Shaping the Normative Landscape - Softcover

Owens, David

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0198708041 ISBN 13: 9780198708049

Publisher: Oxford University Press, 2014

Synopsis

Shaping 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 medical treatment and thereby giving the doctor the right to go ahead. The normative character of our world matters to us on its own account. To make sense of promise, consent, friendship and other related phenomena we must acknowledge that normative interests are amongst our fundamental interests. We must also rethink the psychology of agency and the nature of social convention.

About this title

Review:

Shaping 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)

About the Author:

David Owens is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Reading. He is the author of two previous books: Causes and Coincidences (Cambridge 1992) and Reason Without Freedom (Routledge 2000). He has held visiting appointments at Yale University, Oxford University, Sydney University, London University, and at the Catholic University of Lublin.

About this edition

• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Publication date: 2014
• ISBN 10: 0198708041
• ISBN 13: 9780198708049
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 2
• Number of pages: 270