Justice for Hedgehogs

by Ronald Dworkin

The fox knows many things, the Greeks said, but the hedgehog knows one big thing. In his most comprehensive work, Ronald Dworkin argues that value in all its forms is one big that what truth is, life means, morality requires, and justice demands are different aspects of the same large question. He develops original theories on a great variety of issues very rarely considered in the same moral skepticism, literary, artistic, and historical interpretation, free will, ancient moral theory, being good and living well, liberty, equality, and law among many other topics. What we think about any one of these must stand up, eventually, to any argument we find compelling about the rest.
Skepticism in all its forms—philosophical, cynical, or post-modern—threatens that unity. The Galilean revolution once made the theological world of value safe for science. But the new republic gradually became a new the modern philosophers inflated the methods of physics into a totalitarian theory of everything. They invaded and occupied all the honorifics—reality, truth, fact, ground, meaning, knowledge, and being—and dictated the terms on which other bodies of thought might aspire to them, and skepticism has been the inevitable result. We need a new revolution. We must make the world of science safe for value.

Genres: Philosophy, Law, Nonfiction, Politics, Justice, Academic, Cultural

528 pages, Hardcover

First published January 11, 2011

About the author

Ronald Dworkin, QC, FBA was an American philosopher of law. He was a Jeremy Bentham Professor of Law and Philosophy at University College London, Frank Henry Sommer Professor of Law at New York University, and has taught previously at Yale Law School and the University of Oxford. An influential contributor to both philosophy of law and political philosophy, Dworkin received the 2007 Holberg International Memorial Prize in the Humanities for "his pioneering scholarly work" of "worldwide impact." His theory of law as integrity is amongst the most influential contemporary theories about the nature of law.

Reviews

[robin friedman · Rating 5 out of 5]

Dworkin And The Abandonment Of Colonial Metaphysics

Ronald Dworkin (1931) -- 2013 enjoyed a long career as a writer on legal and political philosophy. In addition to his many books, Dworkin wrote for a broad public in analyzing Supreme Court decisions in the New York Review of Books. The scope of his writing expanded over the years. In "Justice for Hedgehogs" (2011), Dworkin broadens his scope from legal and political philosophy to address larger philosophical questions of metaphysics, interpretation and epistemology, and ethics. It is a challenging and wonderful work.

Dworkin's title derives from a famous essay by Isaiah Berlin "The Hedgehog and the Fox" taken in its turn from the Greek poet Archilocus who said: "the fox knows many things but the hedgehog knows one big thing." Berlin's essay was largely a defense of the way of the fox and of pluralism. It shows a healthy skepticism of any claim to know the single truth. Dworkin for his part takes the side of the hedgehog. Dworkin's basic claim is for what he calls the "unity of value" and the claim that people can work to ethical truth rather than to a variety of competing claims to the truth. In many respects. this may seem an audacious claim that goes contrary to much modernistic thought. Dworkin realizes and plays upon this and develops his claims slowly and carefully. In many respects, Dworkin draws heavily on modernism and modernistic arguments, especially in his emphasis on interpretation. He gives some ancient philosophical doctrines a modernistic turn. In reading this book, as with many philosophical works, it is best to read the introductory chapter carefully and return to it together with the concluding epilogue. Doing so will bring focus to the lengthy arguments and help the reader understand Dworkin's project.

Dworkin uses the phrase "colonial metaphysics" several times and speaks of the need finally for its abandonment (p. 418). What he means is roughly this: many people have seen ethical truths as dependent somehow on a more basic form of metaphysics. With the Enlightenment, thinkers adopted a metaphysics of naturalism and tried to explain ethics within the terms of a scientific worldview. This proved unsuccessful. Prior to that, many thinkers offered a religious, theistically based explanation for ethics. In both these cases and other cases, ethical truth was deemed dependent upon some other truth. Basically, ethical truths were viewed as analogously to discovering "things" "out there" in the way a scientist studies bodies or a theologian studies God. Dworkin denies that ethics has this form of metaphysical basis in "things". That is why he claim that ethics should not be viewed as a "colony" of metaphysics and should be studied on its own terms. Dworkin makes creative use of the philosophy of David Hume who denied that ethical truths could be at all derived from what is. While many people have taken Hume's argument as leading towards skepticism, Dworkin maintains instead that it leads to the independence (non-colonial character) of ethics and that ethics is its own self-contained form of truth.

