Dictionary of Arguments


Philosophical and Scientific Issues in Dispute
 
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Entry
Reference
Autonomy Dworkin Gaus I 103
Autonomy/Dworkin, Gerald/Gaus: (...) to Gerald Dworkin, ‘[w]hat makes an individual the particular person he is is his life plan, his projects. In pursuing autonomy, one shapes one’s life, one constructs its meaning. The autonomous person gives meaning to his life’ (1988(1): 31). Gaus: Such visions of autonomy retain much of the structure of nineteenth-century self-realization perfectionism, while making less of the idea of a rich development of one’s capacities. The notion of a coherent plan of life was central to nineteenth-century self-realization theory (Gaus, 1983a(2): 34–44); the idea of a project or a plan points to a coherent and integrated set of ends. To the extent that a conception of personal autonomy presupposes a certain rational structure of ends, or a
Gaus I 104
rationally constructed plan, it invites the elitist and paternalist objections raised against nineteenthcentury liberal perfectionism. VsDworkin, Gerald: These problems are mitigated by conceptions of autonomy according to which ‘the fundamental idea in autonomy is that of authoring one’s own world without being subject to the will of others’ (Young, 1986(3): 19).
>Autonomy/Gaus, >Individual/Mill, >Liberalism/Gaus.

1. Dworkin, Gerald (1988) The Theory and Practice of Autonomy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
2. Gaus, Gerald F. (1983a) The Modern Liberal Theory of Man. New York: St Martin’s.
3. Young, Robert (1986) Personal Autonomy: Beyond Negative and Positive Freedom. London: Croom-Helm.

Gaus, Gerald F. 2004. „The Diversity of Comprehensive Liberalisms.“ In: Gaus, Gerald F. & Kukathas, Chandran 2004. Handbook of Political Theory. SAGE Publications.

Dworkin I
Ronald Dworkin
Taking Rights Seriously Cambridge, MA 1978


Gaus I
Gerald F. Gaus
Chandran Kukathas
Handbook of Political Theory London 2004
Autonomy Young Gaus I 103
Autonomy/Young, Robert/Gaus: The notion of a coherent plan of life was central to nineteenth-century self-realization theory (Gaus, 1983a(1): 34–44); the idea of a project or a plan points to a coherent and integrated set of ends. To the extent that a conception of personal autonomy presupposes a certain rational structure of ends, or a
Gaus I 104
rationally constructed plan, it invites the elitist and paternalist objections raised against nineteenthcentury liberal perfectionism. VsDworkin, Gerald: These problems are mitigated by conceptions of autonomy according to which ‘the fundamental idea in autonomy is that of authoring one’s own world without being subject to the will of others’ (Young, 1986(2): 19).
Young: An autonomous person employs her critical faculties to evaluate and choose her aims and projects in such a way that they are truly hers, rather than simply imposed by, or unreflectively taken over from, others. Autonomy is thus understood as ‘an ideal of self-creation … Autonomy is opposed to a life of coerced choices. It contrasts with a life of no choices, or of drifting through life without ever exercising one’s capacity to choose’ (Raz, 1986(3): 370, 371). This conception of autonomy is thus a much more open-ended, and so less controversial, ideal than the ideals of either self-realization or project pursuit.
>Autonomy/Gaus.

1. Gaus, Gerald F. (1983a) The Modern Liberal Theory of Man. New York: St Martin’s.
2. Young, Robert (1986) Personal Autonomy: Beyond Negative and Positive Freedom. London: Croom-Helm.
3. Raz, Joseph (1986) The Morality of Freedom. Oxford: Clarendon.

Gaus, Gerald F. 2004. „The Diversity of Comprehensive Liberalisms.“ In: Gaus, Gerald F. & Kukathas, Chandran 2004. Handbook of Political Theory. SAGE Publications.


