What are our duties or rights? How should we act? What are we responsible for? Joseph Raz examines the philosophical issues underlying these everyday questions. He explores the nature of normativity--the reasoning behind certain beliefs and emotions about how we should behave--and offers a novel account of responsibility.

• 1: The Hope


• Part One: Regarding Normativity


• 2: Practical Reasons: Explanatory and Normative


• 3: Reasons: Practical and Adaptive


• 4: The Guise of the Good


• 5: Reason, Rationality and Normativity


• Part Two: Regarding Practical Reasoning


• 6: Epistemic Modulations


• 7: Practical Reasoning


• 8: The Myth of Instrumental Rationality


• 9: Reasons in Conflict


• 10: Numbers: With and Without Contractualism


• 11: Promoting Value?


• Part Three: On Responsibility


• 12: Being in the World


• 13: Responsibility and the Negligence Standard

Joseph Raz has been teaching at Oxford University since 1972. He has been Professor of the Philosophy of Law there since 1985, and Research Professor since 2006; he has also been Professor at Columbia University since 2002. He is a Fellow of the British Academy and Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and has published a number of books including Between Authority and Interpretation (OUP, 2009) and The Authority of Law (OUP, 2009).