Reading Bernard Williams
Discussions with David Brooks and Candace Vogler
About the Event
Bernard Williams was one of the best-known twentieth century British philosophers. Urging the neglected claims of emotion, motivation and sheer luck in morality, the importance of “internal” as well as “external” reasons, Williams saw the subject of moral philosophy as focused on what is involved in living a whole human life well. In this series, David Brooks and Candace Vogler will discuss three of Williams’s most important essays in moral philosophy:
April 10: “Moral Luck”
April 24: “Internal and External Reasons”
May 22: “Utilitarianism and Moral Self-Indulgence”
You are invited to register for one or all of these conversations. The conversations are co-sponsored by the Hyde Park Institute and the University of Chicago Graham School.
Who's Speaking
David Brooks
Columnist, New York Times
David Brooks is a columnist for the New York Times and the author of, among other books, The Social Animal: The Hidden Sources of Love, Character, and Achievement (2011), The Road to Character (2015), and The Second Mountain: The Quest for a Moral Life (2019). In addition to his work at the Times, Brooks has been a reporter and op-ed editor for the Wall Street Journal, a senior editor at the Weekly Standard, a contributing editor at Newsweek and The Atlantic, and a commentator on NPR and the PBS NewsHour. Brooks was a Senior Fellow at Yale’s Jackson Institute and currently serves as chair of Weave: The Social Fabric Project at the Aspen Institute in Washington, D.C.
Candace Vogler
David E. and Clara B. Stern Professor of Philosophy, University of Chicago
Candace Vogler is the David B. and Clara E. Stern Professor of Philosophy and Professor in the College at the University of Chicago, and Principal Investigator on "Virtue, Happiness, and the Meaning of Life," a project funded by the John Templeton Foundation. She has authored two books, John Stuart Mill's Deliberative Landscape: An Essay in Moral Psychology (Routledge, 2001) and Reasonably Vicious (Harvard University Press, 2002), and essays in ethics, social and political philosophy, philosophy and literature, cinema, psychoanalysis, gender studies, sexuality studies, and other areas. Her research interests are in practical philosophy (particularly the strand of work in moral philosophy indebted to Elizabeth Anscombe), practical reason, Kant's ethics, Marx, and neo-Aristotelian naturalism.
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