Gaus I
Gerald F. Gaus
Chandran Kukathas
Handbook of Political Theory London 2004
Communitarianism Political Philosophy Gaus I 170
Communitarianism/Political Philosophy/Dagger: [Longing for community] did not find expression in the word 'communitarian' until the 1840s, when it and communautaire appeared almost simultaneously in the writings of English and French socialists. French dictionaries point to Etienne Cabet and Pierre-Joseph Proudhon as the first to use communautaire, but the Oxford English Dictionary gives the credit for 'communitarian' to one Goodwyn Barmby, who founded the Universal Communitarian Association in 1841 and edited a magazine he called The Promethean, or Communitarian Apostle.
According to Ralph Waldo Emerson's essay on 'English reformers', Barmby
Gaus I 171
advertised his publication as 'the cheapest of all magazines, and the paper most devoted of any to the cause of the people; consecrated to Pantheism in Religion, and Communism in Politics' (1842(1): 239). In the beginning, then, 'communitarian' seems to have been a rough synonym of 'socialist' and 'communist'.
To be a communitarian was simply to believe that community is somehow vital to a worthwhile life and is therefore to be protected against various threats. Socialists and communists were leftists, but a communitarian could as easily be to the right as the left of centre politically
(Miller, 2000c)(2)
(...) people who moved from the settled, family-focused life of villages and small towns to the unsettled, individualistic life of commerce and cities might gain affluence and personal free-
dom, but they paid the price of alienation, isolation, and rootlessness. Ferdinand Tönnies (2001)(3), with his distinction between Gemeinschaft (community) and Gesellschaft (association or civil society), has been especially influential in this regard. As Tönnies defines the terms, Gemeinschaft is an intimate, organic, and traditional form of human association; Gesellschaft is impersonal, mechanical, and rational. To exchange the former for the latter then, is to trade warmth and support for coldness and calculation.
Concern for community took another direction in the twentieth century as some writers began to see the centripetal force of the modern state as the principal threat to community. This turn is evident, for instance, in José Ortega y Gasset's warnings in The Revolt of the Masses against 'the gravest danger that today threatens civilisation: State intervention; the absorption of all spontaneous social effort by the State' (1932(4): 120).
Nisbet: Robert Nisbet's The Quest for Community (1953)(5) provides an especially clear statement of this position, which draws more on Tocqueville's insistence on the importance of voluntary associations ofcitizens than on a longing for Gemeinschaft.
>Community/Tönnies.
In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, in short, the longing for community took the form of a reaction against both the atomizing, anomic tendencies of modern, urban society and the use of the centripetal force of the modern state to check these tendencies. Moreover, modernity was often linked with liberalism, a theory that many took to rest on and encourage atomistic and even 'possessive' individualism (Macpherson, 1962)(6). Against this background, communitarianism developed in the late twentieth century in the course of a debate with - or perhaps within - liberalism.
>Liberalism/Gaus.
Philosophical communitarianism: Four books published in rapid succession in the 1980s - Alasdair MacIntyre's After Virtue (1981)(7), Michael Sandel's Liberalism and the Limits of Justice (1982)(8), Michael Walzer's Spheres of.Justice (1983)(9), and Charles Taylor's Philosophical Papers (1985)(10) - marked the emergence of this philosophical form of communitarianism.FN7 Different as they
are from one another, all of these books express dissatisfaction with liberalism, especially in the form of theories of justice and rights. The main target here was John Rawls's A Theory of Justice (1971)(11), but Robert Nozick's Anarchy, State, and Utopia (1974)(12), Ronald Dworkin's Taking Rights Seriously (1977)(13), and Bruce Ackerman's Social Justice in the Liberal State (1980)(14) also came in for criticism. (CommunitarianismVsRawls, CommunitarianismVsNozick, CommunitarianismVsAckerman, Bruce, CommunitarianismVsDworkin).
CommunitarianismVsLiberalism: a typical complaint was, and is, that these theories are too abstract and universalistic.
Walzer: In opposing them, Walzer proposes a 'radically particularist' approach that attends to 'history, culture, and membership' by asking not what 'rational individuals under universalizing conditions of such-and-such a sort' would choose, but what would 'individuals like us choose, who are situated as we are, who share a culture and are determined to go on sharing it?' (1983(9): xiv, 5).
>M. Walzer.
Walzer thus calls attention to the importance of community, which he and others
writing in the early 1980s took to be suffering from both philosophical and political neglect.
For a valuable, full-length survey of this debate, see Mulhall and Swift, 1996(15)
Gaus I 172
Communitarian responesVsCriticisms: responses: 1) the first is that the communitarians' criticisms are misplaced because they have misconceived liberalism (Caney, 1992)(16). In particular, the communitarians have misunderstood the abstractness of the theories they criticize. Thus Rawls maintains (1993(17): Lecture I) that his 'political' conception of the self as prior to its ends is not a metaphysical claim about the nature of the self, as Sandel believes, but simply a way of representing the parties who are choosing principles of justice
from behind the 'veil of ignorance'. Nor does this conception of the individual as a self capable of
choosing its ends require liberals to deny that individual identity is in many ways the product of
unchosen attachments and social circumstances.
2) 'What is central to the liberal view,' according to Will Kymlicka, 'is not that we can perceive a self
prior to its ends, but that we understand ourselves to be prior to our ends, in the sense that no end or goal is exempt from possible re-examination' (1989(18) : 52). With this understood, a second response is to grant, as Kymlicka, Dworkin (1986(19); 1992(20)), Gewirth (1996)(21), and Mason (2000)(22) do, that liberals should pay more attention to belonging, identity, and community, but to insist that they can do this perfectly well within their existing theories.
3) the third response, finally, is to point to the dangers of the critics' appeal to community norms. Communities have their virtues, but they have their vices, too - smugness, intolerance,
and various forms of oppression and exploitation among them. The fact that communitarians do not embrace these vices simply reveals the perversity of their criticism: they 'want us to live in Salem, but not to believe in witches' (Gutmann 1992(23): 133; Friedman, 1992(24)).

