Value, Respect, and Attachment By Joseph Raz. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001. 186p. $55.00 cloth, $19.00 paper

Widely known for the challenges he poses for the excesses of “me-first” individualism loosely associated with contemporary Western liberalism, Joseph Raz has grown accustomed to plumbing its depths for signs of humanity and goodness. His new book approaches the twin problem of pursuing universal values while acknowledging particularistic cultures, through a window opened in Engaging Reason (1999), where he unpacks the complexity of a “value-reason nexus” to conclude that valuable options are often pursued for incommensurate reasons. In what sense, he now asks, can this “nexus” be said to be universal? At the heart of this project lies an attempt to extend his earlier analysis of value in two related directions: toward human attachments, where Raz must show that particular engagements with value need not fly in the face of universality, and toward an abstract approach to universal respect, which nevertheless remains part and parcel of our contingent attachments.