20th century · 1929–2003
Who influenced Bernard Williams?
Influences
Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy: luck, integrity, and the end of the ethical theory.
Bernard Williams was influenced by Ludwig Wittgenstein. That is 1 line of the 448 documented lines of influence between the 279 thinkers on this map.
Who was Bernard Williams?
Bernard Williams taught at Cambridge and at Berkeley and tried to turn moral philosophy towards psychology, history and above all the Greeks. He doubted that ethics could be given a foundation, and Martha Nussbaum wrote that he asked philosophy to face the difficulty and complexity of human life.
His books include Problems of the Self, Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy, Shame and Necessity and Truth and Truthfulness. He strongly supported women in academia, and he was knighted in 1999.
Summarized from the lead of the Wikipedia article.
Who influenced Bernard Williams?
1 direct influence on this map, earliest first.
- Ludwig Wittgenstein 1889–1951
The line of teachers behind Bernard Williams
The longest documented line of influence ending at Bernard Williams runs 27 generations back, to Thales of Miletus.
- Thales of Miletus
- Anaximenes of Miletus
- Anaxagoras
- Socrates
- Antisthenes
- Diogenes of Sinope
- Crates of Thebes
- Zeno of Citium
- Seneca
- Tertullian
- Augustine of Hippo
- Anselm of Canterbury
- Peter Lombard
- Thomas Aquinas
- René Descartes
- Thomas Hobbes
- Baruch Spinoza
- Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz
- Christian Wolff
- Immanuel Kant
- Johann Gottlieb Fichte
- F. W. J. Schelling
- Georg W. F. Hegel
- T. H. Green
- F. H. Bradley
- Bertrand Russell
- Ludwig Wittgenstein
- Bernard Williams
Two steps away from Bernard Williams
Indirect influences
Contemporaries of Bernard Williams
Thinkers on this map born within 25 years of Bernard Williams, with no direct line between them.
- Jürgen Habermas 1929–2026
- Alasdair MacIntyre 1929–2025
- Jacques Derrida 1930–2004
- Gérard Genette 1930–2018
- Richard Rorty 1931–2007
- Niklas Luhmann 1927–1998
- Umberto Eco 1932–2016
- Michel Foucault 1926–1984
Bernard Williams by the numbers
- Direct influences
- 1
- Direct followers
- 0
- Thinkers upstream
- 121
- Thinkers downstream
- 0
- Wikipedia languages
- 28 — #77 of 84 among 20th-century philosophers
- Card rarity
- Rare
Questions about Bernard Williams
- Who influenced Bernard Williams?
- Ludwig Wittgenstein.
- Who did Bernard Williams influence?
- No later thinker on this map is recorded as drawing directly on Bernard Williams.
- When did Bernard Williams live?
- 1929–2003. The map files Bernard Williams under the 20th century.
- How rare is the Bernard Williams card?
- Wikipedia carries an article on Bernard Williams in 28 languages, which makes it a Rare card. Legendary starts at 100 languages, Epic at 50 and Rare at 25.
More 20th-century philosophers
- Jean-Paul Sartre 1905–1980
- Albert Camus 1913–1960
- Max Weber 1864–1920
- Simone de Beauvoir 1908–1986
- Bertrand Russell 1872–1970
- Ludwig Wittgenstein 1889–1951
- Martin Heidegger 1889–1976
- Umberto Eco 1932–2016