Morality and Social Criticism The Force of Reasons in Discursive Practice [Hardcover]

In this book, Richard Amesbury brings recent developments in Anglo-American philosophy into engagement with dominant currents in contemporary European social theory in order to articulate a pragmatic account of moral criticism. Presented in a lively and accessible style that avoids technical jargon, Morality and Social Criticism argues that the objectivity of moral discourse can be preserved without recourse to the overweening philosophical ambitions of the Enlightenment.Introduction Solidarity and Dissent: Rorty and the 'Consequences of Pragmatism' The Force of Reasons: Habermas on Norms and Justification Norms, Interpretation and Decision-Making: Derrida on Justice Norms and Normativity: Between Regulism and Regularism 'In the Beginning was the Deed': The Ungrounded Grounds of Rational Criticism Agreeing to Disagree: Towards a More Capacious Conception of Tradition The Return of Objectivity: Realism without (Rampant) Platonism Postscript: Doing Justice: Criticism and Philosophy

Richard Amesbury has produced an excellent book ... . Amesburys central project is to preserve - as Rortys pragmatism self-admittedly cannot - the rationality of radical criticism within the spheres of moral, political and religious thought and action. In doing this he finds himself confronting issues that relate quite generally to the nature of rationality and these he takes to be linked inextricably to the philosophy of language and to be fundamentally logical. It is this that gives Amesburys book a much wider appeal than that of most books of its size on social philosophy. Its critical momentum is grounded on a conception of rule-following behaviour which gives primacy to normative practices, which in some sense, lie at the roots of human beings actions and, thus, of human societies. (Guy Stock, Philosophical Investigations, Vol. 31 (4), 2008)

Amesbury ... provides a solid reconstruction of recent attempts in continental philosophlÒ