Books

Edited

JOSEPH RAZ, THE ROOTS OF NORMATIVITY edited with an introduction by Ulrike Heuer

Oxford: Oxford University Press 2022 - reviews by Jonathan Dancy (Mind); John Skorupski (Phil Quarterly); Kimberley Brownlee (Ethics); David Owens (The Modern Law Review); Dale Dorsey (NDPR); Jean-François Kervégan (Revue de métaphysique et de morale)

Paperback edition OUP 2024

LUCK, VALUE AND COMMITMENT: THEMES FROM THE ETHICS OF BERNARD WILLIAMS

Co-edited with Gerald Lang . Oxford: Oxford University Press 2012 (contributions by John Broome, Jonathan Dancy, David Enoch, Ulrike Heuer, Brad Hooker, Gerald Lang, Philip Pettit, Joseph Raz, Michael Smith, Jay Wallace, Susan Wolf).

Monograph

GRÜNDE UND MOTIVE. ÜBER HUMESCHE THEORIEN PRAKTISCHER VERNUNFT

mentis Verlag, Paderborn 2001, 260 pages.

Edited journal issue

THE NORMATIVE SIGNIFICANCE OF INTENTIONS

Co-edited with Matthew Smith (with contributions by Luca Ferrero, Richard Holton, Hallie Liberto, Erasmus Mayr, David Owens, Sarah Paul, Joseph Raz, Ralph Wedgwood, Fiona Woollard). Special Issue of Philosophical Explorations (20th Anniversary Issue), 20:2, 2017.

Forthcoming papers

‘THE VOLUNTARY IS ESSENTIALLY SUPERFICIAL’. BERNARD WILLIAMS ON RESPONSIBILITY AND POLITICAL FREEDOM forthcoming in Veronica Rodriguez-Blanco, Daniel Murata and Julieta Rabanos (eds.), Bernard Williams: From Responsibility to Jurisprudence, chapter 1, 2-22, Bloomsbury/Hart Publishing 2026.

Abstract. In this paper, I try to square three very different contributions to the discussion of responsibility by Bernard Williams in ‘Moral Luck’, ‘Recognizing Responsibility’ (in Shame and Necessity), and in the rarely discussed essay ‘Moral Responsibility and Political Freedom’. The three sources are not obviously compatible, but I show that there is unifying interpretation.

ACTING FOR A REASON: RECOGNITION AND RESPONSE in preparation for Singa Behrens, Benjamin Kiesewetter (eds): The Structure of Normativity. OUP 2026.

Under review

Paper on the obligations of friendship

Paper on responsibility

Book project

The Value of Normativity. The book will develop a value-based account of reasons explaining difficult cases (obligations) both via examples (friendship, promissory obligations) and by giving and defending an account of obligations as protected reasons.

Published papers

VALUE-BASED REASONS in Russ Shafer-Landau (ed.), Oxford Studies in Metaethics 20, 2025:224-244.

Abstract. In this paper I defend the view that the (derivative or non-derivative) value of an action is a paradigm case of a reason for action. I argue that there are two conditions that reasons for actions must satisfy which work in tandem: the Intelligibility Requirement and the Guidance Condition respectively. I show that and how value-based reasons satisfy both. I then argue for the view that it is the value of actions that explains reasons contrasting the approach that practical reasons are provided by the value of the action’s outcomes.

THE POINT OF EXCLUSIONARY REASONS in Andrei Marmor, Kimberley Brownlee, David Enoch (eds.), Engaging Raz, Oxford: Oxford University Press 2025, chapter 6, 118-143 (the link is to Oxford Scholarship Online)

Abstract. One of Joseph Raz’s signature contributions to the explanation of normativity is the introduction of the concept of an exclusionary reason (ER). As Raz sees it, ERs play a crucial role in the explanation of legitimate legal authority, but they are also ubiquitous outside of the legal domain. My focus is on their role in explaining the way in which moral, or at any rate, nonlegal obligations or duties normatively differ from ordinary first-order reasons. According to Raz, such obligations are best understood as ‘protected reasons’, i.e. first-order reasons which are ‘protected’ by an exclusionary reason, which in turn is a second-order reason: a reason not to act for reasons of a certain kind. The protected-reason account suggests that obligations are reasons that one shouldn’t fail to satisfy for certain kinds of reasons.