1. Emerson, R. W. (1842) 'English reformers'. The Dial, 3(2).
2. Miller, David (2000c) 'Communitarianism: left, right and centre'. In his Citizenship and National Identity. Cambridge: Polity.
3. Tönnies, Ferdinand (2001 118871) Community and Civil Society, trans. J. Harris and M. Hollis. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
4. Ortega y Gasset, José (1932) The Revolt of the Masses. New York: Norton.
5. Nisbet, Robert (1953) The Quest for Community. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
6. Macpherson, C. B. (1962) The Political Theory of Possessive Individualism: Hobbes to Locke. Oxford: Clarendon.
7. MacIntyre, Alasdair (1981 ) After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press.
8. Sandel, Michael (1982) Liberalism and the Limits of Justice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
9. Walzer, Michael (1983) Spheres of Justice: A Defense of Pluralism and Equality. New York: Basic.
10. Taylor, Charles (1985) Philosophical Papers, 2 vols. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
11. Rawls, John (1971) A Theory of Justice. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
12. Nozick, Robert (1974) Anarchy, State, and Utopia. New York: Basic.
13. Dworkin, Ronald (1977) Taking Rights Seriously. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
14. Ackerman, Bruce (1980) Social Justice in the Liberal State. New Haven, CT: Yale Umversity Press.
15. Mulhall, Stephen and Adam Swift (1996) Liberals and Communitarians, 2nd edn. Oxford: Blackwell.
16. Caney, Simon (1992) 'Liberalism and communitarianism: a misconceived debate'. Political Studies, 40 (June): 273-89.
17. Rawls, John (1993) Political Liberalism. New York: Columbia University Press.
18. Kymlicka, Will (1989) Liberalism, Community, and Culture. Oxford: Clarendon.
19. Dworkin, Ronald (1986) Law's Empire. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
20. Dworkin, Ronald (1992) 'Liberal community'. In S. Avinerl and A. de-Shalit, eds, ommunitarianism and Individualism. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
21. Gewirth, Alan (1996) The Community of Rights. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
22. Mason, Andrew (2000) Community, Solidarity, and Belonging: Levels of Community and Their Normative Significance. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
23. Gutmann, Amy (1992) 'Communitarian critics of liberalism'. In S. Avineri and A. de-Shalit, eds, Communitarianism and Individualism. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
24. Friedman, Marilyn (1992) 'Feminism and modern friendship: dislocating the community'. In S. Avineri and A. de-Shalit, eds, Communitarianism and Individualism. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Dagger, Richard 2004. „Communitarianism and Republicanism“. In: Gaus, Gerald F. & Kukathas, Chandran 2004. Handbook of Political Theory. SAGE Publications


