The book is a contribution to the study of values, as they affect both our personal and our public life. It defends the view that values are necessarily universal, on the ground that that is a condition of their intelligibility. It does, however, reject most common conceptions of universality, like those embodied in the writings on human rights. It aims to reconcile the universality of value with (a) the social dependence of value and (b) the centrality to our life of deep attachments to people and countries alike. Building from there, the book explores personal love, the value of life, and the fundamental duty of respect for people.
Author(s): Joseph Raz
Series: The Seeley Lectures (4)
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Year: 2001
Language: English
Pages: vii, 178 p. ;
City: Cambridge
Frontmatter
Half-title
Series-title
Title
Copyright
CONTENTS
Introduction
1 Attachment and uniqueness
2 Taming: desire or common history
3 What kind of uniqueness, when, and why?
4 A public diversion
5 Attachments and identity
6 Group identity
7 An Israeli example to reduce discomfort
8 Concluding
2 Universality and difference
1 The thesis
Value
The thesis
The core argument: value and intelligibility
2 When are values universal?
3 The reversal argument
The first stage: the argument from social diversity
Reversing the argument
Dependence through creation and access
Two sample objections to the reversal argument
From social sensitivity to particularism
Contingent particularity?
3 The value of staying alive
1 Framing the question
The value of life and of personal survival
Personal and impersonal value of survival
2 The personal value of perpetual survival
The argument from the absence of a beneficiary
The value of mortality
Lucretius’ argument
3 The personal value of extending life
The basic argument
Is survival a component of a personal good?
4 The relevance of the desire to survive
5 Nagel on the good of life
6 Fear of death, and the view from within
4 Respecting people
1 Introduction
2 Kantian origins
3 On being an end in itself
4 On being valuable in oneself
5 On the value of valuers
6 Introducing reasons of respect
7 Why respect?
8 Respecting people
INDEX
