Rationality and Moral Theory

<p>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.</p> <p>Acknowledgments </p><p>Introduction: Agents and Their Reasons</p><p>Chapter One: Situating the Project</p><p>Chapter Two: How Not to Understand Reasons of Intimacy</p><p>Chapter Three: Friends and Other Relations</p><p>Chapter Four: Intimacy, Fidelity, and Commitments</p><p>Chapter Five: Friendship and Particularism</p><p>Chapter Six: Deontological Constraints and Dispute Resolution</p><p>Chapter Seven: The Scope of the Objective Agent-Relative</p><p>Conclusions: Reasons and Relationships</p><p>Notes </p><p>Bibliography</p><p>Index</p>