I usually like Jane O’Grady’s work, but this popular piece is quite misleading. There are some superficial similarities between Williams and Nietzsche, but the differences are far more profound, including in their completely different understanding of the Greeks. Williams’s critique of morality is also quite tepid by comparison to Nietzsche’s. For those interested, here is a longer essay on the subject: https://leiterreports.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/Bernard-Williams-Debt-to-Nietzsche-published-version.oxps (this chapter is from this book on Williams).

It’s particularly misleading to say, as O’Grady does, that, “In Truth and Truthfulness, subtitled ‘An Essay in Genealogy’, [Williams] aimed to do with truth what Nietzsche had done with morality—suggest how our notions of truthfulness, accuracy and sincerity might have developed, over time, out of mere animality and self-interest.” But Nietzsche’s genealogy set out to debunk morality, not vindicate it, and unlike Williams’s, Nietzsche’s was based on evidence (and inference to the best psychological explanation of that evidence), whereas Williams tells a Whiggish just-so story based on pure speculation.