Description
Book SynopsisStephen Darwall presents a series of essays that explore the view that central moral concepts are irreducibly second-personal, in that they entail mutual accountability and the authority to address demands. He illustrates the power of the second-personal framework to illuminate a wide variety of issues in moral, political, and legal philosophy. Section I concerns morality: its distinctiveness among normative concepts; the metaethics of ''bipolar obligations'' (owed to someone); the relation between moral obligation''s form and the substance of our obligations; whether the fact that an action is wrong is itself a reason against action (as opposed to simply entailing that sufficient moral reasons independently exist); and whether morality requires general principles or might be irreducibly particularistic. Section II consists of two essays on autonomy: one discussing the relation between Kant''s ''autonomy of the will'' and the right to autonomy, and another arguing that what makes an ag
Table of ContentsIntroduction ; I: MORALITY ; 1. Morality's Distinctiveness ; 2. Bipolar Obligation ; 3. Moral Obligation: Form and Substance ; 4. 'But It Would Be Wrong' ; 5. Morality and Principle ; II: AUTONOMY ; 6. Because I Want It ; 7. The Value of Autonomy and Autonomy of the Will ; III: AUTHORITY AND LAW ; 8. Authority and Second-Personal Reasons for Acting ; 9. Authority and Reasons: Exclusionary and Second Personal ; 10. Law and the Second-Person Standpoint ; 11. Civil Recourse as Mutual Accountability (co-authored with Julian Darwall) ; Works Cited ; Index