Early in the book, Dworkin tries to confront various forms of ethical skepticism and maintains, successfully or not, that the important forms of such skepticism are self-refuting. (Such arguments are regularly used in metaphysics, less commonly in ethics.) He wants to find a form of ethics not rooted in theology or scientism. He finds such a source by discussing ethics as an interpretive discipline. Interpretation and meaning play large roles in much modern thinking. What distinguishes Dworkin in his claim that truth is found in interpretation, whether of legal texts, poems, or works of art and music. People know in two ways, for Dworkin: we know the natural world scientifically and the ethical, human world through meaning. We discover truth differently, but in neither case, if it is to have meaning at all, is it "subjective". Interpretive truth differs from scientific truth in that it is found through argument and in that its concepts are interrelated. In human life, Dworkin distinguishes and then interrelates what he calls ethics and morality. People have an ethical duty to themselves that is expressed adverbially: to live well and meaningfully with a project of the individual agent's choosing. Morality is the duty owed to others. It has a Kantian basis for Dworkin which involves expanding to others the realization of one's own dignity and right to choose one's form of life. As with all ethical concepts, ethics and morality fold together, I think, in leading the good life.

Much of Dworkin's project, for those with philosophical background, can be viewed as uniting Hume and Kant. Dworkin also is heavily influenced by what he sees as the interpretive, interrelated character of Platonic and Aristotelian ethics without their metaphysical trappings (pp. 184 -188). Charles Peirce, mentioned all-too-briefly, is another thinker with a large influence on Dworkin (pp 177 -178).

As the book develops, Dworkin explains his independence thesis in the first part and his understanding of interpretation and its nature in the second part. In the third part, Dworkin develops his concept of ethics (finding purpose in one's own life) and in the fourth, his concept of morality (our duties to other people). In the final part of the book, Dworkin returns to the legal and political philosophy which had been the focus of his efforts prior to this book. The epilogue with its title "Dignity Indivisible" aptly and with a sense of urgency and passion recapitulates Dworkin's arguments and what he perceives as their importance.

The book works best in its breadth, in its fresh and challenging discussion of truth, interpretation and unity. Observations on law and politics are interthreaded throughout the book, but the final section of the book on these matters seems to me rushed and less than convincing. I do not agree with some of Dworkin's political or legal conclusions but still find much to admire and learn from in his work. On occasion, Dworkin simply refers to his earlier writings, assuming perhaps too optimistically familiarity on behalf of his readers. The book takes a strong stance against scientism and its particular reductivism. Dworkin also rejects the tendency, common to critics of scientism and to people who use various forms of interpretive theory, to call for a return to God or to theology. This is an unabashedly secular book. Dworkin writes with a concern for understanding life in its shortness and mortality, faced with full knowledge of impending death. By living life with ideals and in the search for truth, Dworkin concludes. "We write a subscript to our mortality. We make our lives tiny diamonds in the cosmic sands." (p. 423)

Dworkin's book is itself the work of a lifetime of thought and commitment to a project. It is impressive in its scope, its argument, its erudition, and its love for the life of the mind and of culture. It offers a challenge to the reader at whatever stage of his or her life to rethink projects and priorities. The book deserves and will undoubtedly receive sustained study and attention.

Robin Friedman

[Michael · Rating 4 out of 5]

In this extraordinarily ambitious book, Dworkin attempts nothing less than a thorough re-grounding of political philosophy, ethics and epistemology. I'm impressed. While I really haven't had a chance to digest his arguments, I think his book stands with some of the monuments of contemporary political theory like Rawls and Habermas (who till roughly the same field).

