“There was never a night or a problem that could defeat sunrise or hope.” — Bernard Williams
Sir Bernard Arthur Owen Williams, FBA (21 September 1929 – 10 June 2003) was an English moral philosopher. His publications include Problems of the Self (1973), Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy (1985), Shame and Necessity (1993), and Truth and Truthfulness (2002). He was knighted in 1999.
From his Wikipedia entry, “Williams became known for his efforts to reorient the study of moral philosophy to psychology, history, and in particular to the Greeks. Martha Nussbaum, an American Philosopher and the current Ernst Freund Distinguished Service Professor of Law and Ethics at the University of Chicago, wrote that he demanded of philosophy that it “come to terms with, and contain, the difficulty and complexity of human life.”
In his last completed book, Truth and Truthfulness: An Essay in Genealogy (2002), Williams identifies the two basic values of truth as accuracy and sincerity and tries to address the gulf between the demand for truth and the doubt that any such thing exists. Jane O’Grady wrote in a Guardian obituary of Williams that the book is an examination of those who “sneer at any purported truth as ludicrously naïve because it is, inevitably, distorted by power, class bias, and ideology.”
It is, based on a reading of his philosophy, that I’m not surprised he would make a statement like our Deep Thought above. We’ve all had that experience as we sat, perhaps alone, through the night fretting about the worst of all possible outcomes. Laid in bed staring up at the ceiling, anxious about a coming event, and still clinging to the hope for the light of morning. It seems we’re hard-wired to crave the light, to walk towards the sun. Christians even sing, “When morning gilds the skies, my heart awakening cries…” And Victor Hugo wrote, “Even the darkest night will end and the sun will rise.”
No matter how bad things look as we go into the night, they do always seem to look less bad as morning rises on the same problems. Sometimes, even in the warm light of day, it’s hard to find that hope, but Christopher Reeve (Superman), despite his paralysis was able to say, “Once you choose hope, anything’s possible.”
I have experienced that worst of dark times and have worked in the funeral industry for a while. I’ve seen families go through some of the darkest experiences. I understand hopelessness, but I’ve always been able to find hope in the morning to keep going, and things have always gotten better. Maybe not on my schedule, but always they have gotten better.
