Tag: Ronald Dworkin

The Moral Irrelevance of the God Question

A while back, I wrote about the separation of moral philosophy and metaphysics. I argued in agreement with Dworkin that whether or not a moral claim is true does not rely on objective metaphysical blunt facts about the nature of the universe. It occurred to me today that this makes the entire debate between the new atheism of Dawkins, Hitchens, and the like and traditional religion irrelevant to questions of moral philosophy–the metaphysical debate about whether or not there is a deity and what that deity’s nature might be can have no bearing whatsoever on our moral theory.

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A Critique of Ronald Dworkin

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.

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Tarantino Aesthetics

Yesterday I found myself rewatching Django Unchained, Quentin Tarantino’s latest film. This morning, I found myself watching a few interviews with Tarantino and was reminded of one of his running traits–he really hates it when people attempt to connect violence in movies to violence in real life. It goes beyond mere point of disagreement; he views the very notion that his movies could have any affect at all on the real world behaviour of people as beyond ridiculous. It suggests a fundamental different in aesthetic philosophy between Tarantino and his critics, and I think I have managed to put my finger on precisely what that difference is.

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Is the Eurozone a German Empire?

Given the title, it’s necessary to make a clarification. I support a federal Europe. It’s the only way Europe can regain its ability to make foreign and economic policy independently from the United States, and regain its position as a leading region. However, after running some numbers today, I no longer believe in the Euro as presently constituted. Here’s why.
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