Terrestrial Thoughts, Extraterrestrial Science

Bernard Williams

  • Realism with a Human Face by Hilary Putnam
    Harvard, 347 pp, £23.95, October 1990, ISBN 0 674 74950 2

There is a wonderful passage in Nietzsche’s Daybreak, about the ageing philosopher. ‘Subject to the illusion of a great moral renewal and rebirth, he passes judgment on the work and course of his life, as though it were only now that he had been endowed with clear sight.’ He ‘considers himself permitted to take things easier and to promulgate decrees rather than demonstrate’; and the inspiration of ‘ this feeling of well-being anti these confident judgments is not wisdom but weariness’.

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