Value, Respect, and Attachment

The book is a contribution to the study of values, as they affect both our personal and our public life. It defends the view that values are necessarily universal, on the ground that that is a condition of their intelligibility. It does, however, reject most common conceptions of universality, like those embodied in the writings on human rights. It aims to reconcile the universality of value with (a) the social dependence of value and (b) the centrality to our life of deep attachments to people and countries alike. Building from there, the book explores personal love, the value of life, and the fundamental duty of respect for people.

Author Biography

Joseph Raz is Professor of the Philosophy of Law and a Fellow of Balliol College, Oxford. He is also Visiting Professor at Columbia University. A Fellow of the British Academy and an Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Professor Raz is the author of The Concept of a Legal System (Oxford, 1970), Practical Reason and Norms (Oxford, 1975), The Authority of Law (Oxford, 1979), The Morality of Freedom (Oxford, 1986), Ethics in the Public Domain (Oxford, 1994), and Engaging Reason (Oxford, 2000).