Tuesday, June 11, 2013

Jeremy Waldron's tribute to Ronald Dworkin

Jeremy Waldron has posted a tribute to the late Ronald Dworkin at SSRN:

"Ronald Dworkin: An Appreciation"

Waldron's tribute was presented at the Memorial Service for Professor Ronald Dworkin, at St. John's Smith Square, London, on June 5, 2013.

Excerpt:
Dworkin's "vision was unified, in his great ethical work, Justice for Hedgehogs, by a principle of dignity. Each person, said Ronnie, has a certain responsibility for the precious shape of his or her own life, and everyone has a duty to respect the conditions under which others are able to discharge that responsibility. That’s what “human dignity” meant for Ronnie and it underpinned both the principles of responsibility that were so important in the luck-egalitarian side of his account of equality and the principles of mutual respect that are represented in the rule of law. His great work of synthesis, Justice for Hedgehogs revealed this as the foundation of all his positions — and I do mean “foundation,” which is not the same as the fortification that allows a philosopher to see off contrary intuitions. I mean that Justice for Hedgehogs bravely identified the very deep underpinning of his various positions, even though that explicit identification made each of them somewhat more vulnerable, by presenting a deeper as well as a wider and more integrated target."


See also Waldron's article on Dworkin in "The Chronicle of Higher Education", February 19, 2013.

See also Will Hutton's tribute to Dworkin in "The Guardian", June 9, 2013: "I despair as I watch the erosion of the liberal views I hold dear."


I have made a collection of links to other tributes to Dworkin here.

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