Lately I have often praised the work of Ronald Dworkin, writer of Justice for Hedgehogs, a book I have recently been reading. Indeed, Dworkin’s views on scepticism, interpretation, and the independence of value from metaphysics are all very persuasive, and I have adopted partially or completely several of his positions on those topics, as regular readers may have observed in recent posts. However, at around the halfway point in Hedgehogs, I have come upon a position of Dworkin’s I cannot accept which I believe undermines much of the rest of his philosophy.
Tag: Ethics
Police Prejudice
I ran across an interesting old Supreme Court decision today from the mid-2000’s. It was a 7-2 decision and if I remember it didn’t get much play at the time in the press–though that was eight years ago, and I may just be forgetful. The court ruled that the police do not have a legal duty to protect any given citizen. The decision justifies a whole slew of first principle injustices–it was wrong, and we are worse off for it. Here’s how.
Divorcing Morality from Metaphysics
Religious deontologists and subjectivist relativists have something in common–both believe that they can derive moral conclusions from their metaphysical theories. This is the most significant mistake made by both groups. Here’s why.
Are People Equal?
Since Thomas Jefferson wrote that “all men are created equal”, we’ve pretty much taken equality as a given. The last couple hundred years of history could be viewed as one prolonged struggle for equality, whether taken from the perspective of colonists, racial, ethnic, or religious minorities, the working classes, women, and so on down the line. But how equal are we, really? And what, precisely, are we equal in? Too often we ignore these questions and resort to Jeffersonian platitudes. Not today.
Do We Have Obligations to Future People?
Today I would like to attempt to answer one of the most difficult questions in political theory, the question of the extent to which the interests of future people ought to be considered. Why is it so difficult? Because there are many seemingly horrific answers that are unusually easy to get to. That said, I think I have found a workaround.
Benjamin Studebaker 