Reasons and the Good

Roger Crisp offers original and sometimes surprising answers to some of the deepest questions in philosophy, including: What reasons do we have for acting in one way or another? Are there moral reasons? What are reasons anyway? What makes for a good human life? How should we weigh the well-being of others against our own? In Reasons and the Good Roger Crisp answers some of the oldest questions in moral philosophy. Claiming that a fundamental issue in normative ethics is what ultimate reasons for action we might have, he argues that the best statements of such reasons will not employ moral concepts. He investigates and explains the nature of reasons themselves; his account of how we come to know them combines an intuitionist epistemology with elements of Pyrrhonist scepticism. He defends a hedonistic theory of well-being and an account of practical reason according to which we can give some, though not overriding, priority to our own good over that of others. The book develops original lines of argument within a framework of some traditional but currently less popular views.