Rationality and Moral Theory: How Intimacy Generates Reasons

by Diane Jeske

Overview

This book provides answers to both normative and metaethical questions in a way that shows the interconnection of both types of questions, and also shows how a complete theory of reasons can be developed by moving back and forth between the two types of questions. It offers an account of the nature of intimate relationships and of the nature of the reasons that intimacy provides, and then uses that account to defend a traditional intuitionist metaethics. The book thus combines attention to the details of the lived moral life – the context in which many of our most pressing moral questions arise, how we deliberate and make moral decisions, the complexities that plague our attempts to know what we ought to do – with theoretical rigor in offering an account of the nature of reasons, how we come to have moral knowledge, and how we can adjudicate between competing positions.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781135854645
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
Publication date:	08/18/2008
Series:	Routledge Studies in Ethics and Moral Theory
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	190
File size:	263 KB

About the Author

Diane Jeske received her PhD from MIT, and is now an associate professor of philosophy at The University of Iowa. She has published extensively on special obligations to intimates and is co-editor, with Richard Fumerton, of Philosophy Through Film.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction: Agents and Their Reasons

Chapter One: Situating the Project

Chapter Two: How Not to Understand Reasons of Intimacy

Chapter Three: Friends and Other Relations

Chapter Four: Intimacy, Fidelity, and Commitments

Chapter Five: Friendship and Particularism

Chapter Six: Deontological Constraints and Dispute Resolution

Chapter Seven: The Scope of the Objective Agent-Relative

Conclusions: Reasons and Relationships

Notes

Bibliography

Index