What does it mean to be truthful? What role does truth play in our lives? What do we lose if we reject truthfulness? No philosopher is better suited to answer these questions than Bernard Williams. Writing with his characteristic combination of passion and elegant simplicity, he explores the value of truth and finds it to be both less and more than we might imagine. Modern culture exhibits two attitudes toward truth: suspicion of being deceived (no one wants to be fooled) and skepticism that objective truth exists at all (no one wants to be naive). This tension between a demand for truthfulness and the doubt that there is any truth to be found is not an abstract paradox. It has political consequences and signals a danger that our intellectual activities, particularly in the humanities, may tear themselves to pieces. Williams's approach, in the tradition of Nietzsche's genealogy, blends philosophy, history, and a fictional account of how the human concern with truth might have arisen. Without denying that we should worry about the contingency of much that we take for granted, he defends truth as an intellectual objective and a cultural value. He identifies two basic virtues of truth, Accuracy and Sincerity, the first of which aims at finding out the truth and the second at telling it. He describes different psychological and social forms that these virtues have taken and asks what ideas can make best sense of them today. "Truth and Truthfulness" presents a powerful challenge to the fashionable belief that truth has no value, but equally to the traditional faith that its value guarantees itself. Bernard Williams shows us that when we lose a sense of the value of truth, we lose a lot both politically and personally, and may well lose everything.

伯纳德•威廉斯（Bernard Williams,1929-2003）,早年在英国牛津大学研究哲学和古典学,曾先后担任伦敦大学、剑桥大学、牛津大学和美国加利福尼亚大学伯克利分校的哲学教授。1970年被选为英国社会科学院院士,之后又当选为美国艺术与科学院外籍院士,并在1999年因其在哲学上的重大贡献而被授予爵位。

威廉斯的主要工作领域是伦理学、知识论、心灵哲学和政治哲学。他在早期希腊思想和笛卡儿的研究上建树卓越,但他最重要的影响是在伦理学方面。威廉斯对功利主义和康德伦理学的批判,对道德和道德要求的本质的探究,主导了近三十年来西方伦理理论的思维,在某种意义上是这一时期最重要的道德哲学家。

徐向东,浙江大学哲学系教授。1986年获北京大学理学士学位,1989年获中国社会科学院研究生院哲学硕士学位,2002年获美国哥伦比亚大学哲学博士学位。2002年2月—2012年10月任教于北京大学哲学系,曾任伦理教研室主任、教育部人文社会科学重点研究基地北京大学外国哲学研究所常务副所长、哲学系学术委员会和学位委员会委员,2012年11月起担任浙江大学人文学院哲学系教授。