• Contact

  • Newsletter

  • About us

  • Delivery options

  • Prospero Book Market Podcast

  • Bound by Convention: Obligation and Social Rules

    Bound by Convention by Owens, David;

    Obligation and Social Rules

      • GET 10% OFF

      • The discount is only available for 'Alert of Favourite Topics' newsletter recipients.
      • Publisher's listprice GBP 25.00
      • The price is estimated because at the time of ordering we do not know what conversion rates will apply to HUF / product currency when the book arrives. In case HUF is weaker, the price increases slightly, in case HUF is stronger, the price goes lower slightly.

        11 943 Ft (11 375 Ft + 5% VAT)
      • Discount 10% (cc. 1 194 Ft off)
      • Discounted price 10 749 Ft (10 238 Ft + 5% VAT)

    11 943 Ft

    db

    Availability

    Estimated delivery time: In stock at the publisher, but not at Prospero's office. Delivery time approx. 3-5 weeks.
    Not in stock at Prospero.

    Why don't you give exact delivery time?

    Delivery time is estimated on our previous experiences. We give estimations only, because we order from outside Hungary, and the delivery time mainly depends on how quickly the publisher supplies the book. Faster or slower deliveries both happen, but we do our best to supply as quickly as possible.

    Product details:

    • Publisher OUP Oxford
    • Date of Publication 3 October 2024

    • ISBN 9780198925927
    • Binding Paperback
    • No. of pages280 pages
    • Size 233x156x16 mm
    • Weight 426 g
    • Language English
    • 559

    Categories

    Short description:

    This work argues that being bound by a social convention can be valuable for its own sake. People need meaning in their lives, and conventions infuse our acts and attitudes with significance, rendering them right or wrong. Such rules bind us not just in virtue of their usefulness but also because their absence would impoverish our social world.

    More

    Long description:

    How should we assess the social structures that govern human conduct and settle whether we are bound by their rules? One approach is to ask whether social arrangements, such as our family structures, reflect pre-conventional facts about our nature. If they do, compliance will serve our interests because these rules are not just conventions. Another approach is to ask whether following a convention has desirable consequences. For example, the rule which makes the dollar bill legal tender is a convention, and the great usefulness of having a medium of exchange ensures we follow that convention by accepting paper money in return for things of real value.

    In this book, David Owens argues that being bound by a convention can also be valuable for its own sake. People need meaning in their lives and conventions infuse acts and attitudes with normative significance, rendering them right or wrong, appropriate or inappropriate, required or forbidden. Such rules bind us not just in virtue of their usefulness but also because their absence would impoverish our social world. Appreciating this point is essential to a proper understanding of our cultures of neighbourliness and hospitality, family structures, systems of property rights, conventions around speech, the norms governing how we deport ourselves in public, and even the rules of a game.

    A strikingly original and philosophically challenging book, both in the sense that it must be read with care and that it challenges much received wisdom in moral theory.

    More

    Table of Contents:

    PART 1: FOUNDATIONS
    Rehabilitating Conventionalism
    The Value of Obligation
    Convention in Action
    Relativism About Obligation?
    PART 2: SOCIAL FORMS
    Competitions
    The Family
    Private Property
    Truthfulness
    Privacy and Public Space

    More
    0