Bernard Williams

The four dimensions in the 16-axis model where this thinker scores highest. People in this archetype tend to lean the same way.

• TRTrust in Reason

  8 / 10
• TETrust in Experience

  8 / 10
• POPractical Orientation

  8 / 10
• TDTheoretical Drive

  8 / 10

The six thinkers whose 16-dimensional positions sit closest to this one. Useful as next-reading suggestions.

• Alexis de TocquevilleCARTOGRAPHER

  Democracy in America — equality's seductions and its soft despotisms.

• Hannah ArendtFORGE

  The banality of evil. Action and natality. The public realm is the space of appearance.

• Harry FrankfurtCARTOGRAPHER

  On bullshit. Caring is what makes us persons. Higher-order desires constitute the self.

• Maruyama MasaoCARTOGRAPHER

  From feudal to modern — Japanese political thought's genealogy.

• Ibn KhaldunCARTOGRAPHER

  Muqaddimah — asabiyyah (social cohesion) as the engine of dynastic cycles.

• Pietro PomponazziCARTOGRAPHER

  Mortality of the soul — virtue worth pursuing for its own sake.

Concepts where Bernard Williams sits in the conversation. Each links to a primer.

• The trolley problem
  A runaway trolley will kill five people unless you pull a lever to divert it onto a track where it kills one. Do you pull?
• Authenticity
  What would it mean to actually be yourself — and is "yourself" even a coherent thing to be?
• Moral luck
  Should chance affect how blameworthy you are? Our intuitions say one thing; our principles another.

Side-by-side with other philosophers, dimension by dimension.

• Bernard Williams VS Peter Singer
• Bernard Williams VS Martha Nussbaum

Short exercises in the same tradition as Bernard Williams's thought. Each takes 5–25 minutes.

• Argument mapping →

  Draw the structure of an argument as boxes and arrows. See its load-bearing walls.

• Reductio ad absurdum →

  Take a claim seriously, run it to its logical limit, see if you still believe it.

• Counterexample drill →

  Try to break a moral rule with a single concrete case.