Gaus I
Gerald F. Gaus
Chandran Kukathas
Handbook of Political Theory London 2004
Egalitarianism Miller Gaus I 417
Egalitarianism/Miller/Weinstein: Miller would resist being characterized as an egalitarian liberal; he would view this label as conflating 'simple' distributive equality with the 'complex' market socialist equality he favours.* The former stipulates that people should be equal with regard to some X and thus limits debates about equality to disputes about 'equality of what?
Walzer: Following Michael Walzer, complex equality is not about distributing some X. Rather it is a 'social ideal' about how we should treat each other as equals.
Miller: But Miller remains an egalitarian liberal nevertheless: 'An egalitarian society must be one which recognizes a number of distinct goods', ensuring that each 'is distributed according to its own proper criterion [desert, need and equality]'. As long as no distributive sphere dominates others, complex equality is secured. The real 'enemy of equality is dominance' which must be politically regulated (1995(1): 203). And dominance is nefarious because it is so harmful to individual self-development.
Cf. >Self-realization/Hobhouse.
Tradition: Miller readily concedes that his political theory draws on two political traditions: 'distributive equality from the tradition of liberalism, social equality from social democracy and socialism' (1999: 244). Consequently, Miller is a true heir to the new liberals. Equally for them, no justice principle is sovereign. Equality and need temper desert qua individual choice and responsibility, allowing all citizens real equal opportunity to develop their talents according to their own lights.
MillerVsDworkin/MillerVsSen: (...) Dworkin's and Sen's versions are egalitarian in what Miller pejoratively labels the 'simple' sense. Whereas Dworkin prefers equalizing resources, Sen prefers equalizing capabilities.
>Life/Dworkin.

* For Miller, there is 'no profound antagonism between meritocracy' and a suitably regulated market because the more egalitarian a market economy is, the more likely it allocates rewards according to merit (1999(2): 179). Also see Miller's defence of market socialism in Market, State and Community (1989)(3) and Cohen (1995(4): ch. I l) for a critical response.

1. Miller, David (1995) 'Complex equality'. In David Miller and Michael Walzer, eds, Pluralism, Justice and Equality. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 197-225.
2. Miller, David (1999) Social Justice. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
3. Miller, David (1989) Market, State and Community. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
4. Cohen, G. A. (1995) Self-Ownership, Freedom and Equality. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Weinstein, David 2004. „English Political Theory in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Century“. In: Gaus, Gerald F. & Kukathas, Chandran 2004. Handbook of Political Theory. SAGE Publications


Gaus I
Gerald F. Gaus
Chandran Kukathas
Handbook of Political Theory London 2004
Law Hart Brocker I 594
Law/Hart: Hart's new definition of the legal concept (Hart 2011) (1) was influenced by Wittgenstein's later philosophy of language: Hart shares with all other positivists the belief that law is a conventional standard order: it is not the content but the institutional 'family tree' of a norm that shows whether it belongs to law. Problem: the right to normative validity should also be covered.
Solution/Hart: Construction from the participant's perspective: a two-tier system of rules.
Rules/Hart: give addressees justifying reasons for action. Their actual validity depends on whether a sufficient number regard them as internally binding.
a) Rules that limit our freedom of action
Brocker I 595
b) Rules that deal with rules of the first kind: how can legal rules be created, amended and invalidated? Example "rule of recognition": Whether a rule belongs to the law depends on it. It allows us to distinguish valid from invalid legal norms. However, it itself has no normative basis. It stands and falls with the recognition of the community. It follows that law and morality form two independent systems of norms. A principle of moral only becomes part of positive law through an ultimately conventional rule of recognition.
For DworkinVsHart seeLaw/Dworkin.
Brocker I 598
Hart's rule model follows an idea of strong judicial discretion. For Hart, the law always has an "open structure". (2) In "hard cases", according to Hart, judges must even use extra-judicial measures to justify their judgments. DworkinVsHart: that makes judges substitute legislators. They are thus competing with Parliament. Democratic-theoretical reasons speak against the idea of strong judicial discretion.
Solution/Dworkin: interpretation model of law.
>Interpretation/Dworkin.
Brocker I 600
HartVsDworkin: Hart can show that his rule term is actually wider than that of Dworkin, thus there is also room for Dworkin's so-called objectives and principles - which Dworkin later admits. (3) Moral/Hart: Hart allows the possibility that moral arguments decide what applies legally. However, they cannot play this internal legal role simply because of its possible substantive correctness. They can only play it as far as the conventional rule of recognition provides for it. (4) The law can include moral content, but does not have to.
DworkinVsHart: for Dworkin, to be and to shall play with necessity in the interpretation of the law, because according to Dworkin the law is continuously interpretative, i.e. has to get along without a conventionalist anchor point.

