Description
Book SynopsisEngaging Reason offers a penetrating examination of a set of fundamental questions about human thought and action. In these tightly argued and interconnected essays Joseph Raz examines the nature of normativity, reason, and the will; the justification of reason; and the objectivity of value. He argues for the centrality, but also demonstrates the limits, of reason in action and belief. He suggests that our life is most truly our own when our various emotions, hopes, desires, intentions, and actions are guided by reason. He explores the universality of value and of principles of reason on one side, and on the other side their dependence on social practices, and their susceptibility to change and improvement. He concludes with an illuminating explanation of self-interest and its relation to impersonal values in general and to morality in particular.Joseph Raz has been since the 1970s a prominent, original, and widely admired contributor to the study of norms, values, and reasons, not jus
Trade ReviewOne comes away with a feeling of having been chided for one's simple-mindedness by a teacher determined to coax one towards a grasp of complicated truth. * Political Studies *
It will be of enormous interest to those working in ethics and those in the occupied territories within the philosophy of mind, known as the philosophy of action ... written from a stand-point of insight, intelligence and complexity of thought, and it deserves to be widely read and discussed. * Jonathan Wolff, Times Higher Education Supplement *
Table of ContentsINTRODUCTION; 1. WHEN WE ARE OURSELVES; 2. AGENCY, REASON AND THE GOOD; 3. INCOMMENSURABILITY AND AGENCY; 4. EXPLAINING NORMATIVITY: ON RATIONALITY AND THE JUSTIFICATION OF REASON; 5. EXPLAINING NORMATIVITY: REASON AND THE WILL; 6. NOTES ON OBJECTIVITY AND VALUE; 7. MORAL CHANGE AND SOCIAL RELATIVISM; 8. MIXING VALUES; 9. THE VALUE OF PRACTICE; 10. THE TRUTH IN PARTICULARISM; 11. THE MORAL POINT OF VIEW; 12. THE AMORALIST; 13. THE CENTRAL CONFLICT: MORALITY AND SELF-INTEREST; INDEX.
