Joseph Raz (Columbia) postou o artigo A Hedgehog's Unity of Value na SSRN. No trabalho, Raz analisa a tese da "unidade dos valores" apresentada e defendida no último grande trabalho de Ronald Dworkin (Justice for Hedgehogs). Segundo a tese assomadamente de inspiração platônica, as diferentes demandas da justiça, da moralidade e da ética individual são passíveis de conciliação racional. Isto é, uma vida justa ou correta é equivalente a uma vida feliz no plano individual (ainda que, por vezes, tenhamos que pagar um preço alto por ações virtuosas) visto que ambos os valores formam uma unidade intrínseca. Na célebre formulação de Gregory Vlastos: "justice pays at the end"...
- Raz: "A Hedgehog's Unity of Value"
Abstract:
Dworkin was nothing if not an inventive and innovative theorist. While like all of
us deeply embedded in his time and the ideas of his time, he was carving his views out
of his own imaginative resources, to an ever growing degree free from the need to
grapple, in his own contributions, with the conventional paradigms set by others, and at
the same time, in his critical commentaries on events and ideas, dissecting the
presuppositions, ideas and writings and exposing the fallacies of opponents. As is to be expected, some ideas, or perhaps it is better to call them intellectual
tendencies, marked, often dominated, the movement of thought in much of his writings.
One dominant trend is the striving towards unity. And Unity is my topic today, or more
specifically the unity of value in Dworkin’s Justice for Hedgehogs. I will reflect on some of
the many things he writes when dealing with that theme. My main aim is to clarify his
view about the unity of value. In doing that I will meander in different directions, trying
out some interpretations before turning to others. In other words, I will try to interpret
his views in ways that will turn out not to fit them. In part to show that the interpretations do not fit, and in part to see how closely his views resemble them even
so. I hope that by the end of this journey we will better understand his view about the
unity of value.
One general caveat before we start: While drawing distinctions between values, virtues,
reasons, rights, duties, etc. where appropriate, Dworkin also uses ‘value’ in a more
indiscriminate, all encompassing way. Its scope is similar to what other writers regard as
the domain of the evaluative or normative or their combination. The unity of value is
about value in that broad sense, and I will use it in that sense in this paper, namely use
the term to refer to reasons, norms, virtues etc. as well as to values in the narrower sense.
