Description
Book SynopsisShaping the Normative Landscape is an investigation of the value of obligations and of rights, of forgiveness, of consent and refusal, of promise and request. David Owens shows that these are all instruments by which we exercise control over our normative environment. Philosophers from Hume to Scanlon have supposed that when we make promises and give our consent, our real interest is in controlling (or being able to anticipate) what people will actually do and that our interest in rights and obligations is a by-product of this more fundamental interest. In fact, we value for its own sake the ability to decide who is obliged to do what, to determine when blame is appropriate, to settle whether an act wrongs us. Owens explores how we control the rights and obligations of ourselves and of those around us. We do so by making friends and thereby creating the rights and obligations of friendship. We do so by making promises and so binding ourselves to perform. We do so by consenting to medic
Trade ReviewShaping the Normative Landscape is bound to shape the philosophical landscape, by contributing to particular philosophical debates and by introducing a new and exciting proposal about how we should understand our normative environment. * Alida Liberman, Ethics *
Shaping the Normative Landscape does two important things. First, it shows how these two general approaches can be reconciled. Second, it shows that some intractable difficulties across a wide range of normative phenomena have both an underlying unity and elegant solution. More importantly, the solution itself is intuitively appealing. * Erin Taylor, Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews *
Changes one's view of an important subject. * Allan Gibbard, The Times Literary Supplement *
ambitious, instructive and sophisticated * Gerald Lang, Analysis *
Table of ContentsINTRODUCTION; PART ONE: INTERESTS; PART TWO: POWERS; PART THREE: PRACTICES
