Dignity and global duty

Boston University Law Review

Volumn 90, Issue 2, 2010, Pages 661-675

  Appiah, Kwame Anthony ^a  

^a PRINCETON UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 77954326038     PISSN: 00068047     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: None     Document Type: Conference Paper

References (64)

1. See, e.g., AYN RAND, What Is Capitalism, in CAPITALISM: THE UNKNOWN IDEAL 3, 3-27 (1966).
2. When these self-described realists are asked why, say, their parents are paying for them to go to college, they answer, cheerfully, that it gives the old ones pleasure; pleasure being one of the things it is in our interest to pursue.
3. JEREMY BENTHAM, AN INTRODUCTION TO THE PRINCIPLES OF MORALS AND LEGISLATION 11 n.a (J.H. Burns & H.L.A. Hart eds., Athlone Press 1970) (1789).
4. See PETER SINGER, THE EXPANDING CIRCLE: ETHICS AND SOCIOBIOLOGY 23-53 (1981).
5. RONALD DWORHN, JUSTICE FOR HEDGEHOGS (forthcoming 2010) (Apr. 17, 2009 manuscript, on file with the Boston University Law Review).
6. Id. (manuscript at 8).
7. Id.
8. Id. (manuscript at 122) (emphasis omitted).
9. Readers of Sovereign Virtue will recognize them as versions of two ideas Dworkin has offered before. RONALD DWORHN, SOVEREIGN VIRTUE 5 (2000).
10. DWORKIN, supra note 5 (manuscript at 128).
11. Id.
12. See DWORKIN, supra note 9, at 5.
13. DWORKIN, supra note 5 (manuscript at 128).
14. Id.
15. Steven Darwall, Two Kinds of Respect, 88 ETHICS 36, 38 (1977).
16. DWORKIN, supra note 5 (manuscript at 128).
17. Id. (manuscript at 11).
18. Id. (manuscript at 174).
19. 1\A) i=1 That is the expected ethical value of the act. If you pick the available act with the largest such expected value, you will have maximized the expected value of your life.
20. It may be better still if you go beyond the moral rules and do what is supererogatorily good for others. Doing what is required adds value to your life, failing to do it takes value away. Doing what is supererogatory adds value, even though not doing it does not take value away.
21. DWORKIN, supra note 5 (manuscript at 123).
22. See id.
23. On the basis, I suppose, of passages like this: "I should never act in such a way that I could not also will that my maxim should be a universal law." IMMANUEL KANT, FOUNDATIONS OF THE METAPHYSICS OF MORALS 21 (Robert Paul Wolf ed., Bobbs-Merrill 1969) (1785).
24. Say, for instance, abiding by a valid contract when changed circumstances have since made the terms unfavorable to you.
25. Dworkin also thinks that moral and ethical values are interconnected among people. What we owe to others - and thus what we must do to live well - is affected by what these others need to live well. See DWORHN, supra note 5 (manuscript at 259). But that idea can be accommodated on the simple view I have adumbrated, even though you have to be careful to avoid straightforward circularity. One easy way to do so would be to say that the value of X's life, independently of how X treats others, is what one considers in deciding how one should treat X, even though the value of X's life overall depends on how X treats others.
26. Id. (manuscript at 126).
27. I am not sure, given what Dworkin says, whether he thinks that the fact that the prince has done these immoral things detracts from the goodness of his life, though not in a way that undermines its overall excellence; or whether he thinks that the role of moral considerations in our lives has nothing to do with their contribution to the value of our lives; or whether he thinks that the value of a life has many incommensurable dimensions, and that the moral value of them is just one dimension.
28. DWORKIN, supra note 5 (manuscript at 126).
29. Id.
30. Id.
31. See id. (manuscript at 125-26).
32. Id. (manuscript at 124) (defining the "adverbial" view of the good life as focusing on the activity of a life, not its consequences).
33. Id. (manuscript at 174).
34. Id. (manuscript at 177).
35. See id. Dworkin actually says we need intervene only to make sure that a person can "pursue value."
36. Id. Given the context, though, I assume that being able to pursue value means being in a position to respond to the demands of the two principles.
37. PAUL COLUER, THE BOTTOM BILLION: WHY THE POOREST COUNTRIES ARE FAILING AND WHAT CAN BE DONE ABOUT IT 3 (2007);
38. JEFFREY SACHS, THE END OF POVERTY: ECONOMIC POSSIBIUTIES OF OUR TIME 290 (2005).
39. See supra note 35 and accompanying text.
40. See DWORHN, supra note 5 (manuscript at 184) ("Sometimes, when one swimmer is drowning and another can save him without losing much ground in the race, the latter does have a duty to cross lanes to help.... But each person may concentrate on swimming his own race without concern for the fact that if he wins another person must therefore lose.").
41. Id. (manuscript at 177).
42. Id. (manuscript at 178).
43. Id.
44. Id. (manuscript at 179).
45. Id. (manuscript at 176).
46. Id. (manuscript at 181).
47. See id. (manuscript at 64-119).
48. See supra Part IV.
49. DWORKIN, supra note 5 (manuscript at 178).
50. See id. (manuscript at 177).
51. BIBB LÁTANÉ & JOHN M DARLEY, THE UNRESPONSIVE BYSTANDER: WHY DOESN'T HE HELP? 37-42 (1970).
52. Martin Gansburg, Thirty-Eight Who Saw Murder Didn't Call the Police, N.Y. TIMES, Mar. 27, 1964, at Al.
53. DWORHN, supra note 5 (manuscript at 203).
54. Id. (manuscript at 199).
55. Id.
56. See supra Part IV.
57. DWORKIN, supra note 5 (manuscript at 199).
58. Id.
59. See supra Part V.
60. DWORKIN, supra note 5 (manuscript at 200).
61. Id.
62. Id. (manuscript at 199-202).
63. Id. (manuscript at 194).
64. See KANT, supra note 23, at 21.