Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
  1. Home
  2. Books
  3. Morality and Metaphysics
Publisher:
Cambridge University Press
Online publication date:
June 2021
Print publication year:
2021
Online ISBN:
9781108691321
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108691321
Subjects:
Ethics, Philosophy
Information

Book description

In this book, Charles Larmore develops an account of morality, freedom, and reason that rejects the naturalistic metaphysics shaping much of modern thought. Reason, Larmore argues, is responsiveness to reasons, and reasons themselves are essentially normative in character, consisting in the way that physical and psychological facts - facts about the world of nature - count in favor of possibilities of thought and action that we can take up. Moral judgments are true or false in virtue of the moral reasons there are. We need therefore a more comprehensive metaphysics that recognizes a normative dimension to reality as well. Though taking its point of departure in the analysis of moral judgment, this book branches widely into related topics such as freedom and the causal order of the world, textual interpretation, the nature of the self, self-knowledge, and the concept of duties to ourselves.

Reviews

‘In resolute opposition to popular expressivist and constitutivist views that have emerged from the traditions of Hume and Kant, Charles Larmore offers an account of morality that does not shy away from its metaphysical commitments. Starting from the contention that moral judgments purport to describe attitude-independent moral facts, which furnish objective reasons that can move us to act so far as we are rational, Larmore develops an ontologically robust account of these reasons as constituting a distinct dimension of reality, not reducible to the physical and psychological realms countenanced by contemporary naturalism. The fruit of long reflection, this erudite and passionately argued book merits the attention of anyone interested in these topics.’

Stephen Engstrom - University of Pittsburgh

Refine List

Actions for selected content:

Select all | Deselect all
  • View selected items
  • Export citations
  • Download PDF (zip)
  • Save to Kindle
  • Save to Dropbox
  • Save to Google Drive

Save Search

You can save your searches here and later view and run them again in "My saved searches".

Please provide a title, maximum of 40 characters.
Cancel
×

Contents

Contents
References

Metrics

Altmetric attention score

Full text views

Total number of HTML views: 0
Total number of PDF views: 0 *
Loading metrics...

Book summary page views

Total views: 0 *
Loading metrics...

* Views captured on Cambridge Core between #date#. This data will be updated every 24 hours.

Usage data cannot currently be displayed.