Joseph Raz

• Doctor of Philosophy
• Professor (Full) at King's College London

considering whether being democratic is a condition of the legitimacy of a constitutional regime, or if it contributes to its legitimacy

Dancy's main thesis is that the conclusion of practical reasoning is an action, and indeed that makes the reasoning practical. I trace his argument, suggest improvements to its superficial deficiencies, and conclude that it fails because Dancy misunderstands the nature of reasoning.

This article offers a new account of the rule of law, revising my previous view and criticising some alternatives. It focuses on the rule of law's aim to avoid arbitrary government, and on its relation to the essential functions of government. The rule of law requires that government action will manifest an intention to protect and advance the inte...

The paper offers a few reflections on moral implications of making sacrifices and on possible duties to make sacrifices. It does not provide an exhaustive or a systematic account of the subject. There are too many disparate questions, and too many different perspectives from which to examine them to allow for a systematic let alone an exhaustive ac...

This commentary responds to Waldron's "Human Rights: A Critique of the Raz/Rawls Approach". It points out that some supposed criticisms are nothing more than observations on conditions that any account of rights must meet, and that Waldron's objections to Raz are due to misunderstanding his thesis and its theoretical goal. The short comment tries t...

In previous writings, I joined those who take the view that action with an intention is an action for (what the agent takes to be) a reason, where whatever value there is in the action is a reason for it. This paper sketches the role of reasons and intentions in leading to action with an intention. Section 1 explains that though belief in the value...

My topic is the possibility of acting in the belief that the action is bad and for the reason that it is, as the agent believes, bad. On route, I examine another question – namely whether agents can, without having any relevant false beliefs, perform actions motivated by the badness of those actions. The main worry is the compatibility of action fo...

The paper distinguishes between instrumental reasons and instrumental rationality. It argues that instrumental reasons are not reasons to take the means to our ends. It further argues that there is no distinct form of instrumental reasoning or of instrumental rationality. In part the argument proceeds through a sympathetic examination of suggestion...

The pluralist turn in jurisprudence has led to a search for new ways of thinking about law. The relationships between state law and other legal orders such as international, customary, transnational or indigenous law are particularly significant in this development. Collecting together new work by leading scholars in the field, this volume consider...

The paper examine various interpretations of Dworkin's thesis of the Unity of Value, as expressed and defended in his book Justice for Hedgehogs. The revision (3rd June) improves the explanation of the role of interpretation regarding unity of value, and adds some other smaller points.

What are our duties or rights? What should we do? What are we responsible for? How do we determine the answers to these questions? This book examines and explains the philosophical issues underlying these everyday questions. It explains the nature of normativity, namely of the fact that, and belief and feelings that one should do something, that th...

Prof. Waldron has recently published a paper criticising the views of Rawls and Raz on human rights. It is pointed out that some supposed criticism are nothing more than observations on conditions that any account of rights must meet, and that Waldron objections to Raz are due to misunderstanding his thesis and its theoretical goal. The short comme...

The paper provides a broadly sketched argument about the importance of state-law and its limits, and the way current developments in international relations and international law tend to transform it without displacing its key position among legal systems in general. It argues that state law is (at least until present time) the most comprehensive l...

If promises are binding there must be a reason to do as one promised. The paper is motivated by belief that there is a difficulty in explaining what that reason is. It arises because the reasons that promising creates are content-independent. Similar difficulties arise regarding other content-independent reasons, though their solution need not be t...

This is the text of the Annual Lecture of the Society for Applied Philosophy, delivered in Oxford on 22-5-12. I kept the talk style of the paper. It examines a central aspect of the relations between duration and quality of life by considering the moral right to voluntary euthanasia, and some aspects of the moral case for a legal right to euthanasi...

The paper will unfold in 5 parts dealing with five questions: first, does the partiality of attachments present an obstacle to their being or giving practical reasons? Second, given a value-based approach to practical reasons, can universal values generate reasons that are specific to their subjects, reasons – say – towards my friends that only I h...

The paper considers some questions arising out of reflection on Finnis's writings about value, exemplifying them by consideration of the putative value of knowledge. They include the role of harmony, and of self-evidence, in identifying or constituting values, and the ways in which values can provide reasons.

The Tanner Lectures on Human Values, which honor the American scholar, industrialist, and philanthropist Obert Clark Tanner, are presented annually at each of nine universities in the United States and Great Britain. They were established at the University of California, Berkeley, beginning in the 2000/1 academic year. This book is an exploration o...

A review in Ethics of Wolf's account of the meaning of life in her Tanner Lectures, examining the relations of the meaning of life, well-being, value, one's attitude to one's activities and one's success in them

Actions for which we are responsible constitute our engagement with the world as rational agents. What is the relationship between such actions and our capacities for rational agency? I take this to be a question about responsibility in a particular use of that term, which I shall call ‘responsibility2’. We are not responsible2 for all our intentio...

