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Biographical note
Krista Lawlor is Henry Waldgrave Stuart Professor of Philosophy at Stanford University and the author of New Thoughts about Old Things: Cognitive Policies as the Ground of Singular Concepts and Assurance: An Austinian Account of Knowledge and Knowledge Claims.[<i>Being Reasonable</i>] is that attractive and unusual thing, a small book on a big subject...[Lawlor] writes wisely and imaginatively about what separates the virtue of reasonableness from the vices it can be confused with. The distinction is more than an academic nicety. At a time when political life tempts us to treat compromise as capitulation, her argument amounts to a defense of the habits that make common life possible.
- Nikhil Krishnan, New Yorker
A short and deftly argued book…enlivened by its use of example and anecdote.
- Andrew Irwin, The Spectator
There’s much to commend in Lawlor’s exploration of reasonableness. The unique contribution of the book is the idea that reasonableness is a distinct virtue…And in distinguishing reasonableness from rationality and persistently emphasizing the importance of forming a shared understanding of the ‘landscape of value,’ Lawlor deftly conveys that understanding and assessing what is of value in the world is not a task the individual alone is up to.
- Anna Heetderks, Fare Forward
It would be great if readers turned to this book in search of well-considered answers to the question: what does it mean to be reasonable? Lawlor follows an excellent path of reflection in constructing a response…Lawlor did not write a guide for situations that demand violent, large-scale change. She wrote a book to help people communicate better, by understanding that a person can be highly rational without being particularly reasonable, and that knowing how to distinguish these traits can help us communicate with others, judge others, understand ourselves, and identify the qualities that enable different people, reasonable and rational alike, to coexist more effectively.
- Pedro Barbalho, Philosophy in Review
Being reasonable is an aspiration for us all, and Krista Lawlor has given us an insightful and nuanced account of what it is—and how it is far more than being simply rational.
- Robert Audi, University of Notre Dame,
This book is a marvelous, philosophically rich study of what Lawlor aptly describes as ‘one of the essential fluids in our social machine.’ Philosophers of law, among others, will find the book profoundly rewarding.
- Gideon Yaffe, Yale University,
Lively, engaging, witty, and insightful, Krista Lawlor's <i>Being Reasonable </i>is well suited for a general audience.
- Marcia Baron, Indiana University–Bloomington,
Lawlor makes an insightful, original, convincing, and extraordinarily clear case for the work that reasonableness is recruited to do in the law, in Rawls’s political philosophy, and in Scanlon’s moral philosophy. <i>Being Reasonable</i> is the finest thing so far written in the rapidly growing field of applied epistemology. It will help the reader to understand the kinds of standards that we apply in the epistemic evaluation of many different kinds of ordinary beliefs, including (especially) beliefs about who did what to whom, and why.
- Ram Neta, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill,
"That attractive and unusual thing, a small book on a big subject...[Lawlor] writes wisely and imaginatively about what separates the virtue of reasonableness from the vices it can be confused with." —Nikhil Krishnan, New Yorker
A leading philosopher explores what it means to be reasonable—and why it matters for the well-being of our society.
Reasonableness plays many roles in our lives. In Anglo-American law, it is the yardstick for a wide range of behavior—the “reasonable-person standard” governs everything from contract enforcement to killing in self-defense. In politics, a state can maintain a liberal democracy only if its citizens are reasonable. In ordinary life, we hold each other accountable to reason: We criticize the unreasonable of bosses who demand too much of our time or of partners who make decisions without regard for our preferences.
But what does it mean to be reasonable? Being reasonable is not the same as being rational. It is also different from being thoughtful. In Being Reasonable, Krista Lawlor argues that a reasonable person seeks to understand what is valuable. A reasonable person must be rational enough to figure out what is valuable and thoughtful enough to care about what other people find valuable, but rationality and thoughtfulness alone do not suffice to make one reasonable. Even an ideally rational and thoughtful person might fail to understand, or lack the concern to understand, what is valuable.
Being Reasonable is the first comprehensive study of reasonableness. Lawlor provides an account of the nature of reasonableness and, further, explains how we manage to be reasonable. Humans discover what is valuable by listening to their emotions and by listening to each other. By taking command over our emotions, and by interacting attentively with others, we can live up to the standard set by society and law.