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According to his long-time friend and fellow philosopher Thomas Nagel, “Bernard Williams once posed the awkward question, What is the point of doing philosophy if you're not extraordinarily good at it?” (Nagel 1995a: 10). The idea seems to be that whereas the brilliant thinkers of, say, chemistry and physics require thought-corroborating minions, philosophy's brightest lights require few, if any, to reflect their glory: underlabourers need not apply. Nagel continues: “If you're not extraordinary, what you do in philosophy will be either unoriginal (and therefore unnecessary) or inadequately supported (and therefore useless). More likely, it will be both unoriginal and wrong” (ibid.). By such measures, Williams clearly counts as extraordinary (as does Nagel, for that matter), and this book documents that extraordinariness by presenting in detail both Williams's substantial original contributions to contemporary philosophy and their supporting arguments.
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According to his long-time friend and fellow philosopher Thomas Nagel, “Bernard Williams once posed the awkward question, What is the point of doing philosophy if you're not extraordinarily good at it?” (Nagel 1995a: 10). The idea seems to be that whereas the brilliant thinkers of, say, chemistry and physics require thought-corroborating minions, philosophy's brightest lights require few, if any, to reflect their glory: underlabourers need not apply. Nagel continues: “If you're not extraordinary, what you do in philosophy will be either unoriginal (and therefore unnecessary) or inadequately supported (and therefore useless). More likely, it will be both unoriginal and wrong” (ibid.). By such measures, Williams clearly counts as extraordinary (as does Nagel, for that matter), and this book documents that extraordinariness by presenting in detail both Williams's substantial original contributions to contemporary philosophy and their supporting arguments.
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