Justice for Hedgehogs
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"The first thing to strike you about this remarkable book is its ambition...In Justice for Hedgehogs all of Dworkin's great talent is on display, the themes overwhelming in their sheer bigness...The easy material is handled in a way that adds depth, while the complex ideas are communicated so deftly you forget that in the hands of a less elegant writer (or more confused mind) they would be incomprehensible." --New Humanist, March/April 2011, Conor Gearty
"The first thing to be said about this remarkable book is that it has nothing to do with animal rights...Justice for Hedgehogs is not a work of vapid generalisation. It is full of sustained argument and arresting observations drawn from a lifetime of thought and a great armoury of knowledge...Dworkin makes a formidable case for his two rules, presented with insight, wit and forensic elegance." --Spectator, 19 March 2011, Jonathan Sumption
"Dworkin is a very impressive writer, with what his early prey, H.L.A. Hart, is said to have described as a `fluent and somewhat elusive analytical style'. He has a keen lawyerly eye for the way to present a case, and is indefatigable in doing so. He knows a great deal, and deploys what he knows with admirable skill. His works are proper objects of wonder."
--Times Higher Education, 27 January 2011, Simon Blackburn
"The first thing to be said about this remarkable book is that it has nothing to do with animal rights...Justice for Hedgehogs is not a work of vapid generalisation. It is full of sustained argument and arresting observations drawn from a lifetime of thought and a great armoury of knowledge...Dworkin makes a formidable case for his two rules, presented with insight, wit and forensic elegance." --Spectator, 19 March 2011, Jonathan Sumption
"Dworkin is a very impressive writer, with what his early prey, H.L.A. Hart, is said to have described as a `fluent and somewhat elusive analytical style'. He has a keen lawyerly eye for the way to present a case, and is indefatigable in doing so. He knows a great deal, and deploys what he knows with admirable skill. His works are proper objects of wonder."
--Times Higher Education, 27 January 2011, Simon Blackburn
Product Description
The fox knows many things, the Greeks said, but the hedgehog knows one big thing. In his most comprehensive work Ronald Dworkin argues that value in all its forms is one big thing: that what truth is, life means, morality requires, and justice demands are different aspects of the same large question. He develops original theories on a great variety of issues very rarely considered in the same book: moral skepticism, literary, artistic, and historical interpretation, free will, ancient moral theory, being good and living well, liberty, equality, and law among many other topics. What we think about any one of these must stand up, eventually, to any argument we find compelling about the rest. Skepticism in all its forms - philosophical, cynical, or post-modern - threatens that unity. The Galilean revolution once made the theological world of value safe for science. But the new republic gradually became a new empire: the modern philosophers inflated the methods of physics into a totalitarian theory of everything. They invaded and occupied all the honorifics - reality, truth, fact, ground, meaning, knowledge, and being - and dictated the terms on which other bodies of thought might aspire to them, and skepticism has been the inevitable result. We need a new revolution. We must make the world of science safe for value.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
20 of 26 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
A Dworkinian statement is usually clear, sharp, and pointedly thought-provoking. This book contains 423 pages of such statements covering a range of subjects from skepticism to morality, living the good life, interpretation, dignity, free will law, and truth. By conventional interpretation of the phrase "A fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing", the fox hesitates to form one single, all-encompassing value that attaches to all things on earth. The hedgehog, on the other hand, believes that it has its thumb pressed against that solitary, centrifugal nerve and the value that controls all values. Dworkin does not mask his intention to show us that he is an hedgehog, but can he assume that role without grasping and reconciling the truth in all the disparate values that philosophers, scientists, and theologians, have hitherto been unable to reconcile? If Dworkin could, and had done so, one wonders if he might not have been a fox who thinks he is an hedgehog?
To have expressed all his views as emanating from one stock value in such a relatively short book, Dworkin might have had to omit steps in arguments which, no doubt, his critics will pursue. Indeed, Dworkin invites responses in a specially created website: [...]t. There have already been comments and criticisms: See Miachael Smith: 2009 Boston Law Review vol 90 p.509 (commenting on the draft manuscript). Nonetheless, "Justice for Hedgehogs", like most of Dworkin's books, is an elegant, charming, and provocative intellectual work.
To have expressed all his views as emanating from one stock value in such a relatively short book, Dworkin might have had to omit steps in arguments which, no doubt, his critics will pursue. Indeed, Dworkin invites responses in a specially created website: [...]t. There have already been comments and criticisms: See Miachael Smith: 2009 Boston Law Review vol 90 p.509 (commenting on the draft manuscript). Nonetheless, "Justice for Hedgehogs", like most of Dworkin's books, is an elegant, charming, and provocative intellectual work.
