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Dworkin on the Foundations of Liberal Equality

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 February 2009

Patrick Neal
Patrick Neal
Affiliation:
University of Vermont
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Ronald Dworkin's Tanner Lectures, “Foundations of Liberal Equality,” have hardly elicited comment within the academic political theory community. This is surprising for a number of reasons. First, Dworkin is widely taken to be one of the leading liberal theorists in the English-speaking world, and “Foundations” is a major statement (120 pages in length) involving reflection upon issues of principle that are at the center of contemporary scholarly debate among liberals. Secondly, “Foundations” introduces a number of ideas and concepts that are new in Dworkin's corpus and that serve to illuminate and clarify some of his wdely discussed earlier works, especially the famous article “Liberalism,” which sparked so much argument over the idea of neutrality and its place within liberal political theory. Finally, the lectures are interesting because of the approach they take to the matter of “defending liberalism,” an approach that departs in interesting and significant ways from those presently pursued by other leading liberal thinkers, notably John Rawls and Joseph Raz.

Type
Articles
Information
Legal Theory , Volume 1 , Issue 2 , June 1995 , pp. 205 - 226
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1995

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References

1. Dworkin, Ronald, Foundations of Liberal Equality, in The Tanner Lecture on Human Values (Grethc B. Peterson, ed.), Vol. 11 (1990), at 1–119Google Scholar; important companion pieces arc Dworkin, Ronald, what is Equality? Part 3: The Place of Liberty, Iowa Law Review, Vol. 73, No. 1 (1987), at 1–54Google Scholar; Dworkin, Ronald, what is Equality? Part 4: Political Equality, University of San Francisco law Review. Vol. 22. No. 1 (Fall 1987), at 1–30Google Scholar; and Dworkin, Ronald. Liberal Community, California law Review, Vol. 77, No. 3 (05 1989), at 479–504CrossRefGoogle Scholar. The latter piece responded to by Selznick, Philip. Dwoikin's Unfinished TaskGoogle Scholar, and Williams, Bernard, Dworkin on Community and Critical Interests, in the same issue, at 505–520Google Scholar. Aside from these, there is a brief critical discussion in Arneson, Richard J., Liberal Democratic Community, in Democratic Community John W. Chapman and Ian Shapiro, eds.) Nomos XXXV (1993). at 197–202Google Scholar. Even briefer, though interesting, remarks of commentary can be found in Beiner, Ronald. Whats The Matter With Liberalism? (1992), at 71Google Scholar, and Rawls, John, Political Liberalism (1993), at 211.Google Scholar

2. Dworkin, Ronald. Liberalism, in Public and Private Morality (Stuart Hampshire, ed.,) (1978), at 113–143.Google Scholar

3. One may wonder at the failure to mention other critical discourses in this context, especially those of feminism and post-modernism. I agree that a serious engagement with either would go a long way toward moderating the passion for LD. The statement in the text, mentioning only communitarians, should be read as an empirical hypothesis regarding the discourses that liberals read, listen to, and take seriously. I might wish that hypothesis were false, but I do not think it is.

4. The allusions are to, respectively, Rawls, Nozick, and Hegel.

5. Dworkin, , Foundations of Liberal Equality, at 12.Google Scholar

6. Id. None of these decisions seem “essentially” or “naturally” personal to me, and obviously marriage and job assignment have been regulated in many societies.

7. Dworkin, , Foundations of Liberal Equality, at 16.Google Scholar

8. Id. at 17.

9. I am here following Dworkin in using “ethics” to denote the subject matter of living well individually, as distinct from “politic,” which denotes issues of collective concern.

10. Dworkin, , Foundations of Liberal Equality, at 21.Google Scholar

11. Id. at 53–54.

12. Id. at 54.

13. Id. at 7–8.

14. Id. at 88; see also 53 in this regard.

15. Id. at 57.

16. Id. at 53.

17. Id. at 43.

18. Williams, , Dworkin on community and Critical Interats. at 515.Google Scholar

19. Dworkin, , Foundations of Liberal Equality, at 66.Google Scholar

20. Id. at 67.

21. Id. at 67.

22. Id. at 68.

23. I have no criticism to make of Dworkin's notion of a “parameter.” though I would note two features of his explication of it. First, it is a particularly vivid, and therefore annoying, instance of a case where the complexity of and controversy surrounding the “matter” being discussed is ignored through the usage of an idiosyncratic vocabulary. The “matters” Dworkin is “really” discussing in raising the distinction between limitations and parameters include the concept of the self operative in liberal theory, the question of whether identity is understood as created, discovered, etc., the question of the account of choice in relation to identity over time. At the forefront of debate over liberal theory, these are matters of great complexity and significance. They have received careful and elaborate consideration in the writings of, among others, Sandel, Kymlicka, MacIntyrc, Taylor, and Parfit. Now it would be silly to insist that Dworkin should do a “literature review.” But how seriously can we be expected to take a discussion that disposes of these issues through an invented dichotomy, one side of which articulates a position so foolish that only a straw man would maintain it?

24. Rawls, , Political. Liberalism, at 37.Google Scholar

25. See Rawls, JohnJustice as Fairness: Political not Methaphysical, Philosophy and Public Affairs, Vol. 14, No. 3 (Summer 1985), at 246Google Scholar. This language has been removed from the text of Political Liberalism.

26. Rawls, , Political Liberalism, at 197.Google Scholar

27. Other ‘minimalist’ works would include Shklar, Judith, The Liberalism of Fear, in Liberalism and The Moral Life (Nancy Rosenblum, ed.,) (1991), at 21–38Google Scholar, and Larmore, Charles, Political Liberalism, Political Theory, Vol. 18 No. 3 (08 1990) at 339–360CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Other “perfectionist” works would include Galston, William, Liberal Purposes (1991)Google Scholar, and Macedo, Stephen, Liberal Virtues (1990)Google Scholar.

28. Rawls, , Political Liberalism at 175.Google Scholar

29. Id. at 12.

30. Id. at 194. To my understanding, this makes Rawls's view indistinguishable in principle from that of William Galston, who is ordinarily understood to be a perfectionist critic of Rawls. Compare Rawls's remarks above with William Galston, Liberal Purposes at 256: “the liberal state… must not throw its weight behind ideals of personal excellence outside the shared understanding of civic excellence, and it must not give pride of place to understandings of personal freedom outside the shared understandings of civic freedom.”

31. Dworkin, , Foundations of Liberal Equality, at 13.Google Scholar

32. Rawls, , Political Liberalism, at 37.Google Scholar

33. Discussions of Raz's perfectionist liberal theory include: George, Robert, The Unorthodox Liberalism of Joseph Raz, Review of Politics, Vol. 53, No. 4 (Fall 1991), at 652–671CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Moore, Margaret, Liberalism and the Ideal of the Good Life, Review of Politics, Vol. 53, No. 4 (Fall 1991), at 672–690CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Waldon, Jeremy, Autonomy and Perfectionism in Rai's Morality of Freedom, Southern California Law Review, Vol. 62 (1989), at 1130–1153Google Scholar; Sadurski, Wojciech, Joseph Raz on Liberal Neutrality and the Harm Principii, Oxford Journal of Legal Studies, Vol. 10, No. 1 (1990), at 130–133CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Waluchow, W. J., Critical Notice of Joseph Raz The Morality of Freedom, Canadian Journal of Philosophy, Vol. 19. No. 3 (09 1989), at 476–479.Google Scholar

34. See Raz, Joseph, The Morality of Freedom (1986), especially 110–162 and 401–430.Google Scholar

35. Id. at 390.

36. Id. at 395.

37. Id. at 392.

38. Dworkin, , Foundations of Liberal Equality at 20–21.Google Scholar

39. Id. at 25–32.

40. Id. at 42.

41. Barry, Brian. How Not to Defend Liberal Institutions, in Liberalism and the Good (B. Douglass, G. Mara, and H. Richardson, eds.) (1990), at 50–51.Google Scholar

42. Dworkin, , Foundations of Liberal Equatity, at 80.Google Scholar

43. Id. at 80.

44. Id. at 85.

45. This anxiety is usually explained as a consequence of the realization that, as a matter of logic, defenses of liberalism base on skepticism about the good or relativism are self-defeating. I harbor the suspicion that the more relevant factor at work here is the rhetorical success of the cultural right in the United States over the past decade or so, which has frightened many liberals into confessing publicly their commitment to and belief in the objectivity of morals, along with other good things.

46. Dworkin, , Foundation of Liberal Equality, at 80.Google Scholar

47. Id. at 81.

48. Id. at 85.

49. Id. at 77.

50. Id. at 85.

51. One could reply: but then that is your preference, and hence there's no reason in principle why that could not be accommodated in the considerations concerning the justifiability of X.

52. Dworkin, , Foundations of Liberai Equality, at 77.Google Scholar

53. Id. at 78.

54. Id. at 78.

55. Id. at 83.

56. See Raz, Joseph, The Morality of Freedom at 157–162.Google Scholar

57. Raz, Joseph, Liberalism, Skepticism and Democracy, Iowa Law Review, Vol. 74, No. 3 (1989). at 780.Google Scholar

58. Raz, . The Morality of Freedom, at 411.Google Scholar

59. Id. at 133.

60. Dworkin, , Foundations of Liberal Equality, at 84.Google Scholar

61. Or at least I will grant this for the sake of argument Actually, it could be the case that removing certain options actually serves to increase the range of quantitative options open to an agent—i.e., effectively preventing people from choosing to be drug addicts can have the effect of making more, not fewer, options open to them.

62. Dworkin, . Foundations of Liberal Equality, at 84.Google Scholar

63. Id. at 84–85.I believe the “conceptual” in the final sentence is a typographical error, and that “cultural” was intended. “Cultural” is the adjective used earlier in the text to describe the type of paternalism Dworkin is here arguing against (what I have labelled “deep”), and “conceptual” as an adjective describing a type of paternalism appears nowhere else in the text.

64. Id. at 86.

65. A reviewer suggests that Dworkin's position here, stressing the challenge model's rejection of an independent standard of ethical value, does not sit comfortably with the distinction between critical and volitional interests, because the concept of critical interests would seem to suppose such a standard. I think the reviewer is largely correct, but it is hard to pin Dworkin down on this because in every explicit definition of “critical interest” he gives, there is a subjective element referring to the agent's beliefs about the critical interest. So, does Dworkin think that a person can be mistaken about what his or her “critical interests” are? I cannot tell for sure from the ambiguous things he says; see especially at 44–48.

66. Dworkin, , Foundation of liberal Equality, at 112.Google Scholar

67. Id. at 117.

68. Id. at 113.

69. For examples and a more detailed defense of the view contrary to Dworkin's here, see Neal, Patrick. A Libaral Theory of the Good?, Canadian Journal of Philosophy. Vol. 17, No. 3 (09 1987), at 567–582.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

70. Dworkin, , Foundations of Liberal Equality, at 113.Google Scholar

71. Id. at 113.

72. Id. at 113.

73. see the suggestive remarks in this vein in George, Robert, The Unorthodox Liberalism of Joseph Raz, Review of Politics, Vol. 53, No. 4 (Fall 1991), at 652–671.CrossRefGoogle Scholar