The title is a riff on the saying (made famous by Isaiah Berlin) that "the fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing":

"Value is one big thing. The truth about living well and being good and what is wonderful is not only coherent but mutually supporting: what we think about any one of these must stand up, eventually to any argument we find compelling about the rest."

It may not be evident how audacious this claim is, but consider the claims Dworkin unpacks in the course of the book:


that there is such thing as truth per se
that there are objectively valid moral judgements, and that relativism and nihilism are hopelessly incoherent
these moral judgements are necessarily interconnected, and collectively rely and on inform a vision of life well-lived
that there are no ultimate conflicts between values, rightly understood
that there is such thing as a right way to live, and moreover we have a duty to ourselves to seek it
that there is such thing as justice, and that it's connected to ethics and morality in an intelligible way


A key element of Dworkin's thinking here is to re-frame how we understand the process of defining concepts, and draw our attention to what he calls the interpretive nature of the concepts we use. Political and moral concepts are not susceptible to neat and tidy definitions, because they unavoidably bring a web of assumptions, beliefs and values (in other words, other concepts) with them - in the absence of which they are unintelligible. Another way to say this: the right answer is a process. And a contested, provisional, complicated one at that.

Closely linked notions of responsibility and dignity allow Dworkin to spell out a mode of seeking the right answers (or we might better say "the best answers we can articulate right now"), and also to develop notions of liberty, justice and democracy by bringing in a concept of fairness he develops from exploring responsibility and dignity.

One of the most practically gratifying things about this approach is that it clarifies what I often find so frustrating about political conversations with someone whose politics don't much align with mine. A position on abortion, affirmative action, or any other issue can only really be explained or clarified to someone who doesn't share it if you have the time and ability to say more about how you came to that position (and they have the patience to listen). In other words, what are your beliefs about the good life, the nature of liberty, justice, etc. Rarely does one get more than a couple sentences into this before the conversation narrows (right when you need it to open up!).

I'm actually going back and skimming the book after finishing it, which I don't recall doing with any other book. Part of that is due to the structure of Dworkin's argument, which is necessarily iterative, developing its arguments in a helical fashion of circling around to revisit and stitch together its arguments. Part of it is because of my own experience reading the book in short, distracted stints going to and from work on the bus & train, which does not really promote the kind of attention span the book deserves.

Dworkin's writing has always puzzled me a bit. I have read a number of his essays in the NYRB (sometimes even when I'm not in a moving vehicle), and have typically found him a little hard to follow, even though his writing is lucid and coherent enough. You may notice in my reviews I use the word "engaging" a lot, and value that highly in an author. Dworkin, for me, is not especially engaging, and it's hard to articulate why exactly. I find myself re-reading his paragraphs multiple times because my mind has wandered to another topic mid-sentence. A good deal of that has to be my own fault, but not all, I think.

I think Dworkin has a tendency to favor a careful, even legalistic formulations (even if repeated to mildly soporific effect) over short, snappy phrases. Understanding that "dignity" means something like: "[A legitimate government] must respect fully the responsibility and right of each person to decide for himself how to make something valuable of his life" is important, but in many instances I might appreciate just having "dignity" stand in for that articulated and not very sexy sentence, which doesn't after all exhaust the concept of dignity.

But I am loathe to deter you from reading what is a very fine book, especially given my distracted state reading it. It deserves what my younger self would have been happy to give it: serious study.

And the man can write a snappy sentence, even if he does so sparingly. The Epilogue has real grace and bite, and if you'll indulge me, I'll close with a bit I quite liked:

"No respectable or even intelligible theory of value supposes that making and spending money has any value or importance in itself.... The ridiculous dream of a princely life is kept alive by ethical sleepwalkers. And they in turn keep injustice alive because their self-contempt breeds a politics of contempt for others. Dignity is indivisible."

[Matthew Schreiner · Rating 3 out of 5]

Picked it up again a few months later- still no Sonic references :(

[Jeremy Vernon · Rating 5 out of 5]

A fitting capstone to the works of Ronald Dworkin, arguably the greatest legal philosopher of his era. This book, a popular literature piece, recapitulates the philosophical work Dworkin had been doing for the last decade of his career, and sadly, life. In it he makes an argument for two things:

1) The reality and truth-bearing nature of moral facts.
2) The consilience and coherence of these moral facts with a more general unified theory of value.

