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Reason in Action

Reason in Action Collected Essays Volume I

Author: Professor John Finnis
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 9780199689941
Published In: September 2013
Format: Paperback , 384 pages
Jurisdiction: U.K. ? Disclaimer:
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Presents for the first time a full overview of John Finnis's important contributions to the theory of practical reason and moral philosophy
Includes seven papers published here for the first time, including an analysis of the moral foundations of free speech, and an essay on pornography
Spans topics from the foundations of meta-ethics to practical ethical controversies, offering Finnis's distinctive insight into the intellectual currents of contemporary morality

New to this edition

Reason in Action collects John Finnis's work on the theory of practical reason and moral philosophy. The essays in the volume range from foundational issues of meta-ethics to the practical application of natural law theory to ethical problems such as nuclear deterrence, obscenity and free speech, and abortion and cloning.

Defending the objectivity of some evaluative and moral judgments, the volume's meta-ethical papers debate with figures as diverse as Jurgen Habermas, Bernard Williams, David Hume, Max Weber, and Christine Korsgaard, and offer a new understanding of Wittgenstein's On Certainty. Further papers engage with Philippa Foot, Geoffrey Warnock, Leo Strauss, Terence Irwin, Matthew Kramer, neo-scholastic interpreters of Aquinas, utilitarians, game theorists, and Immanuel Kant on the shape of moral thought. John Rawls's conception of public reason, J.S. Mill's understanding of free speech, and Jacques Maritain's appeal to "connatural" knowledge are critically contested. Foundational questions addressed in the volume include: how legal reasoning differs from general practical reasoning; how aesthetic appreciation differs from erotic attraction; how subrational elements enter into the rational standard of fairness; how virtues depend upon principles and norms; and how incommensurabilities count in moral thought.

These essays mark the development of Finnis's new classical theory of natural law, engaged with contemporary thinkers and problems. Several essays, including two previously unpublished, show the theory's emergence before Natural Law and Natural Rights. Other unpublished essays include a discussion of pornography, an analysis of freedom of speech, and a substantive introduction reflecting on the theory, its reception, and the convergence on it of capabilities theorists such as Amartya Sen and Martha Nussbaum.

Readership: Scholars and students of moral philosophy, the philosophy of law, and theology, especially religious ethics.

Introduction
Foundations
1: Practical Reason's Foundations
2: Discourse, Truth, and Friendship
3: Scepticism's Self-Refutation
4: Self-refutation Revisited
5: Bernard Williams on Truth's Values
6: Reason, Authority, and Friendship
7: Reason, Universality, and Moral Thought
8: Objectivity and Content in Ethics
9: Is and Ought in Aquinas
Building on the Foundations
10: Action's Most Ultimate End
11: Prudence about Ends
12: Moral Absolutes in Aristotle and Aquinas
13: "Natural Law"
14: Legal Reasoning as Practical Reason
Public Reason and Unreason
15: Commensuration and Public Reason
16: "Public Reason" and Moral Debate
17: Reason, Passions, and Free Speech
18: Freedom of Speech
19: Pornography

John Finnis is Professor of Law and Legal Philosophy at the University of Oxford, and a Fellow of University College. He is the Biolchini Family Professor of Law at the University of Notre Dame.