Joint Commitment: How We Make the Social World - Tapa dura

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. (Seumas Miller, Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews)

a valuable resource to scholars in a variety of disciplines, as well as ordinary people, who have an interest in the everyday phenomena that Gilbert discusses with much insight and illumination...an enjoyable read and can be recommended to a broad-ranging audience. (Matti Heinonen, Journal of Social Ontology)

In this wide-ranging collection of essays, distinguished philosopher Margaret Gilbert investigates the structure of our social world. People often speak of what we do, think, and feel, and of our values, conventions, and laws. Asking how we understand such talk, Gilbert invokes the foundational idea of joint commitment. She applies this idea further to topics ranging from the mutual recognition of two people to the unity of the European Union, from marital love to patriotism, from promissory obligation to the rights of those who issue authoritative commands. Written clearly and without undue technicality, this richly textured collection of essays makes a powerful argument for the importance of joint commitment in our personal and public lives.