Sovereign Virtue: The Theory and Practice of Equality (Hardcover)

by Ronald Dworkin (Author)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly
In this ambitious investigation into the very bedrock of a democratic society, Dworkin, one of our leading legal thinkers (he teaches at NYU), explores the "popular but mysterious political ideal" of equality, looking into its theoretical underpinnings and then showing how a proper conception of equality informs hot-button issues such as campaign finance reform, affirmative action and antisodomy laws. Dworkin (Freedom's Law) advocates a fundamental "equality of resources," arguing that government must provide a form of material equality for everyone. In probing this proposition, he rejects conservative and paternalistic notions of democracy, advocating an "ethical individualism" that makes it government's obligation to treat the life of each person as having great and equal importance. Many of the questions Dworkin raises are of grave concern for America as it faces a new century: What form of democracy is most appropriate to an egalitarian society? How much should a nation like ours spend on its citizens' health? What are the ethical implications of genetic engineering? While in places his abstract discussions of liberty and democracy can be slow going, Dworkin also offers refreshingly pointed commentary on the 1996 Welfare Reform Act ("a plain defeat for social justice"), America's lack of national health-care coverage (a "national disgrace") and other important issues. Two chapters on affirmative action, in which Dworkin argues that sketchy factual evidence about race-based admissions has distorted the debate, are especially insightful. Whatever one's political convictions, it is difficult not to be moved by this book's final, forceful imperative that human lives be successful rather than wasted. (June)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
Drawing from his expertise as a philosopher and legal theorist, Dworkin (law and philosophy, NYU) discusses the ethical foundations of conflicting political ideologies and strives for a consensus that explains human behavior. Central to this notion is the Aristotelian concept of akrasia (literally, "lack of self-control," this term has come to mean, among other things, "acting against one's considered judgment"), which he explicates thoroughly as he relates it to issues confronting contemporary politicians. As Dworkin sees it, the magnanimity of virtue imbues the political mind with an enlightened form of self-interest that has the potential to override immediate or corporeal self-interests of time, money, and labor. Dworkin frames this dichotomy in terms of a struggle between critical and volitional interests in which people actually spurn self-enhancing political concepts (such as a tax cut) in favor of more altruistic objectives. He concludes by noting that as human beings suppress their individual volitional interests, society will witness an increasing level of attention to the critical interests of humankind as a whole. Highly recommended for academic libraries.DPhilip Y. Blue, New York State Supreme Court Criminal Branch Law Lib., New York
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 511 pages
• Publisher: Harvard University Press (May 26, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0674002199
• ISBN-13: 978-0674002197
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.3 x 1.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.2 out of 5 stars See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #826,306 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Impossibly Interesting, February 23, 2001

By	Panopticonman "panopticonman" (Brooklyn, NY USA) - See all my reviews

If you're willing to expend the energy on Dworkin's dense, abstract prose in the first section, you'll be rewarded in the second section wherein he applies his abstractions to tough issues like national healthcare, and genetic manipulation. Dworkin sometimes sounds like an insurance analyst -- he tends to think in terms of spreading risk across populations. He also likes to build models to help conceptualize the distribution of risk and reward in society. These models, fully understood, provide a means of gauging all kinds of propositions: propositions about genetic experimentation, economic inequality, healthcare, to name just a few that he covers in the second section. The problem is that it takes a long time for Dworkin to set up these models that one begins to lose sight of just why such a conceptual tool might be worthwhile (for instance, a desert island where everyone arrives on an equal footing and the auction that ensues to distribute resources equally according to preference.) At the same time, there is something heartening about Dworkin's insistence that rationality can prevail, that reasonable people can agree on certain basic assumptions about the importance of public goods and ways in which these goods might be attained. One wants to believe that this is the case, in spite of considerable evidence to the contrary, especially in our current political discourse, so polarized as not to admit any room for the intrusion of reason. A noble try, really. Overall, a tough book, but a rewarding one.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A Legal theory of Everything, October 9, 2008