1. Hart, H. L. A., Der Begriff des Rechts. Mit einem Postskriptum von 1994 und einem Nachwort von Christoph Möllers, Berlin 2011.
2. Ebenda S. 150-152.
3. Ronald Dworkin, Taking Rights Seriously, Cambridge, Mass. 1977 (erw. Ausgabe 1978). Dt.: Ronald Dworkin, Bürgerrechte ernstgenommen, Frankfurt/M. 1990, S. 111-119. 4. Coleman, Jules L., »The Rights and Wrongs of Taking Rights Seriously«, in: Faculty Scholarship Series, Paper 4204, 1978, S. 897.

Bernd Ladwig, „Ronald Dworkin, Bürgerrechte ernstgenommen“ in: Manfred Brocker (Hg.) Geschichte des politischen Denkens. Das 20. Jahrhundert. Frankfurt/M. 2018


Brocker I
Manfred Brocker
Geschichte des politischen Denkens. Das 20. Jahrhundert Frankfurt/M. 2018
Legal Positivism Dworkin Brocker I 594
Legal Positivism/DworkinVsLegal Positivism/DworkinVsUtilitarianism/Dworkin:[Legal] positivists and utilitarians are united by their opposition to the idea of natural, morally predetermined rights for the state. Positivists reject them because they attribute all normative facts of the law to social facts such as legislation and judicial further training in law. Utilitarians deny them because their last criterion is the social (overall) benefit. Against both perspectives, Dworkin wants to defend a law-based theory to which his book title refers.
Brocker I 596
Legal Positivism/DworkinVsPositivism/DworkinVsHart, L. H. A.: Dworkin rejects a system of rules like Hart's: see Rules/Hart, Law/Hart: instead, one must distinguish between law and principles. ((s) Thus Dworkin is influenced by Kant). Rules are either valid or not - however, principles can collide without at least one of them having to be invalid. Principles/Dworkin: have a certain weight and indicate in which direction arguments point. (1)
Brocker I 599
DworkinVsPositivism: no description of law is possible that does not include judgmental judgements. For illustration, Dworkin introduces the character of the talented judge Hercules, who knows all the important institutional facts of law and its history, as well as all principles and goals. This allows him to make an accurate assessment of the law in an overall context. Justification/Dworkin: thesis: the justification of law in a matter of best available arguments is substantial in nature. Dworkin therefore sees no problem in the fact that his ideal judge is an isolated hero who apparently interprets the law monologically.
VsDworkin: siehe Michelman 1986 (2), 76; Habermas 1994 (3).
Jurisdiction/Dworkin: Responsible judges, according to Dworkin, do not succumb to the temptation to seek reasons and points of view outside the law just because so far no article of the constitution, no legal text and no explicit judgment provide authoritative information on a difficult case.
Brocker I 600
Legal PositivismVsDworkin: a positivist could argue that Dworkin only wants the American legal system to appear in the most positive light possible, but his approach is unsuitable for giving general assessments of legal systems, such as today's Iranian legal system. Dworkin's approach is unsuitable because it already presupposes that a legal system must embody rational contents such as the idea of individual rights
Brocker I 601
against the state. However, this is not a conceptual characteristic of law, but a fragile and in fact not generally recognised achievement of legal history.

1. Ronald Dworkin, Taking Rights Seriously, Cambridge, Mass. 1977 (erw. Ausgabe 1978). Dt.: Ronald Dworkin, Bürgerrechte ernstgenommen, Frankfurt/M. 1990, S. 58-64
2. Michelman, Frank I., »The Supreme Court 1985 Term – Foreword. Traces of Self-Government«, in: Harvard Law Review 100/1, 1986, 4-77.
3. Habermas, Jürgen, Faktizität und Geltung. Beiträge zur Diskurstheorie des Rechts und des demokratischen Rechtsstaats, Frankfurt/M. 1994, S. 272-276.


