I would not offer the author of this manuscript a publishing contract at this point. Let me first give a superficial reason and then more of my personal concerns about the manuscript. First, as I understand, the full manuscript is under review at Routledge currently. I assume that, if Routledge accepts the manuscript, they will get it (and I don't think the manuscript is worth trying to fight for). On the other hand, if the outcome of their refereeing process is that the manuscript is not publishable, then I see no reason why Palgrave Macmillan should do so either. Presumably Routledge has competent academic referees and marketing people. Be that as it may, I do have few main concerns that make me unable to recommend this manuscript. First of all, it tries to cover far too much ground. It has chapters on metaethics, practical reasoning, Kantian ethics, Rawlsian original position and fairness, applied ethics and political theory. I just think that this is too much to cover in one book - many of the previous topics would make solid books of their own. Because of the amount of material covered, in places the argumentation becomes too quick and superficial; not going far enough and deep enough into the interesting controversial topics discussed. I also think that this will be a problem for getting attention and readers. If the book were on just one topic, you could see how the students and faculty focused on that topic would get interested in the book even if it were from a relatively unknown author. However, given that the book is not in any clear sense in any specific topic but rather on all of moral and political philosophy, the reason to pick up the book would be mainly because it is by the person who is the author. Reading a long book like this in most of moral philosophy you might not be working on is a significant investment. I worry that if the book is by a relatively unknown author who has not published in the top journals there would be few people willing to do this. Things might be different if the philosophical content were exceptionally good. I do think that the argumentation is competent and professional but I don't think it is quite excellent enough. So, I worry that if the book were published in this form, there would be relatively few readers and the book would receive not very much attention. I would recommend the author to publish the central ideas of the book in high quality journals to create interest on a work of this magnitude. I am also little sceptical about the main line of reasoning even if this is something that is difficult to evaluate without having read the whole manuscript. The book begins from highly abstract metaethical discussions about the nature of normative facts, epistemology and practical reasoning and through this analysis ends up defending specific conclusions about what should be done in controversial real life ethical problems and what kind of policies around we should arrange the society. I know that some people have attempted ambitious arguments like this before. I just don't see them ever being compelling. If the concrete ethical conclusions turn out to be implausible to some people, they are unlikely to accept all the steps in metaethics and thereafter. And, given how controversial the metaethical claims made in the beginning are, this seems like a wise thing to do. So, I don't see how practical ethical and political questions could ever be solved by abstract theorizing of this sort without just focusing on first-order ethical thinking. To summarize: I think this is a competent proposal but unfortunately, I don't think it is quite focused enough for offering a contract.
