Description
Book SynopsisWhat are our duties or rights? How should we act? What are we responsible for? How do we determine the answers to these questions? Joseph Raz examines and explains the philosophical issues underlying these everyday quandaries. He explores the nature of normativity--namely, the fact that we believe and feel we should behave in certain ways, the reasoning behind certain beliefs and emotions, and various basic features of making decisions about what to do. He goes on to consider when we are responsible for our actions and omissions, and offers a novel account of responsibility. We can think of responsibility for unjustified actions or attitudes as a precondition of the blameworthiness of a person for an attitude or an action, or perhaps for a whole set of actions, intentions, or beliefs. Responsibility for justified actions or attitudes may be a precondition of praiseworthiness. Either way responsibility may point to further consequences of being justified or unjustified, rational or not.
Trade Reviewbreathtaking in its scope, its depth, and, most importantly, its brilliance. * The Canadian Journal of Law & Jurisprudence *
there is something philosophically subtle and genuinely insightful about Raz's suggestive account of the relationship of our agency to the world. * Manuel Vargas, An International Journal of Legal and Political Thought *
Table of Contents1. The Hope ; PART ONE: REGARDING NORMATIVITY ; 2. Practical Reasons: Explanatory and Normative ; 3. Reasons: Practical and Adaptive ; 4. The Guise of the Good ; 5. Reason, Rationality & Normativity ; PART TWO: REGARDING PRACTICAL REASONING ; 6. Epistemic Modulations ; 7. Practical Reasoning ; 8. The Myth of Instrumental Rationality ; 9. Reasons in Conflict ; 10. Numbers: With and Without Contractualism ; 11. Promoting Value? ; PART THREE: ON RESPONSIBILITY ; 12. Being in the World ; 13. Responsibility and the Negligence Standard