Bernd Ladwig, „Ronald Dworkin, Bürgerrechte ernstgenommen“ in: Manfred Brocker (Hg.) Geschichte des politischen Denkens. Das 20. Jahrhundert. Frankfurt/M. 2018

Dworkin I
Ronald Dworkin
Taking Rights Seriously Cambridge, MA 1978


Brocker I
Manfred Brocker
Geschichte des politischen Denkens. Das 20. Jahrhundert Frankfurt/M. 2018
Principles Dworkin Brocker I 596
Principles/Dworkin: Rules are either valid or not valid - however, principles can collide without at least one of them having to be invalid. Principles/Dworkin: have a certain weight and indicate in which direction arguments point.(1)
Moral content comes into law in the form of principles. (2) Morally meaningful constitutional concepts such as "equality" or "human dignity", however, are general and substantially controversial. We do not have unanimously accepted criteria for their correct or incorrect use.
Brocker I 599/600
DworkinVsHart: while Hart insists on the conventional nature of law (see Law/Hart), Dworkin refers to principles. See Legal Positivism/Dworkin. HartVsDworkin see Law/Hart.
Brocker I 601
Principles/Dworkin: For Dworkin there is a close connection between principles and rights: The valid claims of individuals emerge from principles (3). They limit the possibility for the state to violate individual interests in the name of collective objectives. While collective objectives are aggregative, rights are distributive: They protect individuals with regard to fundamental and central interests.
Brocker I 595
Utilitarianism/Principles/DworkinVsUtilitarianism/Dworkin: Arguments of principles express the moral claims to validity that play a role in law. From them
Brocker I 596
individual rights emerge that outdo collective goals in conflict situations; this thesis points to Dworkin's normative confrontation with utilitarianism. (4)
1. Ronald Dworkin, Taking Rights Seriously, Cambridge, Mass. 1977 (erw. Ausgabe 1978). Dt.: Ronald Dworkin, Bürgerrechte ernstgenommen, Frankfurt/M. 1990, S. 58-64
2. Ibid. p. 304
3. Ibid. p. 146
4. Ibid. p. 56f.
Bernd Ladwig, „Ronald Dworkin, Bürgerrechte ernstgenommen“ in: Manfred Brocker (Hg.) Geschichte des politischen Denkens. Das 20. Jahrhundert. Frankfurt/M. 2018

Dworkin I
Ronald Dworkin
Taking Rights Seriously Cambridge, MA 1978


Brocker I
Manfred Brocker
Geschichte des politischen Denkens. Das 20. Jahrhundert Frankfurt/M. 2018
Rights Dworkin Brocker I 597
Rights/Dworkin: Thesis: The rights are not something finished that we would discover. Rather, we win them by means of an argumentative mediation and linkage of as many of our central beliefs as possible. Dworkin calls this "constructive interpretation". (1) Interpretation/Dworkin: does not deal with moral rights; these form a background on which courts have to decide on the existence of concrete institutional rights.
Legal Rights/Dworkin: are creatures of both history and morality. (2)
StavropoulosVsDworkin: this gives the impression of a hybrid ((s) two-part) theory in which the principles are responsible for the moral, positivism for the historical part. (3) Problem: the two ends of the legal justification would then be unconnected.
DworkinVsVs: it is about a rational reconstruction of law as a whole. (Dworkin 1986) (1).
Brocker I 601
Rights/Individuals/Dworkin: Rights always protect the individual with reference to fundamental and central interests. Dworkin does not mean to say that all rights absolutely apply as well as the prohibition of torture. The fundamental point is again a logical one: rights only play their own normative role if they outdo collective goals in cases of conflict. Otherwise, any justification could be directly related to the objective (4). Similarly, rights would be meaningless if they never authorized individuals to break the law. Also formally correctly created,
Brocker I 602
indeed even legal norms confirmed by the supreme court could nevertheless be wrong, because they violate individual rights. See Civil Disobedience, see Civil Rights/Dworkin. This means, however, that civil rights activists do not necessarily have to invoke reasons of conscience in order to break the law. They can argue that the rules they violate are actually illegal because they violate existing rights (5).