1 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
Ronald Dworkin wrote "Taking Rights Seriously" in the late 1970's. It was a ground-breaking work; clear, articulate and libertarian.
While Dworkin is still a liberal, this latest offering is neither clear nor quite so articulate. It purports to be an attack on political cynicism and scepticism but indirectly and unintentionally supports exactly such a position. He sees the cynics and sceptics as `foxes', while the kind and moral people are `hedgehogs'. This is a most unfortunate metaphor, given that foxes are quick-witted, perceptive and courageous while hedgehogs blunder about and get run over. In this country hedgehogs are in decline. Dworkin's support for them is unlikely to change that glum fact, although I actually share his ambition.
The book starts brilliantly with a clear exposition of an important principle:
No government is legitimate unless it shows "Equal concern for the fate of every person over whom it claims dominion"(p2). We can all sign-up to that. But then he leaps into an entirely different realm when he says:
"Second, it must respect fully the responsibility and right of each person to decide for himself how to make something valuable of his life". Whoa, those two statements are not joined. Who will adjudicate on the `value' of my neighbour's aims, should they clash with mine? The latter sounds like an unnecessary addendum to a diluted version of the Communist Manifesto.
In "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance", Robert Pirsig's central character has a mental breakdown because he is asked, by the young teacher's administrator, "Do you teach quality? (value)". He gets badly stuck on shared values. So does Dworkin.
Anyone dealing in `values' must nail his values to the mast. They must be scrupulously and forensically defined. They cannot be assumed and certainly not `assumed to be shared'.
This book seems to be aimed at the American reader as it revisits the constitution and there are links (critical) to the `Tea Party' and its ideals. Dworkin is as liberal as ever and as brave as ever, tackling such grand topics as "moral responsibility", "Ethics" and their application in `politics'. These are huge issues, informed by philosophy, psychology, natural science and legal studies. But the values remain assumed, not defined.
Late in the book (p352) Dworkin defends Rawls's notion of `justice' from the economist Amartya Sen's criticism that Rawls (and to some extent, Dworkin too), have created "transcendentalist" notions of idealised justice which go beyond their data. Dworkin says such criticism would be "damning if accurate". He claims that Sen's criticism is unfounded.
I'm not sure about that. Read this important book and form your own opinion.
While Dworkin is still a liberal, this latest offering is neither clear nor quite so articulate. It purports to be an attack on political cynicism and scepticism but indirectly and unintentionally supports exactly such a position. He sees the cynics and sceptics as `foxes', while the kind and moral people are `hedgehogs'. This is a most unfortunate metaphor, given that foxes are quick-witted, perceptive and courageous while hedgehogs blunder about and get run over. In this country hedgehogs are in decline. Dworkin's support for them is unlikely to change that glum fact, although I actually share his ambition.
The book starts brilliantly with a clear exposition of an important principle:
No government is legitimate unless it shows "Equal concern for the fate of every person over whom it claims dominion"(p2). We can all sign-up to that. But then he leaps into an entirely different realm when he says:
"Second, it must respect fully the responsibility and right of each person to decide for himself how to make something valuable of his life". Whoa, those two statements are not joined. Who will adjudicate on the `value' of my neighbour's aims, should they clash with mine? The latter sounds like an unnecessary addendum to a diluted version of the Communist Manifesto.
In "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance", Robert Pirsig's central character has a mental breakdown because he is asked, by the young teacher's administrator, "Do you teach quality? (value)". He gets badly stuck on shared values. So does Dworkin.
Anyone dealing in `values' must nail his values to the mast. They must be scrupulously and forensically defined. They cannot be assumed and certainly not `assumed to be shared'.
This book seems to be aimed at the American reader as it revisits the constitution and there are links (critical) to the `Tea Party' and its ideals. Dworkin is as liberal as ever and as brave as ever, tackling such grand topics as "moral responsibility", "Ethics" and their application in `politics'. These are huge issues, informed by philosophy, psychology, natural science and legal studies. But the values remain assumed, not defined.
Late in the book (p352) Dworkin defends Rawls's notion of `justice' from the economist Amartya Sen's criticism that Rawls (and to some extent, Dworkin too), have created "transcendentalist" notions of idealised justice which go beyond their data. Dworkin says such criticism would be "damning if accurate". He claims that Sen's criticism is unfounded.
I'm not sure about that. Read this important book and form your own opinion.
2 of 4 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
A well structured and thought provoking book. Not necessarily accessible to the average lay person - although Dworkin's target audience are those who already have some understanding of moral/legal constructs. I would recommend it, just not as light reading.
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