Bound by Convention: Obligation and Social Rules

TY - BOOK

T1 - Bound by Convention

T2 - Obligation and Social Rules

AU - Owens, David

PY - 2022/9/1

Y1 - 2022/9/1

N2 - This work argues that being bound by a social convention can be valuable for its own sake. People need meaning in their lives and conventions infuse our acts and attitudes with significance, rendering them right or wrong, appropriate or inappropriate, required or forbidden. Such rules bind us not just in virtue of their usefulness but also because their absence would impoverish our social world. Appreciating this point is essential to an understanding of our cultures of neighbourliness and hospitality, family structures, systems of property rights, conventions around speech, the norms governing how we deport ourselves in public and even the rules of a game.

AB - This work argues that being bound by a social convention can be valuable for its own sake. People need meaning in their lives and conventions infuse our acts and attitudes with significance, rendering them right or wrong, appropriate or inappropriate, required or forbidden. Such rules bind us not just in virtue of their usefulness but also because their absence would impoverish our social world. Appreciating this point is essential to an understanding of our cultures of neighbourliness and hospitality, family structures, systems of property rights, conventions around speech, the norms governing how we deport ourselves in public and even the rules of a game.

M3 - Book

SN - 9780192896124

BT - Bound by Convention

PB - Oxford Univerity Press; Oxford

CY - Oxford

ER -