Books in brief

March 17, 2026

Being Reasonable: The Case for a Misunderstood Virtue

Collage of Krista Lawlor and the cover of her book Being Reasonable
Photo of Krista Lawlor by LiPo Ching for Stanford University. Book cover courtesy of Harvard University Press.

Author: Krista Lawlor

Via Harvard University Press

“But what does it mean to be reasonable? Being reasonable is not the same as being rational. It is also different from being thoughtful. In Being Reasonable, Krista Lawlor argues that a reasonable person seeks to understand what is valuable. A reasonable person must be rational enough to figure out what is valuable and thoughtful enough to care about what other people find valuable, but rationality and thoughtfulness alone do not suffice to make one reasonable. Even an ideally rational and thoughtful person might fail to understand, or lack the concern to understand, what is valuable."

Lawlor is the Henry Waldgrave Stuart Memorial Professor and professor in the Department of Philosophy.

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