On what matters /
Derek Parfit.
- 3 volumes ; 24 cm
- The Berkeley Tanner Lectures .
- Berkeley Tanner lectures. .
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Volume 1: -- Part 1. Reasons -- Normative concepts -- Objective theories -- Subjective theories -- Further arguments -- Rationality -- Morality -- Moral concepts -- Part 2. Principles -- Possible consent -- Merely as a means -- Respect and value -- Free will and desert -- Part 3. Theories -- Universal laws -- What if everyone did that? -- Impartiality -- Contractualism -- Consequentialism -- Conclusions -- Appendix A. Stage-given reasons -- Appendix B. Rational irrationality and Gauthier's theory -- Appendix C. Deontic reasons -- Volume 2: -- Part 4. Commentaries -- Hiking the range / Susan Wolf -- Humanity as an end in itself / Allen Wood -- A mismatch of methods / Barbara Herman -- How I an not a Kantian / T.M. Scanlon -- Part 5. Responses -- On hiking the range -- On humanity as an end in itself -- On a mismatch of methods -- How the numbers count -- Scanlonian contractualism -- The triple theory -- Part 6. Normativity -- Analytical naturalism and subjectivism -- Non-analytical naturalism -- The triviality objection -- Naturalism and nihilism -- Non-cognitivism and quasi-realism -- Normativity and truth -- Normative truths -- Metaphysics -- Epistemology -- Rationalism -- Agreement -- Nietzsche -- Appendices -- Why anything? Why this? -- The fair warning view -- Some of Kant's arguments for his formula of universal law -- Kant's claims about the good -- Autonomy and categorical imperatives -- Kant's motivational argument -- On what there is -- Volume 3: -- Part 7. Irreducibly Normative Truths -- How things Might Matter -- Non-Realist Cognitivism -- Normative and Natural Truths -- Gibard's offer to non-naturalists -- Railton's defence of soft naturalism -- Railton's resolution of our disagreements -- Jackson's non-empirical normative truths -- Schroeder's conservative reductive thesis -- Part 8. Expressivist truths -- Quasi-realist expressivism -- Gibbard's resolution of our disagreements -- Another triple theory -- Part 9. Normative and Psychological reasons -- Expressivist reasons -- Subjective reason -- Street's meta-ethical constructivism -- Morality, blame, and internal reasons -- Nietzsche's mountain -- Part 10. Ethics -- What matters and universal reasons -- Conflicting reason -- The right and the good -- Deontological principles -- Act consequentialism and common sense morality -- Towards a unified theory.
"On what matters is a major work in moral philosophy. It is the long-awaited follow-up to Derek Parfit's 1984 book Reasons and Persons, one of the landmarks of twentieth-century philosophy. Parfit now presents a powerful new treatment of reasons, rationality, and normativity, and a critical examination of three systematic moral theories - Kant's ethics, contractualism, and consequentialism - leading to his own ground-breaking synthetic conclusion."--Publisher's website.