NDPR Owen Flanagan What is it Like to Be an Addict?

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Dec 3, 2025, 8:23:40 PM12/3/25

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Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews

2025.12.2 View this Review Online View Other NDPR Reviews

Owen Flanagan, What is it Like to Be an Addict? Oxford University Press, 2025, 320pp. $24.99 (hbk) ISBN 9780199388929.

Reviewed by Kevin J. Harrelson, Ball State University

It is a rare book that combines rigorous argument, scientific fluency, and broad accessibility, but Owen Flanagan has managed that trifecta in his new monograph on the philosophy and science of addictions. What is it Like to Be an Addict? should serve as a standard reference-point for philosophers interested in the health sciences moving forward, as it clarifies and refines many of the basic questions in these fields. It is also a book that may be read with profit by anyone with even a passing interest in the science or ethics of addiction. Flanagan aims “to explain what substance addictions...