I will say something on two or three related but distinct topics. First, something on the grounding of normative beliefs, a topic – as I see it – in moral epistemology, and then after a brief remark on explanation, something against a certain understanding of basic principles. My observations were prompted by reflection on Jerry’s desire to rescue...

The paper has dual aim: to analyse the structure of negligence, and to use it to offer an explanation of responsibility (for actions, omissions, consequences) in terms of the relations which must exist between the action (omission, etc.) and the agents powers of rational agency if the agent is responsible for the action. The discussion involves ref...

The paper is a critique of three papers, by Stephen Wall, Leslie Green and Stephen Darwall. In part it defends, and at times modifies my views on respect for people, practical Authority & political neutrality. And in parts it critiques the views of Wall, Green and Darwall. The criticque of Darwall extends to his views on rights, duties and second-p...

This article has been published by the journal Transnational Legal Theory (http://www.hartjournals.co.uk/TLT). The article is an expanded and revised version of the lecture I gave at the opening plenary session of the 24th IVR World Congress in Beijing, September 2009, which was entitled and previously uploaded as ‘Human Rights in a New World Order...

Advancing an account of responsibility which is based on the functioning of our rational capacities, the paper revisits some central aspects of the moral luck puzzle. It proposes a new variant of Williams' agent-regret, but concludes that its scope does not coincide with cases of moral luck. It then distinguishes different ways in which factors bey...

This book develops ideas on some of the central questions in practical philosophy: legal, political, and moral. It provides an overview of the author'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 understa...

This book develops ideas on some of the central questions in practical philosophy: legal, political, and moral. It provides an overview of the author'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 understa...

This book develops ideas on some of the central questions in practical philosophy: legal, political, and moral. It provides an overview of the author'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 understa...

A thesis familiar through being as often disputed as defended has it that intentional action is action for a reason. This essay contributes, through a partial elucidation, though not by arguing for it, to the defence of a weaker version of the thesis, namely: Acting with an intention or a purpose is acting (as things appear to one) for a reason. Th...

Notes on Contributors Introduction PART I: REASONS AND CAUSES What Must Actions be for Reasons to Explain Them? F.Dretske What Kind of Things are Reasons for Action? S.Everson Was Sally's Reason for Running From the Bear that She Thought it was Chasing Her? R.Stout Con-reasons as Causes D.H. Ruben Agential Reasons and the Explanation of Human Behav...

The paper returns to the question whether equality in distribution is valuable in itself, or, if you like, whether it is intrinsically valuable. Its bulk is an examination of two familiar arguments against the intrinsic value of distributional equality: the levelling down objection and the objection that equality violates some person-affecting cond...

I will provisionally take the Guise of the Good thesis to consist of three propositions: (1) Intentional actions are actions performed for reasons, as those are seen by the agents. (2) Specifying the intention which makes an action intentional identifies central features of the reason(s) for which the action is performed. (3) Reasons for action are...

The paper deals with the possibility of a theory of the nature of law as such, a theory which will be necessarily true of all law. It explores the relations between explanations of concepts and of the things they are concepts of, the possibility that the law has essential properties, and the possibility that the law changes its nature over time, an...

All normative phenomena are normative in as much as, and because, they provide reasons or are partly constituted by reasons. This makes the concept of a reason key to an understanding of normativity. Believing that, I will here present some thoughts about the connection between reasons and Reason and between Reason and normativity.

This chapter contains section titled:

The problem I have in mind is the problem of the possible justification of subjecting one's will to that of another, and of the normative standing of demands to do so. The account of authority that I offered, many years ago, under the title of the service conception of authority, addressed this issue, and assumed that all other problems regarding a...

This book develops ideas on some of the central questions in practical philosophy: legal, political, and moral. It provides an overview of the author'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 understa...

This article challenges the view permeating much philosophical thought that the primacy of individual rights represents the individual's standpoint against the public good or against the requirements of others generally. The author explicates the underlying features of our common culture contending that the conflict between individual and general g...

The paper argues that reasoning according to law is an instance of moral reasoning. Several ways of understanding this claim are distinguished. A number of arguments to the effect that because of the internal logic of the law, or the special skills it involves legal reasoning should be seen as immune to moral considerations are rejected. Neverthele...

My article is about legal interpretation, but not about the question: how to interpret the law. Rather its aim is to make us consider seriously the question: Why is interpretation central to legal practices? After all not all normative practices assign interpretation such a central role. In this regard the law contrasts with morality. The reason fo...

This book develops ideas on some of the central questions in practical philosophy: legal, political, and moral. It provides an overview of the author'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 understa...

The privilege of having three sets of extensive and hard-hitting comments on one's work is as welcome as it is rare, and especially so on this occasion as the lectures were, for me, but thefirst (well, not entirely first) stab at a subject I hope to explore at greater length. The reflectionsthat follow will respond to some of the criticisms, but wi...

Professor Robert Alexy wrote a book whose avowed purpose is to refute the basic tenets of a type of legal theory which 'has long since been obsolete in legal science and practice'. The quotation is from the German Federal Constitutional Court in 1968. The fact that Prof Alexy himself mentions no writings in the legal positivist tradition [in Englis...