To assess the proposal, I first explain in some detail what it amounts to and then explore whether it can be made intelligible within Raz’s general approach to the explanation of reasons which I call ‘the value-based account’. I focus on the example of promissory obligations.

REASONS FROM IDENTITY in Simon Kirchin (ed), The Future of Normativity, Oxford: Oxford University Press 2025, chapter 12, 318-340 (the link is to Oxford Scholarship online)

Abstract. Identities play a prominent role in many current discussions regarding nationality, gender, ethnicity, and religion. There is little doubt that these identities which are often based on social roles and are subject to social expectations are important for the ways in which people act and lead their lives. They certainly seem to have normative significance. This chapter explores why and when identities provide reasons. It examines Sartre’s well-known comments on bad faith as an objection that any account of reasons from identity must address. There are two roles that practical identities have been assigned in the explanation of normativity which can be seen as marking the ends of a spectrum: Korsgaard’s who regards practical identities as the source of all normativity, and Scanlon’s who doubts that identities have any direct role to play in the explanation of reasons. The chapter argues that between the all-encompassing and the skeptical, there is space for a direct role of identities in determining some practical reasons.

INTRODUCTION in: J. Raz, The Roots of Normativity, Oxford: Oxford University Press 2022, pp. 1-18 (the link to the text is via Oxford Scholarship Online).

LUCK AND RESPONSIBILITY ACCORDING TO BERNARD WILLIAMS in: Andras Szigeti and Matthew Talbert (eds), Morality and Agency: Themes from Bernard Williams, Oxford: Oxford University Press 2022, chapter 9 (the link to the text is via Oxford Scholarship Online).

Abstract: In his seminal paper, “Moral Luck,” Bernard Williams begins to develop an account of responsibility for unintentional aspects of our agency. It rests on a crucial distinction of success and failure, internal or external to an agent’s project. A success which results from conditions that are internal to a project is not a lucky success, nor is a failure which results from something that is internal to the project just unlucky. There is no internal luck. Responsibility-defying luck is always external. I explain this distinction and show that this approach leads to a plausible account of responsibility for unintentional actions.

MOTIVES AND INTERPRETATIONS: On Friedrich Waismann, Will and Motive, in: Dejan Makovec and Stewart Shapiro (eds.), Friedrich Waismann: The Open Texture of Analytic Philosophy, Palgrave Macmillan 2019, pp. 279-294. (The link is to the penultimate draft)

Abstract. In this paper, I comment on Waismann’s view of ‘motivational explanations’ as he develops it in his unfinished, posthumously published essay ‘Will and Motive’. According to a traditional view, when we act, the motive is an internal psychological state of which we can know through introspection, and it triggers or causes the action. Thus the motive causally explains an independent event which is the action. As Waismann sees it, everything here is false. The motive is (1) not an internal psychological state. (2) We do not know it through introspection. (3) It does not trigger an action, and (4) there is no causal explanation in which the motive is the cause and the action the effect. I analyze Waismann’s arguments for these claims and work out his positive view.

THE RELEVANCE OF THE WRONG KIND OF REASONS in: C. McHugh, J Way, D Whiting, eds, Epistemic and Practical Normativity, Oxford University Press 2018, chapter 3.

Abstract. The discussion of the wrong kind of reasons problem (for short: WKR problem) has spread far beyond fitting attitude theory and buck-passing accounts of value: various philosophers hope to provide a unified account of central issues concerning practical and theoretical normativity by giving an explanation of why certain reasons are of the wrong kind for forming an attitude. They perceive what appears to be a unified phenomenon, and suspect that the explanation of why some reasons are of the wrong kind and others of the right kind for having an attitude are relevantly similar across different attitudes, and may reveal constitutive normative constraints that the attitudes in question are subject to. Along those lines, we may be able to provide a unified account of theoretical and practical normativity. In this paper I show why this ambition is misguided. I argue for two claims: (1) we should sharply distinguish the wrong kind of reasons problem as it arises for fitting attitude theories from any other problem that comes under the same name, and (2) the WKR problem outside of fitting attitude theory doesn’t have a very clear shape (if indeed there is such a problem at all). In particular, there is no similarity between reasons to believe and reasons to intend in this regard, and therefore no hope for a unified explanation of the alleged phenomenon.