1. Ronald Dworkin, Law’s Empire, Cambridge, Mass./London 1986.
2. Ronald Dworkin, Taking Rights Seriously, Cambridge, Mass. 1977 (erw. Ausgabe 1978). Dt.: Ronald Dworkin, Bürgerrechte ernstgenommen, Frankfurt/M. 1990, S. 153
3. Stavropoulos, Nicos, »Legal Interpretivism«, in: Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2014, 〈https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/law-interpretivist/〉, letzter Zugriff 16. 02. 2017.
4. Dworkin 1990, S. 161f.
5. Ibid. p. 349-352.
Bernd Ladwig, „Ronald Dworkin, Bürgerrechte ernstgenommen“ in: Manfred Brocker (Hg.) Geschichte des politischen Denkens. Das 20. Jahrhundert. Frankfurt/M. 2018

Dworkin I
Ronald Dworkin
Taking Rights Seriously Cambridge, MA 1978


Brocker I
Manfred Brocker
Geschichte des politischen Denkens. Das 20. Jahrhundert Frankfurt/M. 2018
Utilitarianism Dworkin Brocker I 601
Utilitarianism/Rights/Dworkin: for utilitarianism, maximizing the overall well-being is the central objective. Rights, for example in the form of ownership guarantees, can also benefit the overall welfare. It can never be ruled out that sacrificing fundamental individual interests of individuals or groups could increase the overall benefit. >Rights.
DworkinVsUtilitarianism: Rights always protect the individual with reference to fundamental and central interests. Dworkin does not mean to say that all rights absolutely apply as well as the prohibition of torture. The fundamental point is again a logical one: rights only play their own normative role if they outdo collective goals in cases of conflict. Otherwise, any justification could be directly related to the objective (1).
DworkinVsUtilitarianism: central objection: Utilitarianism can also take external preferences "impartially" into account such as discrimination against dark-skinned. (2)
Problem: The purely aggregative ((s) summing up) thought of the best possible satisfaction of all possible preferences of all possible people knows no distinction between relevant and irrelevant, acceptable and unacceptable preferences.
>Relevance, >Acceptability.
PerfectionismVsDworkin: there are many kinds of external preferences that should be exempted from Dworkin's criticism: For example, external preferences such as taking sides with members of disadvantaged groups to which you yourself do not belong.(3)
>Perfectionism.
Brocker I 605
LadwigVsDworkin: Dworkin, when he wrote the essays gathered in Civil Rights taken seriously, still believed he could draft an ethically completely neutral theory of rights and justice (so also Dworkin 1985 (4)). >Civil rights.
This may explain his strange assumption that the logical distinction between personal and external preferences is sufficient for criticism of utilitarianism, regardless of their content.
DworkinVsDworkin: In later writings (Dworkin 1990b (5); 2011 (6)), however, Dworkin professes an ethical basis of his liberalism. The organizing idea behind his ever-increasing attempts to recognize unity in the world of values is now dignity.
>Liberalism.

1. Ronald Dworkin, Taking Rights Seriously, Cambridge, Mass. 1977 (erw. Ausgabe 1978). Dt.: Ronald Dworkin, Bürgerrechte ernstgenommen, Frankfurt/M. 1990, p. 161f.
2. Ibid. p. 382-385
3. Cf. Coleman, Jules L., »The Rights and Wrongs of Taking Rights Seriously«, in: Faculty Scholarship Series, Paper 4204, 1978, p. 916f. 4. Ronald Dworkin, , A Matter of Principle, Oxford 1985.
5. Ronald Dworkin. »Foundations of Liberal Equality«, in: The Tanner Lectures on Human Values, XI, Salt Lake City 1990 (b), 1-191.
6. Ronald Dworkin, Sovereign Virtue. The Theory and Practice of Equality, Cambridge, Mass./London 2002.

Bernd Ladwig, „Ronald Dworkin, Bürgerrechte ernstgenommen“ in: Manfred Brocker (Hg.) Geschichte des politischen Denkens. Das 20. Jahrhundert. Frankfurt/M. 2018

Dworkin I
Ronald Dworkin
Taking Rights Seriously Cambridge, MA 1978


Brocker I
Manfred Brocker
Geschichte des politischen Denkens. Das 20. Jahrhundert Frankfurt/M. 2018


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