Problems of the Self: Philosophical Papers 1956–1972 by Bernard Williams (PDF)

Description

This is a volume of philosophical studies, centred on problems of personal identity and extending to related topics in the philosophy of mind and moral philosophy.

User’s Reviews

Reviews from Amazon users which were colected at the time this book was published on the website:

⭐Essays 1 and 3–6 alone make this volume worth the price of admission. I was reading up on the philosophy of death and immortality and chanced upon Williams’s “The Makropulos Case: Reflections on the Tedium of Immortality” and was impressed. In the rest of the essays just mentioned, Williams conclusively, to me, argues for the untenability of nonbodily criteria of personal identity (essay 2 is a response to a reply and hence isn’t as essential as the others). Throughout, Williams employs a thoroughness that is more philosophically illuminating than pedantic, but his postwar-Oxbridge-don writing style is pretty stodgy, full of “I shall be…” and “a man who…” and so on.The rest of the essays held various levels of interest for me, none nearly as much as the first several. He pretty much wipes the floor with Strawson and tells me enough that at least I can be confident in passing him over. “Imperative Inference” wrestles at length with an issue upon which I could not for the life of me figure out what else would hinge, and I didn’t even finish it. It did end up having some relevance (even if not essential) to the general theme of the final group of essays, which revolve around ethics, consistency, and equality. Most of these essays make some worthwhile points, although “The Idea of Equality” just seemed like a lot of what at least today we would consider truisms and platitudes.So, some of it is a bit “dated” in various ways, but where it isn’t (and even sometimes when it is), there are plenty of penetrating insights to be found here.

⭐Early work, focusing more on the mind-body problem and personal identity than on his later interests (ethics and metaethics).

⭐Extremely difficult to understand. But Williams is equally well-versed in the problem and related literature.

⭐Very Sophisticated and stimulating..! One can learn a lots about the subject matter fr the book. You won’t be disappointed.

⭐”The Self and the Future” is one of the essential papers on personal identity.

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