What We Are Reading Today: The Moral Nexus by R. Jay Wallace

What We Are Reading Today: The Moral Nexus by R. Jay Wallace
Updated 05 February 2019
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What We Are Reading Today: The Moral Nexus by R. Jay Wallace

What We Are Reading Today: The Moral Nexus by R. Jay Wallace
  • The book offers an interpretative argument for the relational approach

The Moral Nexus develops and defends a new interpretation of morality — namely, as a set of requirements that connect agents normatively to other persons in a nexus of moral relations. According to this relational interpretation, moral demands are directed to other individuals, who have claims that the agent comply with these demands. Interpersonal morality, so conceived, is the domain of what we owe to each other, insofar as we are each persons with equal moral standing.

The book offers an interpretative argument for the relational approach, says a review on the Princeton University Press website. Specifically, it highlights neglected advantages of this way of understanding the moral domain; explores important theoretical and practical presuppositions of relational moral duties; and considers the normative implications of understanding morality in relational terms.

The book features a novel defense of the relational approach to morality, which emphasizes the special significance that moral requirements have, both for agents who are deliberating about what to do.