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Shaping the Normative Landscape

By David Owens

Shaping the Normative Landscape

By David Owens

0 - Default Title
Description
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.
Product details
Edition:
1
Number of Pages:
272
Release Date:
2012-12-05
Publication Date:
2012-09-20
Publisher:
OUP Oxford
Languages:
Original: English
ISBN10:
0199691509
ISBN13:
9780199691500
GPSR Manufacturer Reference:
[email protected]
Weight:
575 g
Height:
161 cm
Width:
240 cm
Thickness:
19 cm
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