November 1998] 

A Reader's Guide ... a few suggestions

Bernard Williams' philosophy is, in several respects, more difficult to approach and grasp than the work of some other leading figures in the area of ethics. One reason for this is that there is no single work of his that serves as an obvious point of entry to his thought or that can be read as a stand-alone statement of his core views (e.g. in contrast with Rawls and his Theory of Justice). Another difficulty is that Williams' early contributions, prior to the publication of Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy (1985), are largely critical or negative in character (where various aspects of "the morality system" are his primary target) and, read in isolation, there is no obvious relation or connection among them,  which may give  readers the false impression that his thought is fragmented and disjointed. Williams' later writings, after Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy, are similarly diverse and multifaceted. In many ways this is to be expected,  since Williams' self-consciously rejected any effort to advance a "theory" in ethics (or politics) and was averse to efforts to straight-jacket the subject into formulas or programs of any kind. At the same time, it would be a mistake to think that there is no structure or direction to his thought or that it did not develop and evolve in an intelligible and coherent manner. In fact, the opposite is true. As noted above, Williams' various early contributions are sharply focused on features of "the morality system" that he found especially problematic and unhelpful. Similarly, his later contributions are deeply rooted in his effort to advance and articulate a credible account of what ethical life could be like after "morality" - and what sort of problems and possibilities it must deal with.

In introducing students and other new readers to Williams' contribution to ethics it is important to identify the basic structure and evolution of his thought. Although there is some debate about which of his various books might be judged his "best" - and I am not convinced that this is an especially interesting debate - there can be no doubt that his most ambitious and comprehensive work is Ethics and the Limits and Philosophy. It should be treated as the pivotal work for understanding Williams' fundamental concerns. Ethics and the Limits and Philosophy is not, however, a good place to enter  his philosophy. The right place to enter is with a core set of essential contributions that articulate and structure the basic elements of his criticism of "the morality system". The reader or student is then in a suitably informed position to approach and study Ethics and the Limits and Philosophy. When this is done, the full significance of his two later books, Shame and Necessity (1993) and Truth and Truthfulness (2002), can themselves be better appreciated and understood. As with his contributions prior to Ethics and the Limits and Philosophy, there is also a core set of his later papers that his readers should be familiar with.

In making the suggestions that follow I do not intend to suggest either that there is some one way of reading or understanding Williams' thought or contributions, much less that his other contributions are not of importance or interest. What I would say, however, is that there is a core set of his contributions that is essential to understanding how his work all "hangs together" [to use Williams' own expression]. These works, moreover, need to be read and studied in an order that is sensitive to his own intellectual development - as is consistent with Williams' own genealogical sensitivities and methodological preferences.

I have indicated with an asterisk (*) and set in bold what I take to be a handful of his most essential contributions.

--- Paul Russell     [October 2019]

Essential readings from the   Early Writings (prior to Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy):

•   *  Ethical Consistency (1965)  -  in Problems of the Self (1973)

•   Morality and the Emotions (1965)  -  in Problems of the Self (1973)

•   Egoism and Altruism (1973) - in Problems of the Self (1973)

•   *  The Critique of Utilitarianism (Selections) - in Utiltitarianism: For and Against (1973)

 [selections from this work can be found in a variety of anthologies devoted to ethics and introductory philosophy]

•  *  Persons, Character and Morality (1976)  -  in Moral Luck (1981)

•  *  Moral Luck (1976) -  in Moral Luck (1981)  

[see also   Moral luck: a postscript (1993 ) -  in Making Sense of Humanity (1995)]

• * Internal and External Reasons (1980) -  in Moral Luck (1981)

• *  Truth in Relativism (1975) -  in Moral Luck (1981)

• The Point of View of the Universe: Sidgwick (1982) -  in Making Sense of Humanity (1995); and in The Sense of the Past (2006)

• Evolution, Ethics and the Representation Problem (1983) -  in Making Sense of Humanity (1995)