This is a familiar objective in the literature, but it is really the only part Dworkin has in common with the literature. He respects and does not run aground of Hume's is/ought distinction and instead offers a better way of construing moral facts - that they are established through moral arguments and what counts as a moral argument is a process of discourse. This initially sounds iffy until Dworkin observes, rightly, that this is precisely how our most bed-rock of facts, scientific facts, are established. That facts do not exist in any one person's faculties but are, instead, "suspended" in the discourse of many agents.

There are many other subtleties I'm glossing over, but his argument is a truly fascinating one.

Dworkin, as always, is kind to his reader - presenting everything very plainly in his affable Yankee prose. It is rare for a philosopher to have such confidence and clarity as to make his case easily grasped - but Dworkin has staked a career and towering reputation on precisely this.

As moral realist and value pluralist by inclination, I found Dworkin always complicates my intuitions and that, is a very good thing.

[William Schram · Rating 5 out of 5]

Justice for Hedgehogs has a picture of a hedgehog on it. The image is quite adorable but that is not the point that the author is trying to make. Written by Ronald Dworkin, Justice for Hedgehogs attempts to show that morality is not something one is capable of making compromises on while still being upstanding. The idea for the title is from a quote made famous by Isaiah Berlin. Foxes know a lot of things while hedgehogs know one big thing. The author argues that being ethical requires you to have a central tenet that you follow.

There isn't really much more to say without making this an essay so I won't go into specifics. The book was really enjoyable, 5 out of 5.

[Abbie Lee · Rating 5 out of 5]

this book is the book that all other moral philosophy books will be judged against in my mind. it was. SO GOOD. i am eternally indebted to ronald dworkin for writing this book and putting my thoughts into words and making sense of the things i’ve thought but could never express. if dworkinian was a religion i would be DEVOUT. wow. just spectacular. my anti post modernism king.

[Bradd Saunders · Rating 4 out of 5]

The title of Dworkin’s book refers to a Greek aphorism which states that “the fox knows many things but the hedgehog knows one big thing.” What this means is that those with clever ideas and even cleverer arguments for them (the foxes) may reason in ways that are bedazzling but in the end they fall short of the less clever but more grounded hedgehog’s view of the world. For the hedgehog knows something large and far more fundamental than the fox will ever know: that the world exists in a unity of mutually supportive values that give us a prescription for how we must go about our lives.

The way in which Dworkin makes a case for this is by first exposing fox-like arguments to their ultimate conclusions and in so doing reveal that most of them exist upon a paradox. Anybody, for example, who argues the universe is not a moral place is recognizing that there must be such a thing as morals to begin with and that to argue for their nonexistence is to also confirm that they have value. Nobody writes books about unicorns because they are dismissed as fancy. People arguing about the nonexistence of morality, however, admit to the value of it, even if they don’t agree that there are real and tangible grounds for its existence.

Further, to say that the universe is ultimately amoral does not prove that it is, certainly from a human perspective. It proves only that there is nothing in the workings of the universe that validates morality in an obvious and consistent way. But people don’t live in a theoretical framework. They live in a world where choices must be made that cannot help but have consequences for themselves and others. For this reason, Dworkin largely eschews metaphysics. The answers are discovered in our lives and our natures and are constantly undergoing interpretation. But they are answers, nonetheless. Human dignity—a major component of Dworkin’s unity of values idea—demands it.

Fundamental to Dworkin’s philosophy is to prove, then, that it is actually in the best interest of human beings to behave in a moral way. He does this by arguing for the interdependence of ethics and morality. In Dworkin’s definition, ethics is the set of principles by which you treat yourself and your distinct life. Morality is the way in which you treat other people. Foxes will sometimes argue that selfishness is an essential human trait that proves morality to be superfluous—nothing finally but a human conceit. But Dworkin does not believe that. He understands that in order to “live good” we must sometimes be selfish. But he also asserts that in order to “live well” we must think of others, not just for their sake but for ours.The best life is the life that understands this crucial interplay and endeavors constantly to revise and improve upon it.

