"This book concerns one of the most basic philosophical questions: the explanation of normativity in its many guises. It lays out succinctly the view of normativity that Raz has sought to develop over many decades and determines its contours through some of its applications. In a nutshell, it is the view that understanding normativity is understanding the roles and structures of normative reasons which, when they are reasons for actions, are based on values. The book aims also to clarify the ways in which normative reasons are made for rational beings like us. It brings the account of normativity to bear on many aspects of the lives of rational beings, most abstractly, their agency, more concretely their ability to form and maintain relationships, and live their lives as social beings with a sense of their identity"--

The Roots of Normativity concerns one of the most basic philosophical questions: how to explain normativity in its many guises. Over many decades, Joseph Raz has sought to develop an answer to this question, according to which understanding normativity is understanding the roles and structures of normative reasons which, when they are reasons for action, are based on values. This volume collects twelve chapters which succinctly lay out his view, and determine its contours through some of its applications. The chapters also aim to clarify the ways in which normative reasons are made for rational beings like us. Raz's value-based account of normativity is brought to bear on many aspects of the lives of rational beings and their agency, and in particular, their ability to form and maintain relationships, and to live their lives as social beings with a sense of their identity.

What are our duties or rights? How should we act? What are we responsible for? Joseph Raz examines the philosophical issues underlying these everyday questions. He explores the nature of normativity--the reasoning behind certain beliefs and emotions about how we should behave--and offers a novel account of responsibility.

Ethical concepts are, or purport to be, normative. They make claims on us: they command, oblige, recommend, or guide. Or at least when we invoke them, we make claims on one another; but where does their authority over us - or ours over one another - come from? Christine Korsgaard identifies four accounts of the source of normativity that have been advocated by modern moral philosophers: voluntarism, realism, reflective endorsement, and the appeal to autonomy. She traces their history, showing how each developed in response to the prior one and comparing their early versions with those on the contemporary philosophical scene. Kant's theory that normativity springs from our own autonomy emerges as a synthesis of the other three, and Korsgaard concludes with her own version of the Kantian account. Her discussion is followed by commentary from G. A. Cohen, Raymond Geuss, Thomas Nagel, and Bernard Williams, and a reply by Korsgaard.

Practical Reason and Norms focuses on three problems: In what way are rules normative, and how do they differ from ordinary reasons? What makes normative systems systematic? What distinguishes legal systems, and in what consists their normativity? All three questions are answered by taking reasons as the basic normative concept, and showing the distinctive role reasons have in every case, thus paving the way to a unified account of normativity. Rules are a structure of reasons to perform the required act and an exclusionary reason not to follow some competing reasons. Exclusionary reasons are explained, and used to unlock the secrets of orders, promises, and decisions as well as rules. Games are used to exemplify normative systems. Inevitably, the analysis extends to some aspects of normative discourse, which is truth-apt, but with a diminished assertoric force.

Arguing that the major problems in epistemology have their roots in concerns about our control over our beliefs, David Owen presents a critical discussion of the current trends in contemporary epistemology.

Nature and Normativity argues that the problem of the place of norms in nature has been essentially misunderstood when it has been articulated in terms of the relation of human language and thought, on the one hand, and the world described by physics on the other. Rather, if we concentrate on the facts that speaking and thinking are activities of organic agents, then the problem of the place of the normative in nature becomes refocused on three related questions. First, is there a sense in which biological processes and the behavior of organisms can be legitimately subject to normative evaluation? Second, is there some sense in which, in addition to having ordinary causal explanations, organic phenomena can also legitimately be seen to happen because they should happen in that way, in some naturalistically comprehensible sense of 'should', or that organic phenomena happen in order to achieve some result, because that result should occur? And third, is it possible to naturalistically understand how human thought and language can be legitimately seen as the normatively evaluable behavior of a particular species of organism, behavior that occurs in order to satisfy some class of norms? This book develops, articulates, and defends positive answers to each of these questions.