The Revival of Metaphysics
摘要
This chapter is on Williams’s influence on later philosophers and his impact on the revival of analytic metaphysics. The chapter begins with how he taught certain students at Harvard University, such as Roderick Chisholm, Nicholas Wolterstorff, and David Lewis. Most of the discussion centres on Lewis, as Lewis was influenced the most by Williams. It is argued that Lewis absorbed Williams’s belief in metaphysics and such doctrines as Humeanism and four-dimensionalism. Williams’s influence on philosophers in Australia such as D.M. Armstrong and Keith Campbell is then covered, showing how Armstrong, in particular, gravitated towards many of Williams’s positions: metaphysical realism, metaphysical naturalism, empirical metaphysics, to name a few. Lastly, this chapter gives an account of Williams’s view on how to take the ontological turn and how it impacted Lewis and Armstrong, concluding that Williams played a key role not only in the survival but also the revival of metaphysics in the twentieth century.