This volume comprises fourteen essays about issues from Jonathan Dancys writings on practical reasons. The essays throw into relief the importance and originality of Dancys work on an interconnected set of issues, including the explanatory role of practical reasons, the distinction between enticing and peremptory reasons, moral particularism, buck-passing accounts of goodness and/or rightness, and the existence of irreducibly normative properties. It is of course disappointing that the collection is not crowned by a set of replies from Dancy, but to an extent this is compensated for by, on the one hand, Dancys autobiographical-philosophical Afterword and, on the other, his strong presence as an interlocutor in almost all of the contributions to the collection. This volume is a fitting tribute to Dancy not just because its a collection of excellent essays on a topic he describes as the main focus of his career, or because many of the chapters carefully and interestingly engage with Dancys (in his phrase) iconoclastic positions on a number of issues, but also insofar as the collection follows Dancys work in spanning traditional boundaries between the various philosophical disciplines that take an interest in practical reasons: the philosophy of mind/action, moral philosophy, and meta-ethics. ndpr.nd.edu/news/48372-thinking-about-reasons-themes-from-the-philosophy-of-jonathan-dancy/
Posted on: Fri, 16 May 2014 18:08:39 +0000