Margaret P. Gilbert

Gilbert's groundbreaking first book, the monograph On Social Facts (1989), advanced a theory of social phenomena as involving plural subjects constituted by relations of joint commitment in which a number of individuals come together to commit them all as one. This plural subject theory is a fundamental contribution to social theory. In numerous books and articles, she has applied this theory to such varied topics as group membership, political authority and obligation, promises and agreements, shared values, collective emotions, and collective action and responsibility. The first two of these are the focus of her monograph A Theory of Political Obligation: Membership, Commitment, and the Bonds of Society (2006; 2008). These highly original contributions have made her a major and distinctive figure in social and political philosophy and have influenced researchers outside philosophy. Her most recent monograph Rights and Demands; A Foundational Inquiry  (2018) focuses on the grounds of a central class of rights she refers to as demand-rights. She argues both that joint commitment is a ground of such rights and  that it may well be their only ground.