What we owe to each other
Thomas Scanlon (Author)
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. Scanlon bases his contractualism on a broader account of reasons, value, and individual well-being that challenges standard views about these crucial notions
Print Book, English, 1998
Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1998
ix, 420 pages ; 24 cm
9780674950894, 0674950895
39189891
Introduction Reasons and Values Reasons Values Well-Being Right and Wrong Wrongness and Reasons The Structure of Contractualism Responsibility Promises Relativism Appendix: Williams on Internal and External Reasons Notes Bibliography Index
Book based on material presented at meetings and colloquiums; several chapters have been previously published in various journals