What We Owe to Each Other - Hardcover

Scanlon, T. M.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0674950895 ISBN 13: 9780674950894

Publisher: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1998

Synopsis

How do we judge whether an action is morally right or wrong? If an action is wrong, what reason does that give us not to do it? Why should we give such reasons priority over our other concerns and values? In this book, T. M. Scanlon offers new answers to these questions, as they apply to the central part of morality that concerns what we owe to each other. According to his contractualist view, thinking about right and wrong is thinking about what we do in terms that could be justified to others and that they could not reasonably reject. He shows how the special authority of conclusions about right and wrong arises from the value of being related to others in this way, and he shows how familiar moral ideas such as fairness and responsibility can be understood through their role in this process of mutual justification and criticism.

Scanlon bases his contractualism on a broader account of reasons, value, and individual well-being that challenges standard views about these crucial notions. He argues that desires do not provide us with reasons, that states of affairs are not the primary bearers of value, and that well-being is not as important for rational decision-making as it is commonly held to be. Scanlon is a pluralist about both moral and non-moral values. He argues that, taking this plurality of values into account, contractualism allows for most of the variability in moral requirements that relativists have claimed, while still accounting for the full force of our judgments of right and wrong.

About this title

About the Author

T. M. Scanlon is Alford Professor of Natural Religion, Moral Philosophy, and Civil Polity at Harvard University.

Reviews

Scanlon offers a sharp challenge to much contemporary moral philosophy. Most philosophers think that agreements between people play only a subsidiary role in moral theory. What is right or wrong is independent of what people accept. Agreements rest on morality; they do not underlie it. Scanlon dissents. In his conception, morality depends on principles it would not be reasonable for people to reject. These agreements do not derive from further moral facts. Scanlon also challenges the view that desires give reasons for action, leveling heavy artillery at the contrary position of Bernard Williams. The originality, scope, and careful argument of this work mark it as an indispensable book.?David Gordon, Bowling Green State Univ., OH
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press
• Publication date: 1998
• ISBN 10: 0674950895
• ISBN 13: 9780674950894
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 432