Is moral reasoning conceptual interpretation?

Boston University Law Review

Volumn 90, Issue 2, 2010, Pages 535-550

  Fallon Jr , Richard H ^a  

^a HARVARD LAW SCHOOL   (United States)

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 77954343693     PISSN: 00068047     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: None     Document Type: Conference Paper

References (53)

1. See RONALD DWORKIN, JUSTICE FOR HEDGEHOGS (forthcoming 2010) (Apr. 17, 2009 manuscript at 101, on file with the Boston University Law Review) (emphasis added).
2. Id. (manuscript at 7).
3. Id.
4. Id. (manuscript at 76).
5. See id. (manuscript at 7) ("[T]he fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing.").
6. See, e.g., id. (manuscript at 79, 99).
7. See id. (manuscript at 98).
8. See id. (manuscript at 99-100).
9. Id. (manuscript at 9).
10. See id. (manuscript at 19).
11. See id.
12. See id. ("Our moral convictions can finally be sustained or challenged only by other convictions and arguments drawn on that dimension.").
13. See, e.g., id. (manuscript at 79) ("Historians interpret events and epochs, psychoanalysts dreams, sociologists and anthropologists societies and cultures, lawyers documents, critics poems, plays and pictures, priests and rabbis sacred texts.").
14. Id. (manuscript at 83-84).
15. See id. (manuscript at 82) (describing the difficulty of explaining one's own interpretation of a poem or a piece of music, yet observing that "the distinctive truth-seeking and argumentative phenomenology of interpretation survives").
16. See id. (manuscript at 68) ("Conceptual analysis of an interpretive concept is therefore itself an exercise in moral theory. The concept of a moral principle or ideal is an interpretive concept").
17. Id. (manuscript at 101).
18. Id.
19. See id. (manuscript at 86, 99).
20. Id. (manuscript at 65).
21. Id. (manuscript at 66)
22. Id.
23. Dworkin discusses a similar case in Justice for Hedgehogs. Id. (manuscript at 179).
24. Id. (manuscript at 180-82) (discussing a quandary wherein all three passengers are strangers, as well as a scenario in which the single passenger is the rescuer's wife).
25. Dworkin suggests a similar case when he alludes to the plausibility of the claim that values conflict: There is no reason to think, certainly not in advance of a great deal of reflection, that values are always nicely knit together in the mutually accommodating way that hedgehogs imagine. On the contrary, it seems more plausible that values conflict - as they certainly seem to do, for instance, when it would be an act of kindness to tell someone a lie or when the police can save some people from a terrible death only by torturing other people. Id. (manuscript at 9).
26. Id. (manuscript at 101).
27. Id. (manuscript at 114).
28. See, e.g., id. (manuscript at 37-40, 66, 170).
29. JOHN RAWLS, A THEORY OF JUSTICE 18 (rev. ed. 1999) ("It is an equilibrium because at last our principles and judgments coincide; and it is reflective since we know to what principles our judgments conform and the premises of their derivation.").
30. DWORKIN, supra note 1 (manuscript at 101).
31. See id. (manuscript at 181).
32. Dworkin also pursues a conceptual equilibrium approach to moral reasoning in arguing that there is no conflict among liberty, democracy, and equality when these concepts are examined jointly and cast in the best light. Id (manuscript at 220). When we consider liberty, democracy, and equality against the even deeper background values or principles that these concepts serve, we should, he argues, reject any interpretation that would put democracy at odds with liberty. Id. Similarly, we should reject any conception of liberty that would result in the conclusion that well-functioning democracies regularly deprive their citizens of liberty. See id.
33. Id. (manuscript at 112) ("We need some way of describing truth that is generous enough to include both interpretive and empirical domains....").
34. Dworkin makes clear that there is a considerable gap between his account of moral reasoning and most people's actual thought processes with respect to moral issues. See id. (manuscript at 201). He says, for example, that he does not "intend an absurdity: that when a friend asks you for financial help and you are reluctant you ponder the underlying point of friendship to decide whether you must." Id. But he seems to suggest that your response to that friend will, and should, be informed by an interpretive understanding the concept of friendship. Id.
35. BERNARD WILLIAMS, MORAL LUCK 18 (1981).
36. See DWORKIN, supra note 1 (manuscript at 107).
37. Dworkin is quite clear that he intends his theory to apply as much to everyday, practical moral reasoning as to philosophers' systematic reflections. See id. (manuscript at 117) ("Since moral concepts are interpretive, both quotidian moral reasoning and high moral philosophy are interpretive exercises.").
38. See id. (manuscript at 10) ("[Wjhether or not our convictions are true, we are intellectually responsible in holding those convictions and morally responsibility [sic] in acting on them.").
39. See id. (manuscript at 71).
40. See generally, e.g., RONALD DWORKIN, SOVEREIGN VIRTUE (2000).
41. See DWORKIN, supra note 1 (manuscript at 7).
42. Id.
43. Id. (manuscript at 76-77).
44. See supra Part II.
45. See, e.g., DWORKIN, supra note 40, at 121, 182, 184-90.
46. See DWORKIN, supra note 1 (manuscript at 130) (distinguishing between "total freedom," which is not valuable as an end in itself, and negative liberty, which, when rightly understood, is).
47. Id. (manuscript at 116).
48. Although I am unsure whether Dworkin would agree or disagree with this particular judgment, he affirms very clearly that if I cannot help believing something "even after the most sustained reflection," then I must affirm my "undefeated conviction" and find an account of why I am justified in believing as I do: [I]n the end raw, undefeated conviction must play a decisive role in any honest search for an equilibrium epistemology; there may be propositions that we find we cannot but believe even after die most sustained reflection. Then we must not pretend not to believe them but must instead struggle to find an account of why we are justified, in spite of the difficulties, in believing what we do. Id. (manuscript at 40).
49. Some of Dworkin's other remarks reinforce my uncertainty. In one passage he writes: We must find convictions that we believe and that do fit. This is an interpretive process, as I said, because it seeks to understand each part and strand of value in the light of other strands and parts. Almost no one can manage this fully, and there is no guarantee that we will all be able, even together, to manage it even very well. Id. (manuscript at 77);
50. see also id. (manuscript at 240) ("A good government is democratic, just, and efficient, but these are not the same qualities and it is sometimes important to ask, for instance, whether some constitutional arrangement that is likely to make a community more just or efficient must nevertheless be resisted because it is undemocratic").
51. See id. (manuscript at 25) ("Perhaps it is neither true nor false that abortion is wicked or that the American Constitution condemns all racial preference or that Beethoven was a greater creative artist than Picasso. But if so, this is not because there can be no right answer to such questions for reasons prior or external to value, but because that is the right answer... as a matter of sound moral or legal or aesthetic judgment.").
52. See id. (manuscript at 37).
53. See supra note 5 and accompanying text.