By	Harry Melkonian (Sydney, Australia) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Sovereign Virtue: The Theory and Practice of Equality (Paperback)

Just as physicists search for the unifying theory of particle physics and the universe, Professor Dworkin here presents a theory that unifies the sometimes conflicting aspirations of liberty and equality. As usual, his work is not only replete with insights but is frequently extremely profound - especially when he explains what should have been obvious to us but has somehow eluded our vision. Dworkin explains how liberty should not compromise equality without in turn compromising liberty itself. He gives us a new tool for evaluating the merits of changes in the law. As a lawyer and educator, I find this to be a very readable and noteworthy contribution to legal philosophy.

13 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars an ingenious argument for a subtle conception of liberal equ, April 20, 2001

By	The Independent Review, Winter 2001 (Oakland, CA) - See all my reviews

With Sovereign Virtue, Ronald Dworkin finally presents his political theory in a form convenient for the general reader, stripped of the specialized arguments about jurisprudence on which he has built his reputation. The issue in Sovereign Virtue is not how judges should decide cases, but what kind of equality between individuals government should secure and maintain. For Dworkin, liberal egalitarianism strives to make the effects of personal choice dominate over those of individual luck. "When and how far is it right that individuals bear disadvantages or misfortunes of their own situations themselves, and when is it right, on the contrary, that others-the other members of the community in which they live, for example-relieve them from or mitigate the consequences of these disadvantages?" (p. 287). His answer is that "individuals should be relieved of consequential responsibility for those unfortunate features of their situation that are brute bad luck, but not from those that should be seen as flowing from their own choices" (p. 287). In this way, Dworkin claims to strike the right balance between collective and personal responsibility...

...if one makes it past the many pedantic issues Dworkin raises, one will finally come to the provocative, practical nub of his political theory: the distinction between fair and unfair differences in wealth. All philosopher's puzzles aside, Sovereign Virtue calls for a continuous redistribution of wealth much more massive than what is effected now. Dworkin gives no concrete figures, but he believes that "the wealth of everyone in a fair society would be much closer to the average than is true in America now: the great extremes between rich and poor that mark our economic life now would have largely disappeared" (p. 312). Only such a very large redistribution, he contends, would render persons tolerably equal in the extent to which their fates are determined by things beyond their control, but would also leave each person's fate sensitive to the choices he actually makes. Dworkin also argues for a universal health-care system, a more generous welfare scheme, greater regulations on campaign expenditures and contributions, and race-sensitive admissions policies. But all of these positions, with the possible exception of the last, issue directly from the fundamental inequity Dworkin sees in the free-market distribution of wealth...

...Are the advantages accruing to lucky owners of "wealth-talent" any different in principle from the advantages conferred by very selective universities to the lucky owners of the endowment of being black? As F. A. Hayek once noted, the free market does not recognize merit or desert in any objective sense, but simply the value others place on one's capacities or services. "Our problem is whether it is desirable that people should enjoy advantages in proportion to the benefits which their fellows derive from their activities or whether the distribution of these advantages should be based on other men's views of their merits" (Friedrich A. Hayek, The Constitution of Liberty [Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1960], p. 94). But this problem is exactly the same as the one regarding university admissions, as Dworkin frames it...

...Sovereign Virtue, in general, contains an ingenious argument for a subtle conception of liberal equality, worked out over the course of a prodigious career. There are many impressive parts to Dworkin's argument that I have not mentioned for lack of space. Still, that argument is marked by several fundamental inconsistencies. Why should certain people enjoy the unmerited privilege of a rare and prestigious university education, but no one enjoy unmerited wealth? Why shouldn't entrepreneurial capitalists enjoy the equal benefit of Dworkin's liberal neutrality toward "life plans"? And why should inequalities of political influence receive more lax treatment under Dworkin's egalitarian principle than inequalities of wealth? Until Dworkin explains how these positions issue from consistent principle, we must consider his political theory a work of extraordinarily articulate prejudice.