Normal Rationality

Edna Ullmann-Margalit was Professor of Philosophy at the Hebrew University, Jerusalem, and Director of the Center for the Study of Rationality. She was also Chair of the Association for Civil Rights in Israel. She published The Emergence of Norms with Oxford University Press in 1977; a paperback edition was issued in 2016.Avishai Margalit is Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. His books include The Decent Society (Harvard 1996) and On Compromise and Rotten Compromises (Princeton 2010).Cass R. Sunstein is the Robert Walmsley University Professor at Harvard, and founder and director of the Program on Behavioral Economics and Public Policy. From 2009 to 2012, he was Administrator of the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs.

• Editors' Introduction 1: Picking and Choosing (with Sidney Morgenbesser) 2: On Presumption 3: Second-Order Decisions (with Cass R. Sunstein) 4: Big Decisions: Opting, Converting, Drifting 5: On Not Wanting to Know 6: Holding True and Holding as True (with Avishai Margalit) 7: Revision of Norms 8: Invisible Hand Explanations 9: The Invisible Hand and the Cunning of Reason 10: Solidarity in Consumption (with Cass R. Sunstein) 11: Trust, Distrust, and in Between 12: The Case of the Camera in the Kitchen: Surveillance, Privacy, Sanctions and Governance 13: Considerateness Epilogue: Final Ends and Meaningful Lives

Throughout the book, Ullmann-Margalit provides rich and varied, but life-like and plausible examples. These motivate her brilliant, wide-ranging insights and support her arguments; but they are also strewn throughout the texts as interesting asides. The reader is thus left with the impression of someone who saw the philosophical significance of much of everyday life, as well as the importance of reflecting philosophically on our lives if we wish to live them well and rationally. Inadvertently, then, the reader is left with a vision of how to live a philosophical life -- a fitting tribute to a philosopher who was deeply engaged in humanitarian and social justice causes throughout her own life.