Christopher John Fardo Williams (December 31, 1930 – March 25, 1997) was a British philosopher. His areas of interest were philosophical logic

Philosophical logic

Philosophical logic is a term introduced by Bertrand Russell to represent his idea that the workings of natural language and thought can only be adequately represented by an artificial language; essentially it was his formalization program for the natural language...

, on which topic he did most of his original work, and Ancient philosophy

Ancient philosophy

This page lists some links to ancient philosophy. In Western philosophy, the spread of Christianity through the Roman Empire marked the ending of Hellenistic philosophy and ushered in the beginnings of Medieval philosophy, whereas in Eastern philosophy, the spread of Islam through the Arab Empire...

, as an editor and translator.

Life

Christopher Williams was born and grew up in Midsomer Norton

Midsomer Norton

Midsomer Norton is a town near the Mendip Hills in Somerset, England, south-west of Bath, north-east of Wells, north-west of Frome, and south-east of Bristol. It has a population of 10,458. Along with Radstock and Westfield it used to be part of the conurbation and large civil parish of Norton...

 in Somerset

Somerset

The ceremonial and non-metropolitan county of Somerset in South West England borders Bristol and Gloucestershire to the north, Wiltshire to the east, Dorset to the south-east, and Devon to the south-west. It is partly bounded to the north and west by the Bristol Channel and the estuary of the...

 in the United Kingdom

United Kingdom

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...

. He was educated at Shrewsbury School

Shrewsbury School

Shrewsbury School is a co-educational independent school for pupils aged 13 to 18, founded by Royal Charter in 1552. The present campus to which the school moved in 1882 is located on the banks of the River Severn in Shrewsbury, Shropshire, England...

 and Balliol College, Oxford

University of Oxford

The University of Oxford is a university located in Oxford, United Kingdom. It is the second-oldest surviving university in the world and the oldest in the English-speaking world. Although its exact date of foundation is unclear, there is evidence of teaching as far back as 1096...

 where he took a First in Greats and became a convert to Roman Catholicism, a faith to which he was openly devoted for the rest of his life. Planning to enter the Benedictine Order, he became a novice at Downside Abbey

Downside Abbey

The Basilica of St Gregory the Great at Downside, commonly known as Downside Abbey, is a Roman Catholic Benedictine monastery and the Senior House of the English Benedictine Congregation. One of its main apostolates is a school for children aged nine to eighteen...

, but shortly thereafter was struck by polio which left him severely disabled and permanently wheelchair-bound.

Instead he became an academic philosopher, lecturing at the University of Hull

University of Hull

The University of Hull, known informally as Hull University, is an English university, founded in 1927, located in Hull, a city in the East Riding of Yorkshire...

 before moving to Bristol where he taught in the philosophy department as lecturer, Reader and Professor until he died following a cardiac arrest. Despite his disability, Williams commuted between Bristol and his home in Midsomer Norton and attended many philosophical conferences around the world. He also edited the philosophy journal Analysis.

Thought

Believing that such fundamental concepts as existence, truth and identity had been widely misunderstood by the philosophical tradition, and obfuscated especially by metaphysics

Metaphysics

Metaphysics is a branch of philosophy concerned with explaining the fundamental nature of being and the world, although the term is not easily defined. Traditionally, metaphysics attempts to answer two basic questions in the broadest possible terms:...

, Williams attempted to show that they could be elucidated by a close analysis of the way those and related terms are actually used. Williams was not, however, an ordinary language philosopher; rather, he produced painstaking analyses of the concepts couched in the terms of symbolic logic. In this approach, founded in the logical work of Gottlob Frege

Gottlob Frege

Friedrich Ludwig Gottlob Frege was a German mathematician, logician and philosopher. He is considered to be one of the founders of modern logic, and made major contributions to the foundations of mathematics. He is generally considered to be the father of analytic philosophy, for his writings on...

, he was most immediately influenced Arthur Prior

Arthur Prior

Arthur Norman Prior was a noted logician and philosopher. Prior founded tense logic, now also known as temporal logic, and made important contributions to intensional logic, particularly in Prior .-Biography:Prior was entirely educated in New Zealand, where he was fortunate to have come under the...

 and by his friend and fellow Roman Catholic philosopher Peter Geach

Peter Geach

Peter Thomas Geach is a British philosopher. His areas of interest are the history of philosophy, philosophical logic, and the theory of identity.He was educated at Balliol College, Oxford...

.

He summarized his views in a trilogy of books,What is Truth? (1976), What is Existence? (1981) and What is Identity? (1989), and produced a more accessible overview, with less emphasis on symbolic logic, in a single volume, Being, Truth and Identity (1992).

Works

• What is Truth? (1976)
• What is Existence? (1981)
• What is Identity? (1989)
• Being, Truth and Identity (1992).