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Cute Prickly Critter With Presbyopia, Don Herzog
Cute Prickly Critter With Presbyopia, Don Herzog
Reviews
Ronald Dworkin's' latest, long-awaited, and most ambitious book is a puzzle. Truth in advertising first: despite the title, this isn't centrally a book about justice. It's a book about the realm of value-all of that realm. Dworkin is most interested here in morality, but really touches on all of it, as a matter of the application of the abstract argument and sometimes in black and white right on the page, from aesthetics to prudence to morality to politics to law to . . . . It's fun to read, also frustrating. It stretches out lazily in handling some issues but …
Value: A Menu Of Questions, Joseph Raz
Value: A Menu Of Questions, Joseph Raz
Faculty Scholarship
The paper considers some questions arising out of reflection on Finnis's writings about value, exemplifying them by consideration of the putative value of knowledge. They include the role of harmony, and of self-evidence, in identifying or constituting values, and the ways in which values can provide reasons.
On The Guise Of The Good, Joseph Raz
On The Guise Of The Good, Joseph Raz
Faculty Scholarship
The chapter examines the main argument for, and the presuppositions of the claim that intentional actions are actions taken in, and because of, a belief that there is some good in them. An analysis of intentional actions, and of action for a (normative) reason, followed by a consideration of a number of objections to the thesis of the Guise of the Good force various revisions and refinements of the thesis yielding a defensible version of it. It is argued that the revised thesis is supported by the same argument that inspired the Guise of the Good from the beginning and …
The Practice Of Value – Reply, Joseph Raz
The Practice Of Value – Reply, Joseph Raz
Faculty Scholarship
The privilege of having three sets of extensive and hard-hitting comments on one's work is as welcome as it is rare, and especially so on this occasion as the lectures were, for me, but the first (well, not entirely first) stab at a subject I hope to explore at greater length. The reflections that follow will respond to some of the criticisms, but will not be a point by point reply. I will use the occasion to clarify some obscurities in the lectures, and to contrast my view with some of my critics' own positions. I will proceed thematically, starting …
How To Be A Moorean, Donald H. Regan
How To Be A Moorean, Donald H. Regan
Articles
G. E. Moore’s position in the moral philosophy canon is paradoxical. On the one hand, he is widely regarded as the most influential moral philosopher of the twentieth century. On the other hand, his most characteristic doctrines are now more often ridiculed than defended or even discussed seriously. I shall discuss briefly a number of Moorean topics—the nonnaturalness of “good,” the open question argument, the relation of the right and the good, whether fundamental value is intrinsic, and the role of beauty—hoping to explain how a philosophically informed person could actually be a Moorean even today.1
The Value Of Rational Nature, Donald H. Regan
The Value Of Rational Nature, Donald H. Regan
Articles
Kant tells us in the Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals that rational nature is an end in itself; that it is the only thing which is unconditionally valuable; and that it is the ultimate condition of all value.1 A striking trend in recent Kant scholarship is to regard these value claims, rather than the formalism of universalizability, as the ultimate foundation of Kant’s theory.2 But does rational nature as Kant conceives it deserve such veneration? Can it really carry the world of value on its shoulders? I think not. As will become clear, I do not doubt the value …
Gewirth On Necessary Goods: What Is The Agent Committed To Valuing?, Donald H. Regan
Gewirth On Necessary Goods: What Is The Agent Committed To Valuing?, Donald H. Regan
Book Chapters
In this chapter I shall be concerned with stage I of Gewirth's argument, in which he argues that the agent must value her freedom and well-being as necessary goods. Stage I has attracted less criticism over the years than stages II and III, but even so, a good deal has been written about it. I do not claim to have found any brand new objection to Gewirth's argument. The core of my objection occurred to me during my first reading of Reason and Morality, and it obviously occurred to a number of other people as well. 3 But it is …
Corporations, Criminal Law And The Color Of Money, Joseph Vining
Corporations, Criminal Law And The Color Of Money, Joseph Vining
Articles
This part of From Newton's Sleep, published by Princeton University Press in 1995 and in a paperback edition in early 1997, is reprinted by permission of the publisher. From Newton's Sleep is a book on the legal form of thought and its meaning for science and religion. It consists of some two hundred and fifty self-contained pieces arranged in eight sections. In its form, the book is much like and is meant to be much like the material with which lawyers routinely deal. Here, Law Quadrangle Notes excerpts a piece that touches on a subject of lively debate today, among …
Duties Of Preservation, Donald H. Regan
Duties Of Preservation, Donald H. Regan
Book Chapters
The central philosophical problem concerning our duties with regard to nature is this: We are strongly inclined to think we have certain duties which are not fully accounted for by instrumental arguments. We are also strongly inclined to hold a view about value that seems to make it impossible to account for these duties by any noninstrumental arguments. Hence our perplexity. It seems that we have duties to respect living creatures; to avoid causing the extinction of species; even to preserve complex parts of the environment s uch as a tropical rain forest or the Grand Canyon. If we ask …