REASONS TO INTEND in: Daniel Star (ed), The Oxford Handbook of Reasons and Normativity, Oxford University Press 2018, chapter 37, pp. 865-890.

Abstract: Donald Davidson writes that “[r]easons for intending to do something are very much like reasons for action, indeed one might hold that they are exactly the same except for time.” That the reasons for forming an intention and the reasons for acting as intended are in some way related is a widely accepted claim. But it can take different forms. In this paper, I pursue the claim that the reasons may mirror each other so that there is a (derivative) reason to intend whenever there is a reason to act. I argue that it should be rejected.

COMMENT ON T. M. SCANLON, 'IDEAS OF IDENTITY AND THEIR NOR MATIVE STATUS ' King’s College London, Yeoh Tiong Lay Centre for Politics, Philosophy and Law, annual lecture, 28 March 2018. (Further comments by Joseph Raz and John Skorupski)

MORALISCHER ZUFALL UND KONTROLLE DURCH FÄHIGKEITEN Zeitschrift für philosophische Forschung, Vol. 70 (2016), pp. 5-27. (Link is to JSTOR)

Abstract: The problem of moral luck arises from the apparent conflict of two commonly accepted claims: it seems, on the one hand, that we are responsible only for those actions that are under our control; on the other hand, we seem to be responsible for the results of our actions, even if those depend on the cooperation of factors that we do not control directly. I explain a notion of control which is compatible with moral luck, and also allows us to explain when and why we are responsible for failed and negligent actions.

Das Problem des moralischen Zufalls ergibt sich aus dem vermeintlich Konflikt zweier tief in unserem Alltagsverständnis von Verantwortung verankerter Annahmen: einerseits scheint es, dass wir nur für das verantwortlich sind, was unter unserer Kontrolle ist; andererseits sind wir aber verantwortlich für das, wir tun – für die Ergebnisse unseres Handeln - und die sind gewöhnlich nicht unter unserer Kontrolle, sondern hängen von vielen Umständen ab, auf die wir als Handelnde keinen direkten Einfluss haben. Ich entwickele ich einen anderen Kontrollbegriff – Kontrolle durch Fertigkeiten – und zeige, dass die Kontrolle über unser Handeln in diesem Sinn mit moralischem Zufall vereinbar ist. Darüberhinaus erlaubt uns dieser Kontrollbegriff zu erklären, wann und in welchem Umfang wir für missglückte und nachlässige Handlungen verantwortlich sind.

INTENTIONS, PERMISSIBILITY, AND THE REASONS FOR WHICH WE ACT in: Pavlakos, G. & V. Rodriguez-Blanco (eds), Practical Normativity. Essays on Reasons and Intentions in Law and Practical Reason, Cambridge University Press 2015, pp. 11-30. (The link is to Cambridge University Press.)

Abstract. If you injure me, it matters morally whether it was an accident or you did it intentionally, and whether you did it because you thought it would be fun. I take it that any ethical theory will have to include some explanation of why this is. In this paper, I discuss Thomson’s “The Irrelevance-of-Intentions-to-Permissibility Thesis”:

[IIP] “It is irrelevant to the question whether X may do alpha what intention X would do alpha with if he or she did it.”

IIP is driven in part by skepticism about the doctrine of double effect (DDE). In this paper I do not focus on the arguments for or against DDE, but investigate IIP itself more closely, and investigate some of the arguments for and against it.

