---

The concepts we use to value and prescribe (concepts like good, right, ought) are historically contingent, and we could have found ourselves with others. But what does it mean to say that some concepts are better than others for purposes of action-guiding and deliberation? What is it to choose between different normative conceptual frameworks?

---

Theorists working on metaethics and the nature of normativity typically study goodness, rightness, what ought to be done, and so on. In their investigations they employ and consider our actual normative concepts. But the actual concepts of goodness, rightness, and what ought to be done are only some of the possible normative concepts there are. There are other possible concepts, ascribing different properties. Matti Eklund explores the consequences of this thought,
for example for the debate over normative realism, and for the debate over what it is for concepts and properties to be normative. Conceptual engineering - the project of considering how our concepts can be replaced by better ones - has become a central topic in philosophy. Eklund applies this
methodology to central normative concepts and discusses the special complications that arise in this case. For example, since talk of improvement is itself normative, how should we, in the context, understand talk of a concept being better?

---

In all, this is a highly interesting book, full of important and useful theoretical resources, relevant and often neglected distinctions, and lots of things to think about for those working in meta-ethics. The book raises a lot of very relevant and fruitful questions for further research, and as such, definitely merits close consideration Sebastian Köhler, Ethics Theory and Moral Practice

---

Matti Eklund is Chair Professor of Theoretical Philosophy at Uppsala University. He received his PhD from MIT in 2000. Previously he has taught at a number of other universities, including University of Colorado-Boulder and Cornell University. He has published on a variety of topics in metaphysics, philosophy of language, philosophy of logic, and metaethics.

---