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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."

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.[9][10] 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."

Awarded a scholarship to Oxford, Williams read Greats (pure Classics followed by Ancient History and philosophy) at Balliol. Among his influences at Oxford were W. S. Watt, Russell Meiggs, R. M. Hare, Elizabeth Anscombe, Eric Dodds, Eduard Fraenkel, David Pears and Gilbert Ryle. 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 first in the second part of the course and a prize fellowship at All Souls.

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. They had already been friends at Oxford. Catlin had moved to New York to study economics at Columbia University on a Fulbright scholarship.

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. 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.

courtesy-wikipedia

- Bernard Williams

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