Título: What We Owe to Each Other
Autor: T. M. Scanlon
Sinopse: “This magnificent book…opens up a novel, arresting position on matters that have been debated for thousands of years.” ―Times Literary Supplement
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. He shows how the special authority of conclusions about right and wrong arises from the value of being related to others in this way, and he shows how familiar moral ideas such as fairness and responsibility can be understood through their role in this process of mutual justification and criticism.
Scanlon bases his contractualism on a broader account of reasons, value, and individual well-being that challenges standard views about these crucial notions. He argues that desires do not provide us with reasons, that states of affairs are not the primary bearers of value, and that well-being is not as important for rational decision-making as it is commonly held to be. Scanlon is a pluralist about both moral and non-moral values. He argues that, taking this plurality of values into account, contractualism allows for most of the variability in moral requirements that relativists have claimed, while still accounting for the full force of our judgments of right and wrong.
Contexto da obra
Como livro em inglês, esta obra costuma ganhar também uma camada própria de interesse editorial e linguístico. “What We Owe to Each Other”, de T. M. Scanlon, publicado pela editora Belknap Press: An Imprint of Harvard University Press, em 2000 e com 432 páginas, integra a categoria Livros em Inglês. Por isso, o interesse da obra tende a se ampliar quando o leitor considera também a relação com a língua em que ela circula.
Editora: Belknap Press: An Imprint of Harvard University Press
Páginas: 432
Ano: 2000-11-15
Edição: Revised
Linguagem: en
ISBN: 067400423X
ISBN13: 9780674004238
Sobre a editora
Os livros da editora Belknap Press: An Imprint of Harvard University Press trazem obras que exploram temas históricos, econômicos e culturais com profundidade analítica e rigor acadêmico. A experiência de leitura costuma envolver narrativas densas, que combinam relatos detalhados com reflexões críticas, muitas vezes abordando conflitos políticos, sociais ou econômicos em contextos amplos, como guerras mundiais, dinâmicas raciais ou transformações financeiras globais. O tom varia entre o didático e o ensaístico, com ritmo que privilegia a clareza e a argumentação fundamentada, sem apelos simplistas. O catálogo revela também uma atenção especial a personagens históricos complexos e a processos de mudança social, com obras que dialogam com públicos interessados em história, política e ciências sociais.
