Margaret Gilbert

Margaret Gilbert is a leading contributor to the philosophy of the social world. Her work has not only helped to found several research areas in philosophy, but has influenced social scientists as well.

Her first book, On Social Facts (1989) presents a novel, unified approach to a wide range of social phenomena including social groups, group languages, and social conventions. This approach is presented in the context of reflections on the theories Max Weber, Emile Durkheim, and Georg Simmel, founders of sociology, and the philosophers Ludwig Wittgenstein, Saul Kripke, and David Lewis. In subsequent writings Margaret Gilbert has continued further to develop and apply the ideas first introduced in On Social Facts.

The key concept in her work is the concept of joint commitment---a commitment of two or more persons. As she understands it, a joint commitment is what transforms you and me and whatever others into "we". One way to create a joint commitment is to make an agreement with someone, but it is not the only way.

Her essay collection---Joint Commitment: How We Make the Social World (2013)---shows how many aspects of our lives can be illuminated by appeal to joint commitment. Topics range from marital love to the unity of a group of nations such as the European Union, from the nature of command authority to the nature of agreements and promises.

Earlier collections of her essays are Living Together (1996), Sociality and Responsibility (2000), Marcher Ensemble (in French)(2003), and Il Noi Collettivo (in Italian) (2015). Living Together includes the much referenced articles "Walking Together: A Paradigmatic Social Phenomenon" and "Modeling Collective Belief". Sociality and Responsibility includes "Collective Remorse" which helped to initiate the current philosophical interest in collective emotions.

In her book A Theory of Political Obligation: Membership, Commitment, and the Bonds of Society (2006) Gilbert uses her theory of social groups to develop a novel approach to a longstanding problem in political philosophy---the problem of political obligation. The problem, in brief, is: does one have a special obligation to obey the laws of one's own country in particular? Many people have the sense that the answer is positive, but the philosophical consensus to date has not validated this sense. Gilbert argues that the conditions under which a positive answer makes sense are not as restricted as has been assumed in the negative camp. In particular, a "social contract" does not have to take the form of an explicit agreement but, rather, a joint commitment that does not require the explicitness of an agreement. Further, the obligations in question can exist in both just and unjust societies: obligations of joint commitment are not moral requirements. The paperback (2008) contains a number of small clarifying revisions.

A central aspect of joint commitment, Gilbert has argued, is that it grounds obligations and rights for the parties, where obligations in the relevant sense are not and do not comprise moral requirements. Her most recent monograph Rights and Demands: A Foundational Inquiry (2018) fully develops this theme, connecting it to contemporary rights theory, to the long-standing question whether there are any natural rights, and to a topic of pressing current concern: the nature and grounds of human rights.

Gilbert's most recent essay collection is Life in Groups: How We Think, Feel, and Act Together (2023). The essays here offer further discussion of collective beliefs, emotions, values, and intentions, including a general account of collective emotions, and include responses to critics with respect to her views on the obligations of citizens, collective moral responsibility, and other topics.

Margaret Gilbert is Melden Chair in Moral Philosophy and Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at the University of California, Irvine. She is an elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. She has lectured widely in the United States, the UK, Europe, and Scandinavia. In 2019 she received the prestigious Lebowitz Prize for Philosophical Achievement and Contribution from Phi Beta Kappa and the American Philosophical Association. In 2024 she will be President of the Pacific Division of the American Philosophical Association.