Sometimes our intentions and beliefs exhibit a structure that proves us to be irrational. The Normativity of Rationality is concerned with the question of whether we ought to avoid such irrationality. Benjamin Kiesewetter defends the normativity of rationality by presenting a new solution to the problems that arise from the common assumption that we ought to be rational. The argument touches upon many other topics in the theory of normativity, such as the form and the content of rational requirements, the preconditions of criticism, and the function of reasons in deliberation and advice. Drawing on an extensive and careful assessment of the problems discussed in the literature, Kiesewetter provides a detailed defence of a reason-response conception of rationality, a novel, evidence-relative account of reasons, and an explanation of structural irrationality in terms of these accounts.

Benjamin Kiesewetter studied philosophy, German literature and cultural studies in Berlin, Nottingham, and Berkeley. He received his Ph.D. from Humboldt University of Berlin in 2014, and worked as a lecturer and research associate at the Australian National University in Canberra, the Humboldt University of Berlin, and the University of Hamburg. He works on metaethics, reasons and rationality, children's rights and other normative issues in philosophy.

• 1: Introduction: the normativity of rationality
• 2: Rationality, reasons, and criticism
• 3: Structural requirements of rationality
• 4: Bootstrapping and other detachment problems
• 5: The why-be-rational challenge
• 6: The myth of structural rationality
• 7: Rationality as responding correctly to reasons
• 8: An evidence-relative account of reasons
• 9: Explaining structural irrationality
• 10: Explaining instrumental irrationality