•  The Scientific and the Ethical  (1984) - in Objectivity and Cultural Divergence, Ed. by S.C. Brown (Cambridge: 1984)

• *  How Free Does the Will Need to Be? (1985) -  in Making Sense of Humanity (1995)

[  ... Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy (1985) ...  ]

Essential readings from the  Later Writings (after Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy):

•   Internal Reasons and the Obscurity of Blame (1989) -  in Making Sense of Humanity (1995)

•   *  Making Sense of Humanity (1987) -  in Making Sense of Humanity (1995)

•  *  Nietzsche’s Minimalist Moral Psychology (1993) - in The Sense of the Past (2006)

•   *  The Women of Trachis (1996) - in The Sense of the Past (2006)

•   Values, Reasons and the Theory of Persuasion (1996) - in Philosophy as a Humanistic Discipline (2006)

•   Moral Responsibility and Political Freedom (1997) - in Philosophy as a Humanistic Discipline (2006)

•   Tolerating the Intolerable (1999) - in Philosophy as a Humanistic Discipline (2006)

•   Unbearable Suffering (2004) - in The Sense of the Past (2006)

• *  Realism and Moralism in Political Theory (2005) - in In the Beginning Was the Deed (2005)

• Modernity and Ethical Life (2005*) in In the Beginning Was the Deed (2005)

• Human Rights and Relativism (2005*) - in In the Beginning Was the Deed (2005)

• *  The Human Prejudice (2006*) - in Philosophy as a Humanistic Discipline (2006)

Papers on Ethics and The Nature of Philosophy  

•  On Hating and Despising Philosophy (1996) - in Essays and Reviews 1959-2002 (2014)

• * Philosophy as a Humanistic Discipline (2000) - in Philosophy as a Humanistic Discipline (2006)

• * Why Philosophy Needs History (2002) - in Essays and Reviews 1959-2002 (2014)

• What Philosophy Might Become (2006*) - in Philosophy as a Humanistic Discipline (2006)

Opera & Music

• Bernard Williams, On Opera (Yale University Press: 2006)

• Bernard Williams, Wagner & Politics [NYRB, November 2000]

• Moral (and Musical) Hazard by Martha C. Nussbaum, Review of ON OPERA and ESSAYS AND REVIEWS 1959-2002, by Bernard Williams

• Life in Tune, by Jerry Fodor [TLS - January 2007]

• Singing and Silence, review of On Opera by Patrick O'Connor [Literary Review ] 

• Opera and the Limits of Philosophy: on Bernard Williams’s Music Criticism: Guy Dammann [British Journal of Aesthetics, 50.4 (2010): 469-479]

Reports & Political Contributions

• Committee on Obscenity and Film Censorship - Wikipedia article

• Obscenity and Film Censorship: An Abridgement of the Williams Report, edited by Bernard Williams. (Cambridge University Press, 1979).

Obituaries

• Professor Sir Bernard Williams:  "Arguably the greatest British philosopher of his era, he brought wit and compassion to the moral questions of society..." [Guardian - June 2003 / Jane O'Grady]

• Sir Bernard Williams, 73, Oxford Philosopher, Dies [New York Times - June 2003 / Christopher Lehmann-Haupt] 

• Professor Sir Bernard Williams [The Telegraph  - June 2003]

• Philosopher Bernard Williams Dies  [Washington Post - June 2003]

• Sir Bernard Williams Renowned moral philosopher and a brilliant figure of his generation  [The Herald (Scotland) - June 2003]

• Bernard Williams (1929-2003) [Philosophy Now - June 2003 / A.W. Moore] 

• Professor Sir Bernard Williams: Philosopher who promoted the understanding of human nature over a narrow rationality in ethics [The Independent - June 2003 / Richard Wollheim]

•  Bernard Williams, philosophe analytique humaniste britannique  [Le Monde - June 2003] 

• Bernard Williams | Obituary  [The Economist - June 2003] (by Anthony Gottlieb)