This book covers a lot of ground. To prove, for example, that we actually have free will, which is fundamental to moral choice, is lot to ask and I’m not sure that Dworkin does so. But one thing he is certain of is that we must act as if we have it, and that even those who claim we don’t still tend to judge themselves and others as if we do, which—in the way that we actually go about our lives—amounts to the same thing.

There is nothing in his arguments that can’t be refuted in some way, but Dworkin is comfortable with this. He is not out to prove something so much as to necessitate an ongoing and vital conversation. Well-meaning people are going to disagree about how best to live life and what does or does not constitute a moral choice in a given situation. But he sees this as being part of a process of interpretation vital to our existence. We must endeavor to improve. Why and how is part of the struggle. Ultimately, Dworkin is arguing for wisdom: an almost ineffable combination of reason and intuition. It’s something that’s hard to argue but somehow makes sense.

[Bru Fritsche · Rating 5 out of 5]

Desde o começo, fui grata por esse livro desconstruir vários pré-conhecimentos que eu achava que tinha sobre a Moral e a Ética, ao mesmo tempo que atribuiu uma importância superior à que eu esperava à concepção popular e intuitiva de “certo” e “errado”. Confesso que, quando comecei, achei que estaria diante de algo diferente: que seriam feita uma revisão da filosofia moral antiga até a atual, uma comparação profunda entre a Raposa e o Porco Espinho e uma investigação sobre a definição conceitual de valor. Percebo agora que tais análises não seriam mais tão válidas: já existem muitas obras que abordam o tema dessa forma, inclusive erroneamente. Além disso, vejo como a Raposa e o Porco Espinho foram representadas nas diferentes correntes que tratam da justiça e do valor: os “íamos” citados, e como em sua maioria correspondem à Raposa, ou aproximam-se dela. Também percebo, principalmente depois da exploração Interpretativa, que a busca pela definição (“conceito”) de valor pode não ser relevante como a forma como ele se manifesta, ou não, em determinadas situações éticas e morais. Me chamaram mais atenção as partes de A Verdade na Moral, Livre-arbítrio e Responsabilidade, Da Dignidade à Moral, Dano, Obrigações, Democracia e Direito. Nessas seções, a desmistificação foi mais forte - de como muitos assuntos que entendemos como conceitos são na verdade interpretativos, motivando conflitos causados por divergências no próprio assunto abordado - pois este é interpretativo. Acredito que uma das maiores lições desse livro é parar de buscar por definições, verdades, bandeiras ideológicas (inclusive morais), e principalmente convicções prontas e estabelecidas. Foi confirmada a minha noção já construída de que não posso me deixar levar pelo mantra do político que diz lutar pela “democracia”, “dignidade”, “direitos humanos e individuais”, pois são meros termos que embelezam o discurso e convencem os mais distraídos; não correspondem a pessoas de fato comprometidas com a compreensão de o que tais “conceitos” representam. Esse livro com certeza está em mim. Percebo como incorporei às minhas crenças/modos de vida muito do que foi abordado, e percebo como será fundamental para que eu viva uma vida boa. A ética começa a ter uma importância de destaque para mim, além do básico que eu antes tinha como suficiente, e creio que, como foi posto pelo autor, ela coloca um adendo à nossa mortalidade. Seria egoísmo (e talvez até ceticismo) acharmos que nossas ações não têm efeitos sobre o mundo com o qual nos relacionamos. E a ética nos diferenciará da poeira cósmica, ainda que minimamente, por um período de tempo desprezível diante da infinitude cósmica.

[June · Rating 3 out of 5]

The style here is very impressive. You can really tell Dworkin is a lawyer doing philosophy and not an Anglo-American-trained philosopher. I also quite enjoyed the focus on interpretation. I just couldn't get into the book as much as I wanted to and remain unconvinced by the thesis.

[Sara Van Dyck · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a challenging and sometimes technical book for the general reader such as I am. I read only about half of it, but there were chapters that I read over three times. It’s a rich and ultimately encouraging book and I hope that others might read at least parts of it, as I state below.

Dworkin’s standard is that any legitimate government must show equal concern for every citizen, and also respect the responsibility and right of each person to make something valuable of his life. (p.2) He shows how these relate to current issues such as treatment of terrorists, poverty, inequality of wealth, and welfare.

What made this book stand out for me was Dworkin’s humane and reasonable attitudes. Repeatedly he uses terms such as “try,”do what we can,” “take minimal steps in the right direction.” “Living well,” a key goal, means that “we each have a sovereign responsibility to make something of value of our own lives, as a painter makes something of value of his canvas.” Dworkin doesn’t use this term, but I think he has a sense of the beauty, the aesthetics, of living well. Our moral development is a work in progress. We each are given resources, but part of ethics is that we must make meaningful use of them.

I think that someone who doesn’t want to read the entire book could get an excellent sense of it by reading chapter 1, chapter 16, on equality, and the epilogue. And I will quote from the final paragrph:”If we manage to lead a good life well…we make our lives tiny diamonds in the cosmic sands.”

However, I don’t see even a suggestion for dealing with two poles of irresponsibility. One is the problem of the mentally ill, addicts, or a few young people, who can’t or don’t take responsibility for themselves and destroy what they are given. At the other extreme, how can we deal with those powerful people in government or finance who are clearly – as Dworkin indicates – motivated by greed and don’t feel they have any responsibility to society? Issues of justice and law are trumped for them by personal desires or fears.

[Astir · Rating 2 out of 5]

Hold the presses: liberal male has done a bigg thinke about truth, morality, and justice, and would like you to know that pornography is really just an issue of free speech.

[John Ferngrove · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm having a hard time making progress with this because Dworkin's insistence that we can have ethical debates and mean what we say without worrying about the ontological grounding of morality is chafing rather badly with my strong belief that morality is grounded in the quantity and quality of consciousness. Starting from the idea that a universe with consciousness is more intrinsically valuable that one without consciousness and that a universe with more consciousness is intrinsically more valuable than one with less consciousness I just work it all out from there with notions like 'area under the curve of quality of consciousness'. With these ideas I see morality and ethics as concretely grounded in lived reality. This is all just making me want to scream while trying to get through the foothills of Dworkin's arguments, so I'm shelving it for a later date. I'm probably being unfair because the full scope of his arguments probably extend way beyond the metaphysical grounding of morality/ethics.

[Leonardo]

Un sistema firme de convicciones morales tiene una fuerte integridad — una coherencia en la que cada juicio de moralidad personal o política respalda a los otros— y la verdad conceptual de que nada, además de otro juicio de valor, puede respaldar a un juicio de valor protege esa integridad, igual que en el caso de las matemáticas.

Religión sin dios Pág.59-60

[Nancy Chantraine · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a terrific book. Very cerebral- kind of like reading for Philosophy 101. But the author guides us through his remarkable and succinct theories about truth, morality and how to reconcile leading a good life in a world where many cannot or will not do so.

[Philip Chaston · Rating 4 out of 5]

A useful distillation of Dworkin's journey and stimulating for libertarians and classical liberals: dignity, justice and incorporating self-worth in law, ethics and morality through an indivisible perspective - all of which are compatible with and draw upon natural rights.

[Ivan Benis-Scott · Rating 5 out of 5]

Life changing, Paradigm shifting book that describes a political vision that seems the most plausible (liberalism), but, most importantly, a framework and philosophy about value that explains and prescribes the complexity of the world.

