essay genealogy in truth truthfulness

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The work of Bernard Williams (1929-2003) will be argued and written about by philosophers for many years to come. He was widely viewed as one of the most (if not the most) important British philosophers of his generation, and his many noteworthy books, including such well-known works as Problems of the Self (1973), Moral Luck (1981), Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy (1985), and Shame and Necessity (1993), have deeply influenced contemporary debates about the nature of moral knowledge. We will miss him. In Truth and Truthfulness, his last published book, Williams has left us with a powerful argument for the importance of the notion of truth to our attempts to think and talk about the world. Williams is not attempting to provide a theory of truth, he rather hopes to give us “the value of truth” (6). Williams believes that the notion of truth he will be working with reflects “everyone’s concept of truth” (271). So, rather than concentrating on truth as such, his account focuses on what he identifies as the “virtues” of truthfulness, Accuracy and Sincerity. Williams similarly insists that he is not giving us a history of the concept of truth, which is, he believes, “everywhere and always the same” (61). Instead, he will tell a story or “fictional genealogy” that explains our need for truth and truthfulness. Having done so, he proceeds to detail some of the important ethical consequences of that need, in several historical genealogies of the concepts of truth and truthfulness, and related ideas such as authenticity and self-deception. The book is roughly divided into two parts. The first half, chapters 1 through 6, revolve around a State-of-Nature story Williams tells (in chapter 3) to illustrate and defend the importance of truth for successful human interaction. The second half, chapters 7 through 10, offers several fascinating accounts of changes in the notions of.
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pdfBernard Williams, Truth and Truthfulness: An Essay in Genealogy7 PagesUploaded bySamuel FleischackerViews  connect to downloadREAD PAPERDownloadUploaded bySamuel FleischackerLoading PreviewSorry, preview is currently unavailable. You can download the paper by clicking the button above.