Reading Onora O'Neill

"Lucid and timely, these essays honour the arguments of this exceptional moral philosopher, not by meekly accepting them, but by challenging them, and taking them in new directions. The breadth of their topics reflects the range of O'Neill's reflective engagement: what autonomy, consent and independence mean for fallible agents, and why these matter; whether moral norms are in some sense constructed; whether we have a right to have children; what hope means for Kant's account of ethics and religion. Especially timely are responses to O'Neill's work on trust and communication, looking at testimony in contexts rife with prejudice. In their own way, these essays offer answers to Kant's famous trio of questions: What can I know? What must I do? What may I hope? The answers they propose are sometimes more realistic than Kant's own, since, following O'Neill's lead, they do better justice to our vulnerabilities and limitations, as knowers and agents living in social circumstances that are far from ideal-and in so doing, they offer eloquent proof of O'Neill's continuing power to inspire and engage." - Rae Langton, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA