Skip to main content

Dworkin’s Unity of Value: An Interpretation and Defense

Res Publica volume 26, pages 403–422 (2020)Cite this article

Abstract

Ronald Dworkin’s unity of value thesis underlies his influential moral, political, and legal thought. This essay presents an interpretation of the unity thesis designed to isolate its distinctly ethical character, elaborate Dworkin’s fundamental ethical arguments for it, and to utilize this reconstruction to correct misinterpretations that, I argue, underlie recent criticism. This criticism largely depends on construing the unity thesis within a familiar dualistic meta-ethical framework according to which Dworkin’s theory of value is classified as either constructivist or realist in character. Both options, however, misapprehend the epistemological framework within which Dworkin defends value judgments in general, and therefore fail to challenge his use of that framework in defending the unity of value in particular. Correcting this oversight is essential to a proper understanding of Dworkin’s novel account of moral epistemology and of the moral and political program that his unity thesis sponsors. The paper concludes by suggesting how more profitable criticism of the unity of value might proceed.

This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution.

Access options

Buy single article

Instant access to the full article PDF.

USD 39.95

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Notes

  1. See Parts III, IV, and V of Dworkin (2011) for his unified account of law, interpersonal morality, and personal ethics.

  2. Dworkin uses the terms ‘ethics’ and ‘morality’ to denote distinct but interdependent departments of value. Whereas ethics studies what it means to live well, morality studies that part of living well that concerns what we owe to others (Dworkin 2011, pp. 25, 327–328). For convenience, in this paper I will often use the terms ‘ethics’ and ‘ethical’ broadly to denote all normative domains that concern Dworkin, including morality and law. Since, for Dworkin, all of these domains of value (and even art) connect, ultimately, to the ‘ethical hub’, I believe his meaning is preserved by this loose use of the term (Dworkin 2011, p. 203).

  3. Buckley credits Dworkin’s use of the term ‘constructive’ in his analysis of Rawls for originating use of the term ‘constructivism’ among contemporary political philosophers.

  4. See Dworkin’s notorious rejection of ‘morons’, exotic moral entities or properties in virtue of which, a realist might hold, moral propositions are true or false (Dworkin 2011, pp. 9, 26).

  5. Dworkin’s (2011) explicit rejection of a purely procedural constructivism is at pp. 11, 63–66, 417–418, and 437 n. 29.

  6. It is worth noting that while the purposive character of interpretation indeed commits Dworkin to a kind of teleology about value insofar as values are justified and specified in relation to ends or purposes, nothing in this commitment is inconsistent with the Kantian view, endorsed explicitly by Dworkin (2011, pp. 264–266, 44–49), that moral values give categorical reasons. As Kant himself emphasized, some ends—for example, objective ends, such as humanity, that hold universally, as opposed to subjective ends that hold only contingently—bind categorically (Kant 1785, note at 4:428–429).

  7. For a summary of this apparent evidence see the text that immediately precedes and follows note 3 above.

  8. Dworkin’s (2011) explicit rejection of a purely procedural constructivism is at pp. 11, 63–66, 417–418, and 437 n. 29.

  9. Winter here cites Fallon in support of his reading of Dworkin. See Fallon (2010, p. 545).

  10. Winter says (p. 478) that if society adopted a conception of liberty that made freedom compatible with forced labor, he would be ‘linguistically disabled’ from objecting to it in terms of how freedom is now understood.

References

  • Buckley, Michael. 2015. Political constructivism. In Internet encyclopedia of philosophy. https://www.iep.utm.edu/poli-con/. Accessed 2 Mar 2019.

  • Carter, Ian. 1999. A measure of freedom. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Dworkin, Ronald. 1986. Law’s empire. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Dworkin, Ronald. 1996. Freedom’s law. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Dworkin, Ronald. 2000. Sovereign virtue: The theory and practice of equality. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Dworkin, Ronald. 2006. Justice in robes. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Dworkin, Ronald. 2011. Justice for hedgehogs. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Edmundson, William A. 2012. Book review: Ronald Dworkin, Justice for hedgehogs. Law and Philosophy 31: 759–767.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Fallon, Richard. 2010. Is moral reasoning conceptual interpretation? Boston University Law Review. 90: 535–550.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kant, Immanuel. 1785. Groundwork of the metaphysics of morals. In Practical philosophy. Cambridge edition of the works of Immanuel Kant, ed. Paul Guyer and Allen W. Wood. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Knight, Carl. 2015. Justice for foxes. Law and Philosophy 34: 633–659.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Kramer, Matthew. 2013. Working on the inside: Ronald Dworkin’s moral philosophy. Analysis Reviews 73: 118–129.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Larmore, Charles. 2013. The holes in holism. European Journal of Political Theory. 12: 205–216.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Minow, Martha, and Joseph Singer. 2010. In favor of foxes: Pluralism as fact and aid to the pursuit of justice. Boston University Law Review 90: 101–119.

    Google Scholar 

  • Raz, Joseph. 2016. A hedgehog’s unity of value. In The legacy of Ronald Dworkin, ed. Wil Waluchow. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Rodriguez-Blanco, Veronica. 2001. ‘Genuine’ disagreements: A realist reinterpretation of Dworkin. Oxford Journal of Legal Studies 21: 649–671.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Smith, Dale. 2012. Law, justice and the unity of value. Oxford Journal of Legal Studies 32: 383–400.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Waluchow, Wil, and Stefan Sciaraffa. 2016. Editors’ introduction. In The legacy of Ronald Dworkin, ed. Wil Waluchow and Stefan Sciaraffa. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • Winter, Jack. 2016. Justice for hedgehogs, conceptual authenticity for foxes: Ronald Dworkin on value conflicts. Res Publica 2 (4): 463–479.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Zipursky, Benjamin. 2010. Two takes on truth in normative discourse. Boston University Law Review 90: 525–534.

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Political Science, Columbia University, 420 West 118th St. 7th Floor, New York, NY, 10027, USA

    Luke MacInnis

Authors
  1. Luke MacInnis
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Luke MacInnis.

Additional information

Publisher's Note

Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and Permissions

About this article

Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

MacInnis, L. Dworkin’s Unity of Value: An Interpretation and Defense. Res Publica 26, 403–422 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11158-020-09452-6

Download citation

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11158-020-09452-6

Keywords

  • Dworkin
  • Integrity
  • Interpretation
  • Moral responsibility
  • Unity of value
  • Value pluralism