Joint Commitment

Margaret Gilbert is Melden Chair in Moral Philosophy and Professor of Philosophy at the University of California, Irvine. A founding figure in contemporary philosophy of social phenomena, her work has applications within moral, political and legal philosophy and social and political science. Her many books include On Social Facts (1989), Sociality and Responsibility (2000), and A Theory of Political Obligation (2006). She has been a member of the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, and held other distinguished research and teaching positions in the United States, Europe, and Scandinavia.

• CONTENTS ; PREFACE ; ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ; SOURCES ; INTRODUCTION ; PART I SHARED AGENCY ; Ch. 1 Acting Together ; Ch. 2 Considerations on Joint Commitment ; Ch. 3 Who's to Blame? ; Ch. 4 Rationality in Collective Action ; Ch. 5 Two Approaches to Shared Intention ; PART II COLLECTIVE ATTITUDES ; Ch. 6 Belief and Acceptance as Features of Groups ; Ch. 7 Collective Epistemology ; Ch. 8 Shared Values, Social Unity, and Liberty ; Ch. 9 Social Convention Revisited ; Ch. 10 Collective Guilt Feelings ; PART III MUTUAL RECOGNITION, PROMISES, AND LOVE ; Ch. 11 "Fusion": a contractual model ; Ch. 12 The problem of promisees' rights ; Ch. 13 Three dogmas about promising ; Ch. 14 Mutual Recognition ; PART IV POLITICAL LIFE ; Ch. 15 A Real Unity of Them All ; Ch. 16 Pro Patria: an Essay on Patriotism ; Ch. 17 De-moralizing Political Obligation ; Ch. 18 Commands and Their Practical Import ; BIBLIOGRAPHY OF AUTHOR'S WORKS ; INDEX

As Gilbert sees it, joint commitments are centrally constitutive of collective actions and attitudes, the practice of promising, conventions, political obligations and so on as per the above set of chapter headings. As the sub-title suggests, joint commitment is evidently by her lights the most fundamental social concept. As is fitting, she applies it in a wide variety of contexts, and the result is a wide-ranging and lively set of essays. Importantly, she applies her theoretical notion to questions in political philosophy and thereby connects abstract theory to real world concerns, something most theorists in this sub-field have not yet done. While many of the essays are well-known to those working in the field, it is useful to have them collected in one place, not the least because it facilitates development of an overview of her oeuvre.