Agency and Responsibility: A Common-sense Moral Psychology - Couverture souple

Kennett, Jeanette

Couverture souple

ISBN 10 : 0199266301 ISBN 13 : 9780199266302

Editeur : Oxford University Press, 2004

Synopsis

Book by Kennett Jeanette

A propos du livre

Présentation de l'éditeur :

Is it ever possible for people to act freely and intentionally against their better judgement? Is it ever possible to act in opposition to one's strongest desire? If either of these questions are answered in the negative, the common-sense distinctions between recklessness, weakness of will and compulsion collapse. This would threaten our ordinary notion of self-control and undermine our practice of holding each other responsible for moral failure. So a clear and plausible account of how weakness of will and self-control are possible is of great practical significance. Taking the problem of weakness of will as her starting point, Jeanette Kennett builds an admirably comprehensive and integrated account of moral agency which gives a central place to the capacity for self-control. Her account of the exercise and limits of self-control vindicates the common-sense distinction between weakness of will and compulsion and so underwrites our ordinary allocations of moral responsibility. She addresses with clarity and insight a range of important topics in moral psychology, such as the nature of valuing and desiring, conceptions of virtue, moral conflict, and the varieties of recklessness (here characterised as culpable bad judgement) - and does so in terms which make their relations to each other and to the challenges of real life obvious. Agency and Responsibility concludes by testing the accounts developed of self-control, moral failure, and moral responsibility against the hard cases provided by acts of extreme evil.

Revue de presse :

Review from previous edition Agency and Responsibility is a penetrating treatment of its topic(s). The argument is painstakingly developed and richly supported by realistic examples.... But since a review can't do justice to a complex and subtle work of this kind, I urge readers to see for themselves. The book is well worth reading. (Gary Watson, Mind)

Jeanette Kennett has written a nicely balanced, informative and well-argued book on contemporary thought about agency and responsibility.... There are several points where the author's warmth and commitment to a moral life come through while she manages the rigors of analytic philosophy. (Metapsychology)

À propos de cette édition

• Éditeur: Oxford University Press
• Date d'édition: 2004
• ISBN 10: 0199266301
• ISBN 13: 9780199266302
• Reliure: Broché
• Nombre de pages: 240