INTENTIONS AND THE REASONS FOR WHICH WE ACT Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 114:3 (2014), pp. 291-316. (The link is to JSTOR)

Abstract. Many of the things we do in the course of a day we don’t do intentionally: blushing, sneezing, breathing, blinking, smiling —to name but a few. But we also do act intentionally, and often when we do we act for reasons. Whether we always act for reasons when we act intentionally is controversial. But at least the converse is generally accepted: when we act for reasons we always act intentionally. Necessarily, it seems. In this paper, I argue that acting intentionally is not in all cases acting for a reason. Instead, intentional agency involves a specific kind of control. Having this kind of control makes it possible to modify one’s action in the light of reasons. Intentional agency opens the possibility of acting in the light of reasons.

THE REASONS THAT CAN’T BE FOLLOWED. Comment on J. Raz, From Normativity to Responsibility in: The Jerusalem Review of Legal Studies 2013, vol. 8: 1-14 (with a reply by Joseph Raz).

PROMISING - PART 1 in: Philosophy Compass 7 (12): 832-841, 2012

Abstract. The explanation of promising is fraught with problems. In particular the problem that promises can be valid even when nothing good comes of keeping the promise (the problem of ‘bare wrongings’), and the bootstrapping problem with explaining how the mere intention to put oneself under an obligation can create such an obligation have been recognized since Hume’s famous discussion of the topic. There are two influential accounts of promising, and promissory obligation, which attempt to solve the problems: The expectation account and the practice account. While those accounts solve both the bootstrapping problem and the problem of bare wrongings, it turns out that they encounter numerous problems of their own.

PROMISING - PART 2 in: Philosophy Compass 7 (12): 842-851, 2012

Abstract. The explanation of promising is fraught with problems. In particular the problem that promises can be valid even when nothing good comes of keeping the promise (the problem of ‘bare wrongings’), and the bootstrapping problem with explaining how the mere intention to put oneself under an obligation can create such an obligation have been recognized since Hume’s famous discussion of the topic. In part 1, I showed that two main views of promising which attempt to solve these problems fall short of explaining the promissory obligation nonetheless. In this second part, I will explain what it takes to show that there is such an obligation (rather than just a reason of a different kind) to keep one’s promises, and discuss a further account of promissory obligation – the normative powers account – which perhaps stands a chance to solve both the bootstrapping and the bare wrongings problem (or rather, to show why we needn’t be worried about those problems after all), and to successfully explain promissory obligation. It comes in at least two different forms: one which regards the normative power to promise as based on our ability to form special relationships, and another which regards the promisee’s ‘authority interest’ as the basis.

THICK CONCEPTS AND INTERNAL REASONS in: U. Heuer & G. Lang (eds), Luck, Value and Commitment, OUP 2012, pp. 219-246 (The link is to Oxford Scholarship online)

Abstract. It has become common to distinguish between two kinds of ethical concepts: thick and thin ones. Bernard Williams, who coined the terms, explains that thick concepts such as “coward, lie, brutality, gratitude and so forth” are marked by having greater empirical content than thin ones. They are both action-guiding and world-guided:

If a concept of this kind applies, this often provides someone with a reason for action. At the same time, their application is guided by the world. Judgments applying thick concepts have been seen as lending support to the possibility of explaining moral knowledge, and objectivity in ethics. Some non-cognitivists regard this approach as wrongheaded, and so does Bernard Williams even though he is not a non-cognitivist. However, he believes that having a practical reason does depend on a person’s attitudes and motives. As Blackburn notes, while we may readily accept that the kindness of an action or the fact that it is required by justice is a reason to perform it, there are many thick concepts whose action-guiding role we would reject. Some derogatory – e.g., racist or sexist - words express thick concepts too. But there are no racist or sexist truths. Blackburn claims that it is morally objectionable to regard the facts asserted in propositions which employ thick concepts as ipso facto action-guiding because it leads to “a conservative and ultimately self-serving complacency.” As he sees it,

…it is morally vital that we proceed by splitting the input from the output in such a case. By refusing to split we fail to open an essential specifically normative dimension of criticism.

