ABSTRACT

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.

chapter |3 pages

Introduction: Agents and Their Reasons

chapter 1|25 pages

Situating the Project

chapter 2|14 pages

How Not to Understand Reasons of Intimacy

chapter 3|20 pages

Friends and Other Relations

chapter 4|21 pages

Intimacy, Fidelity, and Commitments

chapter 5|23 pages

Friendship and Particularism

chapter 7|23 pages

The Scope of the Objective Agent-Relative