Kinds of Reasons: An Essay in the Philosophy of Action

Understanding human beings and their distinctive rational and volitional capacities is one of the central tasks of philosophy. In Kinds of Reasons, Maria Alvarez offers a fresh and incisive treatment of this subject, focusing on reasons as they feature in contexts of agency. Building on some important recent work in the area, and drawing on the writings of G. E. M. Anscombe, Alvarez's arguments run counter to the orthodoxy that has dominated the theory of action for the past forty years. Bold, painstaking, lucid, and direct, Kinds of Reasons stakes out a distinctive position in one of the most hotly contested areas of contemporary philosophy.