What should a person do when she depends for her possibilities of action on the actions of other persons? Is it possible to live as one free person among others? In this groundbreaking work of moral and political philosophy, A. J. Julius argues that a person acts freely by acting for good reasons. To act for good reasons in the presence of other people, a person must act for reasons that she shares with them. Julius uses these ideas of free action and interpersonal rationality to explain the wrongness of coercion, the value of cooperation, the rational force of democratic law, and the imperative of substituting public for private property. He proposes that we can begin to act freely, within our actual unfree society, by setting out to reconstruct it on a democratic basis.A book that will open new directions in the discussion of rationality and freedom, Reconstruction makes it plain that the political is personal.


A. J. Julius is assistant professor of philosophy at the University of California, Los Angeles.