Williams answers Blackburn’s challenge, while holding on to a cognitivist understanding of thick concepts. His particular brand of cognitivism is peculiar: Williams rejects the separability thesis, and claims that correct applications of thick concepts yield evaluative (and not just descriptive) knowledge. But this is a special kind of knowledge. It is confined to a local community. The members of a community which uses certain thick concepts may have reasons to act accordingly, but the non-members do not. And even the reasons of members remain a little fragile: they may not want to continue using their concepts upon thorough reflection. My aim in this paper is to show that Williams’s position is, despite its initial attraction, untenable. In particular, I showing why the internal reasons view is incompatible with Williams’s own understanding of thick concepts. My modest result is that the internalist view of reasons does not help to answer Blackburn’s challenge.

INTRODUCTION (with Gerald Lang) in: U. Heuer & G. Lang (eds) Luck, Value and Commitment, Oxford University Press 2012, pp. 1-16 (Link is to Oxford Scholarship online)

GUIDED BY REASONS: RAZ ON THE NORMATIVE-EXPLANATORY NEXUS in: Jurisprudence 2 (2), 2011, 353-365 (The link is to HeinOnline)

Abstract. Joseph Raz’s From Normativity to Responsibility explores normativity as an essential feature of our‘Being in the World’: finding that normativity can be cashed out in terms of normative reasons (epistemic and practical) which are facts that are (marginal cases apart) independent of our beliefs about them; and yet those reasons are necessarily related to our rational capacities, and our proper functioning as persons who lead their lives by exercising their rational powers. Reasons are subject to the normative/explanatory nexus. Reasons must be capable of guiding us—but not every fact that would make acting in a certain way good could do that.

In this paper, I explore the possibility of understanding the nexus as suggesting that ‘reason’ (but not ‘value’) is a response-dependent concept.

THE PARADOX OF DEONTOLOGY, REVISITED in: Mark Timmons (ed), Oxford Studies in Normative Ethics, Oxford: Oxford University Press 2011, pp. 236-67.

Abstract. It is a feature of our ordinary understanding of morality that we ought not to act in certain ways at all. We ought not to kill, torture, deceive, break our promises (say)—exceptional circumstances apart. These restrictions are at the core of deontological ethics. But while it is also part and parcel of ordinary moral thought, it seems puzzling, because it requires an agent to act (or to abstain from acting) in certain ways, even if by violating some restriction she could achieve a better outcome in terms of the very restriction that she is required to heed. Why not violate a restriction if doing so minimizes the violation of that very restriction? This question concerns what is sometimes called ‘the paradox of deontology’ or ‘the problem of minimizing violations’.

Exploring whether there is really a problem here, and how it might be solved, is the main objective of this paper. I discuss promising as an example of a kind of action which is thought to be subject to agent-centred restrictions. It turns out that they are surprisingly easy to explain. The difficult case is killing—and that should give us a pause. I argue that the problem is not with the very idea of deontological restrictions, but with puzzling aspects of the ethics of killing.

BEYOND WRONG REASONS: THE BUCK-PASSING ACCOUNT OF VALUE in: Michael Brady (ed.), New Waves in Metaethics, Palgrave: 2010, pp. 166-184 (The link is to the penultimate draft)

Abstract. The buck-passing account of value (BPA) is very fertile ground that has given rise to a number of interpretations and controversies. It has originally been proposed by T.M. Scanlon as an analysis of value: according to it, being good ‘is not a property that itself provides a reason to respond to a thing in certain ways. Rather, to be good or valuable is to have other properties that constitute such reasons’. Buck-passing stands in a complicated relation to the fitting-attitude analysis of normativity that reaches back to the work of Brentano and Ewing. Proponents of FA-analysis hold that, as a matter of the conceptual analysis of ‘good’, something is good if it is fitting to have pro-attitudes of a certain kind towards it. The ambition of FA-analysis is to explain all practical normativity in terms of the fittingness of attitudes, which – while being itself a normative concept – is the only normative concept which grounds all others. Wlodek Rabinowicz and Toni Rønnow-Rasmussen welcomed BPA as a contemporary version of FA-analysis, and others have followed this suggestion. But whether BPA should be regarded as a version of FA-analysis is a moot point. In section I, I show that BPA is not as obviously a successor of the fitting-attitude analysis of value as some have thought. The much discussed wrong-kind-of-reasons (for short: WKR) problem afflicts buck-passing only in so far as it incorporates a version of FA analysis, or at any rate is expressed in terms of reasons for attitudes. There can be a buck-passing account of value which is not affected by the problem: one that limits the account to reasons for actions (rather than attitudes). However, insofar as BPA does inherit elements of FA analysis, it also has a WKR problem. In section II, I discuss this problem and its solution. I show that it has been misidentified in the current literature, and that – once we understand the problem correctly – its solution is likely to be unavailable to the buck-passer. Hence we should reject any account of BPA that incorporates FA analysis. That leaves us with versions which do not: versions that formulate BPA in terms of reasons for actions only, rather than reasons for attitudes. Finally, in section III, I discuss why buck-passing seemed to be appealing to begin with, and whether a version of BPA that does not incorporate FA analysis is a viable contender of the account – beyond the WKR problem.

WRONGNESS AND REASONS Ethical Theory and Moral Practice, Vol 13:2 (April 2010), 137-152 (The link is to JSTOR)

Abstract. Is the wrongness of an action a reason not to perform it? Of course it is, you may answer. That an action is wrong both explains and justifies not doing it. Yet, there are doubts. Thinking that wrongness is a reason is confused, so an argument by Jonathan Dancy. There can’t be such a reason if ‘ϕ-ing is wrong’ is verdictive, and an all things considered judgment about what (not) to do in a certain situation. Such judgments are based on all the relevant reasons for and against ϕ-ing. If that ϕ-ing is wrong, while being an all things considered verdict, would itself be a reason, it would upset the balance of reasons: it would be a further reason which has not yet been considered in reaching the verdict. Hence, the judgment wasn’t ‘all things considered' after all. I show that the argument against wrongness being a reason is unsuccessful, because its main assumption is false. Its main assumption is that a consideration which necessarily does not affect the balance of reasons is not a reason. I also argue that there can be no deontic buck-passing account.

REASONS AND IMPOSSIBILITY, Philosophical Studies, Vol 147, No 2, 2010, 235-246, 2010.

Abstract. In this paper, I argue that a person can have a reason to do what she cannot do. In a nutshell, the argument is that a person can have derivate reasons relating to an action that she has a non-derivative reason to perform. There are clear examples of derivative reasons that a person has in cases where she cannot do what she (non-derivatively) has reason to do. She couldn’t have those derivative reasons, unless she also had the non-derivative reason to do what she cannot do. I discuss a number of objections to this view, in particular two: (1) The objection that if there were reasons to do what one cannot do, many of those would be ‘crazy reasons’, and (2) the worry that if there were such reasons, then agents would have reasons to engage in futile deliberations and tryings. I develop an explanation of ‘crazy reasons’ that shows that not all reasons to do the impossible are crazy and only those that are need to be filtered out, and, regarding the second objecting, I show that the reasons for trying as well as for taking the means to doing something—instrumental reasons in a broad sense—are different from the reasons for performing the action in the first place. They are affected by impossibility, and we can explain why that is so. The view I argue for is that a person may have a reason to do what she cannot do, but she does not have a reason to try to do so or to take means to realizing the impossible.

MORALISCHE MOTIVATION in: S. Gosepath, W. Hinsch, B. Roessler (eds), Handbuch der politischen Philosophie und Sozialphilosophie, Berlin: deGruyter 2008 [Link to the published paper]

EXPLAINING REASONS: WHERE DOES THE BUCK STOP? Journal for Ethics and Social Philosophy, Vol 1:3, 2006.

