From one of the leading policy experts of our time, an urgent rethinking of how we can better support each other to thrive Whether we realize it or not, all of us participate in the social contract every day through mutual obligations among our family, community, place of work, and fellow citizens. Caring for others, paying taxes, and benefiting from public services define the social contract that supports and binds us together as a society. Today, however, our social contract has been broken by changing gender roles, technology, new models of work, aging, and the perils of climate change. Minouche Shafik takes us through stages of life we all experience—raising children, getting educated, falling ill, working, growing old—and shows how a reordering of our societies is possible. Drawing on evidence and examples from around the world, she shows how every country can provide citizens with the basics to have a decent life and be able to contribute to society. But we owe each other more than this. A more generous and inclusive society would also share more risks collectively and ask everyone to contribute for as long as they can so that everyone can fulfill their potential. What We Owe Each Other identifies the key elements of a better social contract that recognizes our interdependencies, supports and invests more in each other, and expects more of individuals in return. Powerful, hopeful, and thought-provoking, What We Owe Each Other provides practical solutions to current challenges and demonstrates how we can build a better society—together.

How do we judge whether an action is morally right or wrong? If an action is wrong, what reason does that give us not to do it? Why should we give such reasons priority over our other concerns and values? In this book, T. M. Scanlon offers new answers to these questions, as they apply to the central part of morality that concerns what we owe to each other. According to his contractualist view, thinking about right and wrong is thinking about what we do in terms that could be justified to others and that they could not reasonably reject. He shows how the special authority of conclusions about right and wrong arises from the value of being related to others in this way, and he shows how familiar moral ideas such as fairness and responsibility can be understood through their role in this process of mutual justification and criticism. Scanlon bases his contractualism on a broader account of reasons, value, and individual well-being that challenges standard views about these crucial notions. He argues that desires do not provide us with reasons, that states of affairs are not the primary bearers of value, and that well-being is not as important for rational decision-making as it is commonly held to be. Scanlon is a pluralist about both moral and non-moral values. He argues that, taking this plurality of values into account, contractualism allows for most of the variability in moral requirements that relativists have claimed, while still accounting for the full force of our judgments of right and wrong.

An Instant New York Times Bestseller “This book will change your sense of how grand the sweep of human history could be, where you fit into it, and how much you could do to change it for the better. It's as simple, and as ambitious, as that.” —Ezra Klein An Oxford philosopher makes the case for “longtermism” — that positively influencing the long-term future is a key moral priority of our time. The fate of the world is in our hands. Humanity’s written history spans only five thousand years. Our yet-unwritten future could last for millions more — or it could end tomorrow. Astonishing numbers of people could lead lives of great happiness or unimaginable suffering, or never live at all, depending on what we choose to do today. In What We Owe The Future, philosopher William MacAskill argues for longtermism, that idea that positively influencing the distant future is a key moral priority of our time. From this perspective, it’s not enough to reverse climate change or avert the next pandemic. We must ensure that civilization would rebound if it collapsed; counter the end of moral progress; and prepare for a planet where the smartest beings are digital, not human. If we make wise choices today, our grandchildren’s grandchildren will thrive, knowing we did everything we could to give them a world full of justice, hope and beauty.

By exploring the ethical differences between humans and animals,Animalkind establishes a middle ground betweenegalitarianism and outright dismissal of animal rights. A thought-provoking foray into our complex and contradictoryrelationship with animals Advocates that we owe each animal due respect Offers readers a sensible alternative to extremism by speakingof respect and compassion for animals, not rights Balances philosophical analysis with intriguing facts andengaging tales

Five leading moral philosophers assess various aspects of T.M. Scanlon’s moral theory as laid out in his seminal work, What We Owe to Each Other. An assessment of T.M. Scanlon’s seminal work What We Owe to Each Other. Written by five leading moral philosophers. Contributes to debates initiated by Scanlon on value theory, normative ethics, and metaethics. Includes a response by T.M. Scanlon in which he clarifies and develops his views.

What Do We Owe Each Other? includes essays by some of the finest social and political policy researchers in the United States. They address critical issues in contemporary American society. These range from the making of public opinion, the nature of the presumed social contract between government and its people, the special place of corporate governance and institutional investors with respect to social stability, the search for educational equality in a world of growing income disparities, the huge run up in prison populations and the decline of American citizenship, and not least, the ethical issues of selfless and selfish motivations with respect to organ transplants, and the sale of body parts.Although the volume is clearly focused on the United States of the past and present, it offers a long view of how social trends take on distinctive moral characteristics. The opening essay by Katherine Newman of Princeton University and Elisabeth Jacobs of Harvard University carefully documents how the political and social goals of the New Deal era outstripped the public opinion views of the time. They rise to a special level of analysis on how the policy processes can be uneven in one era and yet translate into a general good in later periods. Economic recovery and ideological dispositions were not in sync during the New Deal. As the contributors show, such disparities remain true of the American political process as a whole.The contributors display a wide diversity of opinion, but the volume is unified by the belief that ethical concerns play as large a role in defining American society as do economic interests. The book should attract the attention of political scientists, sociologists, economists, and above all, those people interested in how policy analysis is fused with moral considerations at the start as well as at the close of decision making as such. Howard L. Rosenthal is a professor of politics at New York University. He is the author of many journal articles and coauthor, with Alberto Alesina of Partisan Politics, Divided Government, and the Economy, and coauthor with Keith T. Poole of Ideology and Congress (available from Transaction).