Bernard Williams, in full Sir Bernard Arthur Owen Williams, (born Sept. 21, 1929, Westcliff, Essex, Eng.—died June 10, 2003, Rome, Italy), English philosopher. He studied at the University of Oxford and served in the Royal Air Force (1951–53). He was Knightbridge Professor of Philosophy at the University of Cambridge (1967–79), Monroe Deutsch Professor at the University of California, Berkeley (1988–2003), and White’s Professor of Moral Philosophy at Oxford (1990–96). He is noted especially for his writings on ethics and the history of Western philosophy, both ancient and modern. His major published works include Descartes: The Project of Pure Enquiry (1978), Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy (1985), Shame and Necessity (1993), Truth and Truthfulness: An Essay in Genealogy (2002), and important writings on personal identity, the relation of morality to human motivation, the idea of social and political equality, the significance of death, and the role and limits of objectivity in science, morality, and human life. Williams did not put forward a systematic philosophical theory; indeed, he was suspicious of systematic theories, particularly in ethics, because, in his view, they failed to be true to the contingency, complexity, and individuality of human life.
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