- Lived:
- 1919–2006 · London and Oxford
- Tradition:
- Analytic philosophy at its Oxford high noon; descriptive metaphysics; the philosophy of persons
- The Big Idea:
- Philosophy's deepest job is not to invent a better picture of reality but to map the one we already can't think without — a world of bodies and persons, held together by reference, re-identification, and the emotions we feel toward one another.
- In their words:
- The task, he said, is to describe "the actual structure of our thought about the world."
- If you remember one thing:
- He brought metaphysics back from exile by making it modest — and he argued that moral responsibility rests not on solving free will but on the resentment and gratitude no human community could ever really give up.