What is special about legal reasoning? In what way is it distinctive? How does it differ from reasoning in medicine, or engineering, physics, or everyday life? The answers range from the very ambitious to the modest. The ambitious claim that there is a special and distinctive legal logic, or legal ways of reasoning, modes of reasoning which set the...

I will consider some of the differences between epistemic reasons and reasons for action, and use these differences to illuminate a major division between types of normative reasons, which I will call ‘adaptive’ and ‘practical’ reasons. A few clarifications of some aspects of the concept of epistemic reasons will lead to a distinction between stand...

A thesis familiar by being as often disputed as defended has it that intentional action is action for a reason. The present paper contributes to the defence of a weaker version of it, namely: Acting with an intention or a purpose is acting (as things appear to one) for a reason.

Using the accounts of Gewirth and Griffin as examples, the article criticises accounts of human rights as those are understood in human rights practices, which regard them as rights all human beings have in virtue of their humanity. Instead it suggests that (with Rawls) human rights set the limits to the sovereignty of the state, but criticises Raw...

The lectures explain how most values, cultural values, depend on social practices, and how some others, moral value, depend on them in a different, more partial and indirect way. They also explain why such dependence does not lead to pernicious relativism about values or morality.

The purpose of Raz in this article is to revisit the service conception of authority. The author focuses his attention on some of the objections that were addressed to this conception. In the first section of his work, the fundamental methodological premises of the conception are explained. In the second section, the main features of the service co...

Stephen Darwall's understanding of what kind of life is a good life, good for the person whose life it is, belongs in the same family as, among others, Scanlon's and mine. It is a family of views about well-being which descends from Aristotle, and Darwall has much of interest to say about the good life, and particularly about Aristotle's views on t...

Although this collection of articles is not formally a commentary on Elizabeth Anscombe's famous article of the same title, in which she criticised the moral philosophy prevalent in 1958, a number of the contributors do take Anscombe's work as a starting point. Taken together the collection could be seen as a demonstration of the extent to which mo...

A view as widely endorsed as it is disputed says, formulating it in my own words: The only thing we have reason to do is promote value. This I will call The promotion of value thesis (or principle).

Most people find it irritatingly childish to wonder whether there is anything wrong if a lifeguard who can save several people drowning to his right lets them drown in order to save one person drowning on his left, even though saving the several would have been as easy as, and no more risky than saving the one, and he knew that, and knew that he co...

This book brings together a collection of original papers on some of the main tenets of Joseph Raz's legal and political philosophy: legal positivism and the nature of law, practical reason, authority, the value of equality, incommensurability, harm, group rights, and multiculturalism. It raises questions concerning Raz's notion of group rights and...

The book offers a penetrating examination of a set of fundamental questions about human thought and action. In these 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...

There is much in the paper that I agree with, much that I do not understand and am probably not competent to understand, and some which I am puzzled by. I will concentrate on the last. Both regarding puzzles, and regarding points of agreement and incomprehension, I will be selective and touch on only a few.

Aspects of the world are normative in as much as they or their existence constitute reasons for persons, i.e. grounds which make certain beliefs, moods, emotions, intentions or actions appropriate or inappropriate. Our capacities to perceive and understand how things are, and what response is appropriate to them, and our ability to respond appropri...

In Law's Empire Prof. Ronald Dworkin has advanced a new theory of law, complex and intriguing. He calls it law as integrity. But in some ways the more radical and surprising claim he makes is that not only were previous legal philosophers mistaken about the nature of law, they were also mistaken about the nature of the philosophy of law or jurispru...

Postema's article discusses, lucidly and probingly, a central jurisprudential idea, which he calls the autonomy thesis. In its general form it is shared by many writers who otherwise support divergent accounts of the nature of law. It is, according to Postema, a thesis that is meant to account for a core idea, that the law's “defining aim is to … u...

I could not write the essay I hoped to write. I hoped to write about cultural pluralism and moral epistemology by assuming that the first is the case and exploring what implications this may have for the second. But I soon realized that I do not know what cultural pluralism is. I do not mean that I have just belatedly discovered that the phrase “cu...

The book offers a penetrating examination of a set of fundamental questions about human thought and action. In these 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...

The rule of law should be understood as part of the culture of democracy which requires a distribution of power between a periodically elected legislature and executive and an independent, but publicly accountable, judiciary in charge of a more slowly changing legal doctrine. The rule of law is also essential for the protection of individuals in fa...

This book explores, within a liberal framework, the nature, significance, and justification of political freedom or liberty. Against recent liberal positions, it is argued that political morality is neither rights‐based, nor equality‐based. What underlies rights, and the value of freedom, is a concern with autonomy. Autonomy requires, among other t...

This book explores, within a liberal framework, the nature, significance, and justification of political freedom or liberty. Against recent liberal positions, it is argued that political morality is neither rights‐based, nor equality‐based. What underlies rights, and the value of freedom, is a concern with autonomy. Autonomy requires, among other t...