Search results for ""Author Russell Hardin""
The University of Chicago Press Morality within the Limits of Reason
This provocative, lucidly written reconstruction of utilitarianism focuses on the practical constraints involved in ethical choice: information may be inadequate, and understanding of causes and effects may be limited. Good decision making may be especially constrained if other people are closely involved in determining an outcome. Hardin demonstrates that many of these structural issues can and should be distinguished from the thornier problems of utilitarian value theory, and he is able to show what kinds of moral conclusions we can reach within the limits of reason.
£40.00
Princeton University Press How Do You Know?: The Economics of Ordinary Knowledge
How do ordinary people come to know or believe what they do? We need an account of this process to help explain why people act as they do. You might think I am acting irrationally--against my interest or my purpose--until you realize that what you know and what I know differ significantly. My actions, given my knowledge, might make eminently good sense. Of course, this pushes our problem back one stage to assess why someone knows or believes what they do. That is the focus of this book. Russell Hardin supposes that people are not usually going to act knowingly against their interests or other purposes. To try to understand how they have come to their knowledge or beliefs is therefore to be charitable in assessing their rationality. Hardin insists on such a charitable stance in the effort to understand others and their sometimes objectively perverse actions. Hardin presents an essentially economic account of what an individual can come to know and then applies this account to many areas of ordinary life: political participation, religious beliefs, popular knowledge of science, liberalism, culture, extremism, moral beliefs, and institutional knowledge. All of these can be enlightened by the supposition that people are attempting reasonable actions under the severe constraints of acquiring better knowledge when they face demands that far outstretch their possibilities.
£46.80
New York University Press Political Order: Nomos XXXVIII
The collapse of the Soviet empire stands as a dramatic reminder that political institutions are human creations that can be designed more or less well. The question of what constitutes a viable political order is as old as it is profound, and is a central part of the works of such thinkers as Plato, Aristotle, Machiavelli, Hobbes, Locke, Montesquieu, and the American Founders. In eighteen original essays, Political Order presents the work of major scholars such as Robert Dahl, John Gray, Jennifer Nedelsky, Pasquale Pasquino, James Scott, Karen Orren, Steven Skowronek, Walter Dean Burnham, Morris Fiorina, and Norman Schofield who address some of the most pressing questions about political order. Under what conditions do we get political order rather than political chaos? How is political order sustained once it has been created? Do constitutions and electoral systems matter, and if so how much? Is there one best type of political order, and, if not, what is the range of viable possibilities and how should they be evaluated?
£23.39
New York University Press Political Order: Nomos XXXVIII
The collapse of the Soviet empire stands as a dramatic reminder that political institutions are human creations that can be designed more or less well. The question of what constitutes a viable political order is as old as it is profound, and is a central part of the works of such thinkers as Plato, Aristotle, Machiavelli, Hobbes, Locke, Montesquieu, and the American Founders. In eighteen original essays, Political Order presents the work of major scholars such as Robert Dahl, John Gray, Jennifer Nedelsky, Pasquale Pasquino, James Scott, Karen Orren, Steven Skowronek, Walter Dean Burnham, Morris Fiorina, and Norman Schofield who address some of the most pressing questions about political order. Under what conditions do we get political order rather than political chaos? How is political order sustained once it has been created? Do constitutions and electoral systems matter, and if so how much? Is there one best type of political order, and, if not, what is the range of viable possibilities and how should they be evaluated?
£68.40