Essays and Reviews: 1959-2002

From an early essay disdaining “obscure metaphysical writing” in favor of “more pragmatic and literal-minded… thinkers” to a late selection announcing that philosophy “wants to make things clear,” this career-spanning collection by Williams (1929–2003), author of Truth and Truthfulness, exhibits and demands discipline of mind, precision of thought, clarity of language, and practicability of concept. The selections weave through evolutionary biology, theology, linguistic theory, medical ethics, and social science toward Williams’s favored ground, political and moral philosophy, in search of principles by which we “might lead a worthwhile life.” Williams’s reviews evaluate his targets on argumentative method and “intellectual structure,” praising clarity and excoriating sophistry, faulty logic, untested assumptions, imprecise language, and “speculative history and creaky scholarship” with gentle irony or caustic glee. Emblematic of his own criteria of inquiry with exactitude, exuding intelligence and humanity, this collection, with a foreword by Michael Wood, is free of ideology, prejudice, and cant, and is imbued with an almost wistful hope that, from an ever-deepening cultural morass, philosophy might yet discover “plain truth,” helping its subjects understand “something of how we came to be where we are.” Beyond satisfying Williams’s fans, the volume argues eloquently for the necessity of philosophical reflection and examination. (Feb.)