- Lived:
- 1929–2003 · England, with late chapters in California and Oxford; died in Rome
- Tradition:
- Analytic moral philosophy — and its most devastating internal critic
- The Big Idea:
- The great moral theories — utilitarianism, Kantianism, all the systems — demand a view of life so simplified that following them honestly would cost you your integrity; ethics is bigger, messier, and more human than any theory can capture.
- In their words:
- "Morality, the peculiar institution."
- If you remember one thing:
- He fought both of the reigning ethical theories to a standstill — and then spent his dying years defending the one thing every theory quietly depends on: telling the truth.