The Sources of Normativity

This is one of the most excting books of moral philsophy publsihed in the nineties. It is breathtakingly bold, but often frustratingly vague in its arguments.The book mounts a massive argument for a Kantian(ish) position. It starts from i) the undeniable fact of our self-consciousness, and proceeds according to the following steps:ii) it follows from our self-consciousness that we must think of ourselves as acting for reasons;iii) that we can only properly act according to reasons if we act on universal principles;iv) the content of the universal principles that express our reasons comes from the descriptions under which we find ourselves valuable (what she calls our practical identity);v) we all have to have a practical identity as a human being;and finally vi) this practical identity as a human being entails that we should act on universal principles that involve valuing the humanity of each person.The argument is flawed in places, but I think that anyone who engages with it will find its range and imagination sufficient to make it well worth reading.