By Professor John Haldane
The Herald (Glasgow)
16 June 2003
The announcement of the death in Rome of Sir Bernard
Williams has struck a heavy blow to
British philosophy.
Williams was one of the most brilliant
figures of his
generation and was recognised internationally
as a moral
philosopher of the first rank.
He helped transform the way in which
the subject was
practised in Britain and throughout
the English-speaking
world, but he leaves behind no obvious
successor and
the nature of universities is now far
less accommodating to
those whose talents are many, broad,
and deep.
Bernard (Arthur Owen) Williams was born
in Southend in
1929. After schooling at Chigwell, Williams
went up to
Balliol College, Oxford, and graduated
in 1951. His
academic progression was delayed by
a spell of National
Service spent flying Spitfires with
the RAF in Canada. His
energy, enthusiasm, and multifarious
talents suited him to
the task, and the role of fighter pilot
further enhanced an
image as the brightest of Oxford's gilded
youths.
While on leave in New York he met a
former fellow
student, Shirley Brittain, who was then
studying at
Columbia University. An interrupted
relationship led to
marriage in 1955. By that point both
were back in England,
he having been elected to fellowships
at All Souls and
New College. Shirley Williams's political
ambitions made
London their choice of home and he took
up positions first
at University College and then at Bedford
College where
he became professor of philosophy in
1964.
His widening philosophical interests
were further
broadened by encountering at Bedford
the complex
character Aurel Kolnai, author of the
now neglected classic
The War Against the West (1938). A Hungarian
emigré
who studied phenomenology under Husserl
and
converted to Catholicism on the strength
of reading
Chesterton, Kolnai brought to moral
philosophy both an
acute sense of the vulnerability of
any civilisation which
lacks a serious ethical dimension, and
a recognition of the
absurdity of confining philosophical
thought to any single
style or method.
His brand of humane pluralism had parallels
with that of
Isaiah Berlin (Russian born and culturally
Jewish), another
important influence from whom Williams
learned "that
every thought belongs, not just somewhere,
but to
someone and is at home in a context
of other thoughts".
Williams had been much admired by his
Oxford teachers,
including J L Austin, A J Ayer, Stuart
Hampshire, and
Gilbert Ryle, and they might have assumed
that he would
carry to new levels their favoured style
of close conceptual
analysis designed to dissolve, rather
than to solve,
philosophical problems.
Very soon, however, he began to turn
against their ideal of
ahistorical abstraction, favouring a
more engaged style of
philosophising. What he retained, however,
was a respect
for rigour, which, combined with his
enormous intelligence
and speed of thought, made him an unmatchable
interlocutor.
Ryle once said of him: "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 reached the
end of your sentence."
The increasing international interest
in his work, together
with the development of her political
career, meant that he
and and his wife (later Baroness Williams
of Crosby)
spent less time together. That, along
with a difference of
personal style (she relaxed and accommodating,
he
combative and quick to criticise), and
opposition over the
matter of religion (she a devout Catholic,
he an unwavering
atheist) eroded their marriage, the
breaking point of which
was his relationship with Patricia Skinner,
née Law, then
wife of the intellectual historian,
Quentin Skinner.
His first marriage was dissolved (and
later annulled) and in
1974 he married for the second time.
By then he had
become Knightsbridge professor of philosophy
at
Cambridge and had published his first
book, Morality: An
Introduction To Ethics (1972), followed
by a collection of
his early and mostly very influential
articles, Problems of
the Self (1973), and an important published
debate:
Utilitarianism: For and Against (with
J J C Smart).
Over the next 30 years, there were to
be further significant
books: Descartes: The Project of Pure
Enquiry (1978);
Moral Luck (1981); Ethics and the Limits
of Philosophy
(1985); Shame and Necessity (1993);
and Truth and
Truthfulness (2002); and also further
eminent
appointments: provost of King's College
Cambridge
(1979-87), Sather professor of classics
(1987-90) and
professor of philosophy (1990-03) Berkeley,
and White's
professor of moral philosophy at Oxford
(1990-96).
Besides his academic work, he served
on several
important committees, including the
Royal Commission on
Gambling (1976-78); the Committee on
Obscenity and
Film Censorhip (1977-79), of which he
was chairman; the
Labour Party's Commission on Social
Justice (1992-94);
and the Independent Inquiry into the
Misuse of Drugs Act
(1997-2000). He was a member of the
Board of Sadler's
Wells, later the English National Opera
(1967-1986), and
was knighted in 1999.
Williams's philosophical views were
always nuanced and
defy easy characterisation, but he remained
something of
a philosophical sceptic and moral relativist,
though he was
a severe critic of more extreme proponents
of these
positions.
In Truth and Truthfulness, he attempts
to show how
abandonment of traditional ideas about
the nature and
value of truth need not result in intellectual
anarchy.
Williams's choice of subject for what
he knew might well be
his last major publication and the force
with which he argues
his case may reflect a concern that
his earlier work was
widely viewed as lending support to
just such a radical
conclusion.
Fittingly, upon his retirement from
the White's chair,
Williams was re-elected a fellow of
All Souls, the place of
his first academic appointment.
He is survived by his wife and by three
chidren: one
(Rebecca) from his first marriage, and
two (Jacob and
Jonathan) from his second.
