Abstract

This book contains the 1992 Tanner Lectures on Human Values delivered by Christine M. Korsgaard at Cambridge University, along with commentaries by G. A. Cohen, Raymond Geuss, Thomas Nagel, and Bernard Williams, as well as a reply by Korsgaard. The theme taken up in these lectures is the source and authority of norms, what Korsgaard calls “the normative question,” which asks “what justifies the claims that morality makes on us”. With clarity and elegance, she examines four proposed answers to this question: voluntarism, realism, reflective endorsement, and the appeal to autonomy.