[Rachel · Rating 4 out of 5]

Don't be deceived by the title, Justice for Hedgehogs by Ronald Dworkin is not light reading, but it is not a dense philosophical tome either. It is more Aristotle than Plato--in terms of style and presentation. I like the emphasis on the concept of dignity as being essential to "living well". Dignity requires self-respect and authenticity--two things religion, authoritarian political systems, and capitalism denies people. Dworkin makes an intellectual case for being a morally responsible person, but he fails to provide a compelling emotional reason (see Martha Nussbaum for that). A person has to care about being a good person to take Dworkin's argument seriously. I agree with Dworkin's synopsis of Greek philosophers general agreement that "living well is more than having your desires satisfied and being moral requires taking a genuine concern in the lives of others" (19) and his assessment of modern philosophy's abandonment of that ideal of ethical and moral integrity for either self-abnegation or self-assertion. Another key concept is of moral responsibility: "we cannot expect agreement, but we can demand responsibility" (12). We all need a rational moral epistemology that is not based on tradition, authority, religion, or accident of birth. Being morally responsible is thinking well and rationally about our values and behavior. For instance, "acts are wrong if they insult the dignity of others . . . authenticity demands that so far as decisions are to be made about the best use to which a person's life should be put, these must be made by the person whose life it is" (212). Additionally, "governments have a sovereign responsibility to treat each person in their power with equal concern and respect. They achieve justice to the extent they succeed" (321). "We do not recognize the moral authority of governments that don't show equal concern for all lives and treats people with dignity"(344)--the same may be said for religious institutions. And, Dworkin's discussion of the distinction between paternalistic and probalistic laws is an interesting engagement of the idea of liberty. Probalistic refers to choices a reasonable person would make for themselves. Finally, I appreciated the author's observation that Plato pointed out that the rich and poor both suffer from inequality, "though the poor are usually more aware of the injustice" (420).

[Eric · Rating 4 out of 5]

The book description says everything in the way of a synopsis. As far as a recommendation, yes I would, provided you don't mind long drawn out philosophical arguments in an academic style . Given his goal, Dworkin is obliged to do just that. That said, the prose is not nearly as dense or dry as in many other philosophical treatise (I'm referring to anything by Rawls of course, ugh). Like Aristotle, Dworkin rightly considers ethics and politics to be two sides to the same coin, and attempts a "unity of all values" -- the result of which the supposed inevitable conflict between things like liberty and equality can be reconciled into a consistent whole. It's all founded on a proper understanding of human dignity and understanding the distinction between living life well and living a good life. The effort is impressive, but to decide whether he succeeds or not is something that would really take a second reading.

[A.M.P. · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fascinating read that isn't overly heavy but no so light as to skim over the important topics discussed within.

Dworkin poses, answers, and discusses many points of view and puts them in a way that are understandable and easy to relate to. Without ever pandering or refusing different trains of thought, this is an interesting and enlightening book.

For those versed philosophy, you will find a lot of familiar but modern and interesting points of view and for those less so a fascinating new way of thinking.

[Chrishna · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was written by a professor of the philosophy of law, so yes, it's dense and it's heavy reading. It takes Kant's Categorical Imperative to a new, all encompassing level. I'm not going to summarize it here other than to say if you are really interested read the review that I tagged above.

[Mason · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sometimes it is refreshing to take a day off and become totally immersed in an argument. This is a fine book for just that sort of release. This will also be a book to find again in a few years for a gut check on whether ones own truth structures stand up to the dignity test.

[Angela Randall]

Found this book because of a NY Times article with an essay/excerpt of this book.

[Ramiro · Rating 5 out of 5]

Even better than 'Law's Empire'. It's a wiser Dworkin, who's learned how to use footnotes.

[Hiromichi Chiba · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's simple and magnificent introductory book about todays ethical ideas, especially the governmental ideas.

[Alex Bloom · Rating 4 out of 5]

Impressive in its synthesis of all of the things that go into building a political theory. Go elsewhere for Dworkin's political theory proper.

[Andy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Everyone should read this book. Not an easy read, but immensely rewarding. If you've ever wondered about ideology/dogma-free morality and ethics, this is the book for you.

[Carl · Rating 2 out of 5]

I think it's probably a work of considerable scholarship & erudition but it is much deeper, longer & in smaller print than I wanted. I didn't go far at all. Shame on me!

[Antonia · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Any conviction that nothing matters must be as much the target of your suspicion and doubt- and misplaced hope for external validation- as any more positive conviction"