New Book: "Essays and Reviews" by Bernard Williams

Essays and Reviews: 1959-2002

by Bernard Williams

(Princeton University Press, 2014)

456 pages




Description

Bernard Williams was one of the most important philosophers of the last fifty years, but he was also a distinguished critic and essayist with an elegant style and a rare ability to communicate complex ideas to a wide public. This is the first collection of Williams's popular essays and reviews, many of which appeared in the New York Review of Books, the London Review of Books, and the Times Literary Supplement. In these pieces, Williams writes about a broad range of subjects, from philosophy and political philosophy to religion, science, the humanities, economics, socialism, feminism, and pornography. No matter the subject, Williams probes and challenges arguments, teases out their implications, and connects them to the wider intellectual scene. At the same time, readers see a first-class mind grappling with landmark books in "real time", before critical consensus had formed and ossified.

Contents

Foreword [pdf] by Michael Wood

1. Plato Today, by R.H.S. Crossman (1959)
2. English Philosophy since 1900, by G. J. Warnock (1959)
3. Thought and Action, by Stuart Hampshire (1960)
4. The Theological Appearance of the Church of England (1960)
5. The Four Loves, by C. S. Lewis (1960)
6. Discourse on Method, by René Descartes (1960)
7. The Individual Reason: L'esprit laïc (1961)
8. What Is Existentialism? (1962)
9. Sketch for a Theory of the Emotions, by Jean-Paul Sartre (1962)
10. Sense and Sensibilia, by J. L. Austin, (1962)
11. The Concept of a Person, by A. J. Ayer (1963)
12. Two Faces of Science (1963)
13. The English Moralists, by Basil Willey (1965)
14. Universities: Protest, Reform and Revolution (1968)
15. Has "God" a Meaning? (1968)
16. Russell and Moore, by A. J. Ayer (1971)
17. Immanuel Kant, by Lucien Goldmann (1972)
18. A Theory of Justice, by John Rawls (1972)
19. Beyond Freedom and Dignity, by B. F. Skinner (1972)
20. What Computers Can't Do, by Hubert L. Dreyfus (1973)
21. Wisdom, edited by Renford Bambrough (1974)
22. The Socialist Idea, ed. by S. Hampshire & L. Kolakowski (1975)
23. Anarchy, State, and Utopia, by Robert Nozick (1975)
24. The Ethics of Fetal Research, by Paul Ramsey (1975)
25. The Moral View of Politics (1976)
26. The Passions of Bertrand Russell (1976)
27. Where Chomsky Stands (1976)
28. The Selfish Gene, by Richard Dawkins (1976)
29. The Fire and the Sun, by Iris Murdoch (1977)
30. The Logic of Abortion (1977)
31. On Thinking, by Gilbert Ryle (1979)
32. Rubbish Theory, by Michael Thompson (1980)
33. Lying, by Sissela Bok (1980)
34. Logic and Society / Ulysses and the Sirens, by Jon Elster (1980)
35. The Culture of Narcissism, by Christopher Lasch (1980)
36. Religion and Public Doctrine in England, by Maurice Cowling (1981)
37. Nietzsche’s Centaur (1981)
38. After Virtue, by Alasdair MacIntyre (1981)
39. Philosophical Explanations, by Robert Nozick (1982)
40. The Miracle of Theism, by J. L. Mackie (1983)
41. Offensive Literature, by John Sutherland (1983)
42. Consequences of Pragmatism, by Richard Rorty (1983)
43. The Collected Papers of Bertrand Russell, vol. I (1984)
44. Reasons and Persons, by Derek Parfit (1984)
45. Wickedness: A Philosophical Essay, by Mary Midgley (1984)
46. Secrets, by Sissela Bok (1984)
47. Choice and Consequence, by Thomas C. Schelling (1985)
48. Privacy, by Barrington Moore, Jr. (1985)
49. Ordinary Vices, by Judith Shklar (1985)
50. The Right to Know, by Clive Ponting (1985) 
51. Taking Sides, by Michael Harrington (1986)
52. A Matter of Principle, by Ronald Dworkin (1986)
53. The View from Nowhere, by Thomas Nagel (1986)
54. What Hope for the Humanities? (1987) [preview]
55. The Society of Mind, by Marvin Minsky (1987) 
56. Whose Justice? Which Rationality? by Alasdair MacIntyre (1989)
57. Intellectuals, by Paul Johnson (1989)
58. Contingency, Irony and Solidarity, by Richard Rorty (1989)
59. Sources of the Self, by Charles Taylor (1990)
60. The Need to Be Sceptical (1990)
61. The Saturated Self, by Kenneth J. Gergen (1991)
62. Realism with a Human Face, by Hilary Putnam (1991)
63. Political Liberalism, by John Rawls (1993)
64. Inequality Reexamined, by Amartya Sen (1993)
65. The Therapy of Desire, by Martha Nussbaum (1994)
66. Only Words, by Catharine MacKinnon (1994)
67. The Riddle of Umberto Eco (1995)
68. On Hating and Despising Philosophy (1996)
69. The Last Word, by Thomas Nagel (1998)
70. Wagner and the Transcendence of Politics (2000)
71. Why Philosophy Needs History (2002)

See also Roger Scruton's review of the book in "The Telegraph".