Harmful thoughts : essays on law, self, and morality / Meir Dan-Cohen.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Dan-Cohen, Meir.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Law and ethics.

Law--Philosophy.

Law.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (320 p.)

Edition:

Course Book

Place of Publication:

Princeton : Princeton University Press, c2002.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

In these writings by one of our most creative legal philosophers, Meir Dan-Cohen explores the nature of the self and its response to legal commands and mounts a challenge to some prevailing tenets of legal theory and the neighboring moral, political, and economic thought. The result is an insider's critique of liberalism that extends contemporary liberalism's Kantian strand, combining it with postmodernist ideas about the contingent and socially constructed self to build a thoroughly original perspective on some of the most vital concerns of legal and moral theory. Dan-Cohen looks first at the ubiquity of legal coercion and considers its decisive impact on the nature of legal discourse and communication, on law's normative aspirations and claim to obedience, and on the ideal of the rule of law. He moves on to discuss basic values, stressing the preeminence of individual identity and human dignity over the more traditional liberal preoccupations with preference-based choice and experiential harm. Dan-Cohen then focuses more directly on the normative ramifications of the socially constructed self. Fundamental concepts such as responsibility and ownership are reinterpreted to take account of the constitutive role that social practices--particularly law and morality--play in the formation of the self. Throughout, Dan-Cohen draws on a uniquely productive mix of philosophical traditions and subjects, blending the methods of analytic philosophy with the concerns of Continental philosophers to reconceive the self and its relation to ethics and the law.

Contents:

Frontmatter

CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

INTRODUCTION

PART 1. COERCION AND COMMUNICATION

PART 2. BASIC VALUES

PART 3. BOUNDARIES OF SELF

INDEX

Notes:

Description based upon print version of record.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9786612087585

9781400814213

1400814219

9781282087583

1282087584

9781400825059

1400825059

OCLC:

367660422