In this book Joseph Raz develops his views on some of the central questions in practical philosophy: legal, political, and moral. The book provides an overview of Raz's work on jurisprudence and the nature of law in the context of broader questions in the philosophy of practical reason. The book opens with a discussion of methodological issues, focusing on understanding the nature of jurisprudence. It asks how the nature of law can be explained, and how the success of a legal theory can be established. The book then addresses central questions on the nature of law, its relation to morality, the nature and justification of authority, and the nature of legal reasoning. It explains how legitimate law, while being a branch of applied morality, is also a relatively autonomous system, which has the potential to bridge moral differences among its subjects. Raz offers responses to some critical reactions to his theory of authority, adumbrating, and modifying the theory to meet some of them. The final part of the book brings together for the first time Raz's work on the nature of interpretation in law and the humanities. It includes a new essay explaining interpretive pluralism and the possibility of interpretive innovation. Taken together, the essays in the volume offer a valuable introduction for students coming for the first time to Raz's work in the philosophy of law, and an original contribution to many of the current debates in practical philosophy.

"Morality of Freedom" is the winner of the W J M Mackenzie Prize of the Political Studies Association for 1987.

What are our duties or rights? How should we act? What are we responsible for? How do we determine the answers to these questions? Joseph Raz examines and explains the philosophical issues underlying these everyday quandaries. He explores the nature of normativity--namely, the fact that we believe and feel we should behave in certain ways, the reasoning behind certain beliefs and emotions, and various basic features of making decisions about what to do. He goes on to consider when we are responsible for our actions and omissions, and offers a novel account of responsibility. We can think of responsibility for unjustified actions or attitudes as a precondition of the blameworthiness of a person for an attitude or an action, or perhaps for a whole set of actions, intentions, or beliefs. Responsibility for justified actions or attitudes may be a precondition of praiseworthiness. Either way responsibility may point to further consequences of being justified or unjustified, rational or not. But crucially, responsibility attaches to people in a more holistic way. Some people are responsible for their actions, while others are not. In this way, Raz argues that the end is in the beginning, in understanding how people are subject to normativity, namely how it is that there are reasons addressed to them, and what is the meaning of that for our being in the world.

Engaging Reason offers a penetrating examination of a set of fundamental questions about human thought and action. In these tightly argued and interconnected essays Joseph Raz examines the nature of normativity, reason, and the will; the justification of reason; and the objectivity of value. He argues for the centrality, but also demonstrates the limits, of reason in action and belief. He suggests that our life is most truly our own when our various emotions, hopes, desires, intentions, and actions are guided by reason. He explores the universality of value and of principles of reason on one side, and on the other side their dependence on social practices, and their susceptibility to change and improvement. He concludes with an illuminating explanation of self-interest and its relation to impersonal values in general and to morality in particular. Joseph Raz has been since the 1970s a prominent, original, and widely admired contributor to the study of norms, values, and reasons, not just in philosophy but in political and legal theory. This volume displays the power and unity of his thought on these subjects, and will be essential reading for all who work on them.

The Practice of Value explores the nature of value and its relation to the social and historical conditions under which human agents live. At the core of the book are the Tanner Lectures delivered at Berkeley in 2001 by Joseph Raz, who has been one of the leading figures in moral and legal philosophy since the 1970's. Raz argues that values depend importantly on social practices, but that we can make sense of this dependence without falling back on cultural relativism. In response, three eminent philosophers, Christine Korsgaard, Robert Pippin, and Bernard Williams, offer their own distinctive reflections on the connections between value and practice. The book begins with an introduction by Jay Wallace, setting the scene for what follows, and ends with a response from Raz to his commentators. The result is a fascinating debate, accessible to readers throughout and beyond philosophy, about the relations between human values and human life.

The book is a contribution to the study of values, as they affect both our personal and our public life. It defends the view that values are necessarily universal, on the ground that that is a condition of their intelligibility. It does, however, reject most common conceptions of universality, like those embodied in the writings on human rights. It aims to reconcile the universality of value with (a) the social dependence of value and (b) the centrality to our life of deep attachments to people and countries alike. Building from there, the book explores personal love, the value of life, and the fundamental duty of respect for people.

Practical Reason and Norms focuses on three problems: In what way are rules normative, and how do they differ from ordinary reasons? What makes normative systems systematic? What distinguishes legal systems, and in what consists their normativity? All three questions are answered by taking reasons as the basic normative concept, and showing the distinctive role reasons have in every case, thus paving the way to a unified account of normativity. Rules are a structure of reasons to perform the required act and an exclusionary reason not to follow some competing reasons. Exclusionary reasons are explained, and used to unlock the secrets of orders, promises, and decisions as well as rules. Games are used to exemplify normative systems. Inevitably, the analysis extends to some aspects of normative discourse, which is truth-apt, but with a diminished assertoric force.

Raz begins by presenting an analysis of the concept of moral authority. He then develops a detailed explanation of the nature of law and legal systems. Within this framework Raz then examines the areas of legal thought that have been viewed as impregnated with moral values.