Abstract. The buck-passing account of values offers an explanation of the close relation of values and reasons for action: of why it is that the question whether something that is of value provides reasons is not ”open.” Being of value simply is, its defenders claim, a property that something has in virtue of its having other reason-providing properties. The generic idea of buck-passing is that the property of being good or being of value does not provide reasons. It is other properties that do. There are, however, at least three versions of the account which differ in their understanding of those “other properties.” The first two versions both assume that non-normative properties provide reasons, the difference being that the second allows that normative properties also provide reasons. Both run into difficulties, which I explain, in trying to defend the claim that non-normative properties provide reasons for action. The third version of the buck-passing account which explains being of value in terms of more specific evaluative properties that are reason-providing remains unpersuasive as well. Once we understand the relation between general and specific properties as a difference in degree, there is no space for a reduction of the one kind of properties to the other. In section II I sketch an alternative account of the relation between reasons and values, which is based on a thesis that I call the Conceptual Link and the claim that values are not just co-extensive with reasons, but explain them.

INTERNALISM AND EXTERNALISM IN ETHICS Encyclopedia of Philosophy 2nd edition, New York: Macmillan 2005.

REASONS FOR ACTIONS AND DESIRES Philosophical Studies 121, 2004, 43-63.

Abstract. It is an assumption common to many theories of rationality that all practical reasons are based on a person's given desires. I shall call any approach to practical reasons which accepts this assumption a "Humean approach". In spite of many criticisms, the Humean approach has numerous followers who take it to be the natural and inevitable view of practical reason. I will develop an argument against the Humean view aiming to explain its appeal, as well as to expose its mistake. I focus on just one argument in favour of the Humean approach, which I believe can be constructed as the background idea of many Humean accounts: the argument from motivation.

RAZ ON REASONS AND VALUES in: P. Pettit, S. Scheffler, M. Smith, R.J. Wallace (eds), Reason and Value. Themes from the Moral Philosophy of Joseph Raz, Oxford: Oxford University Press 2004, 129-52.

Abstract.Explaining the relation of values and reasons is a major focus of Joseph Raz’s work. I examine his account of the relation of values and reasons, focusing in particular on practical reasons. As a preliminary way of delineating two basic alternatives for mapping the relation of values and reasons, let me pose the Euthyphro-style question: (1) Is something valuable because we have reasons to behave in some way with respect to it? Or: (2) Do we have reasons to behave in some way with respect to it because it is valuable? Though helpful for contrasting different approaches, this question is still multiply ambiguous. It may be interpreted as a question concerning the metaphysical primacy of values and reasons respectively - that is, whether there have to be things of value for there to be reasons, or vice versa. There is also a question of conceptual primacy: Can ‘value’ be defined in terms of reasons, or can ‘reason’ be defined in terms of value? A related, but different question is epistemological: Does a person have to be able to master the concept of value in order to understand the concept of a reason (or, again, vice versa)? I use these three questions as guidelines for investigating Raz’s view of the relation of values and reasons. Are values (1) metaphysically, (2) conceptually, and/or (3) epistemologically prior to reasons? Or are reasons in all or any of these respects prior to value? My strategy in the paper is as follows: In section 1, I locate Raz’s position with respect to these three questions by contrasting his views with those of Thomas Scanlon. In section 2, I work out Raz’s account of reasons and values in some greater detail. And then, in section 3, I discuss what I take to be the remaining major problem with Raz’s approach.

SIND WÜNSCHE HANDLUNGSGRÜNDE? Analyse und Kritik Vol 21, 1999, 1-24.

Abstract.Desires are often taken to be the basis for all practical reasons. I introduce one of the most powerful arguments to sustain this view: the argument from motivation . In section 2, however, I develop an equally powerful objection to desire-based approaches showing that desires are not suited to accommodate the justificatory role of reasons. The objection suggests that at least one of the premises of the argument from motivation must presuppose that only desires can explain actions. This move is, however, fatal for desire-based views of practical reason. [The paper is in German.]

HABEN MEINE GRÜNDE ETWAS MIT MIR ZU TUN? BERNARD WILLIAMS ERWIDERUNG AUF JOHN MCDOWELL in: J. Nida-Rümelin (ed), Analyomen 3, 606-614. Walter deGruyter Berlin 1999. [Link to the published paper]

ZUM BEGRIFF DER MORALISCHEN MOTIVATION in: G. Meggle (ed.) Analyomen 2, Perspectives in Analytical Philosophy, 243-250. Walter deGruyter, Berlin 1997. [Link to the published paper]