What can--and what can't--philosophy do? What are its ethical risks--and its possible
rewards? How does it differ from science? In Philosophy as a Humanistic Discipline,
Bernard Williams addresses these questions and presents a striking vision of philosophy as
fundamentally different from science in its aims and methods even though there is still in
philosophy" something that counts as getting it right." Written with his distinctive combination
of rigor, imagination, depth, and humanism, the book amply demonstrates why Williams was�…

Philosophy should not try to assimilate itself to the aims of the sciences. Scientism stems
from the false assumption that a representation of the world minimally based on local
perspectives is what best serves self-understanding. Philosophy must concern itself with the
history of our conceptions, and we must overcome the need to think that this history should
ideally be vindicatory. There is no basic conflict between arguing within the framework of our
ideas, reflectively making better sense of them, and understanding their highly contingent�…