The Roots of Normativity

Joseph Raz died last year. Sadly, then, this collection of essays, some previously published, and some unpublished, may stand as his last contribution to philosophy. So, it is very good to be able to say that they exemplify his strength and originality as a moral philosopher: his wisdom, care in working through an argument, suspicion of merely fashionable claims, and intentness in arriving in his own way at his own view. Of course, they are not extended studies but essays on various moral subjects, so they sometimes touch only cursorily on a topic, and throw out ideas that are left undeveloped. Raz often works through a kind of linguistic phenomenology. As Ulrike Heuer says, in her helpful introduction, his work is guided by a methodological assumption: the aim of much of philosophy, and, at any rate, his, is to elucidate practices and concepts as we find and already understand them. (p. 1)