eShop USA > Books > Sovereign Virtue: The Theory and Practice of Equality
Sovereign Virtue: The Theory and Practice of Equality
List Price: $22.00Our Price: $19.80 You Save: $2.20 (10%)Prices subject to change.
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Save $10.00 when you spend $50.00 or more on qualifying items offered by Amazon.com. Enter code BMLSAVES at checkout.
Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 150
EAN: 9780674008106
ISBN: 0674008103
Label: Harvard University Press
Manufacturer: Harvard University Press
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 528
Publication Date: March 01, 2002
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Studio: Harvard University Press
Related Items: Featured Listmania!
Editorial Review: Equality is the endangered species of political ideals. Even left-of-center politicians reject equality as an ideal: government must combat poverty, they say, but need not strive that its citizens be equal in any dimension. In his new book Ronald Dworkin insists, to the contrary, that equality is the indispensable virtue of democratic sovereignty. A legitimate government must treat all its citizens as equals, that is, with equal respect and concern, and, since the economic distribution that any society achieves is mainly the consequence of its system of law and policy, that requirement imposes serious egalitarian constraints on that distribution. What distribution of a nation's wealth is demanded by equal concern for all? Dworkin draws upon two fundamental humanist principles--first, it is of equal objective importance that all human lives flourish, and second, each person is responsible for defining and achieving the flourishing of his or her own life--to ground his well-known thesis that true equality means equality in the value of the resources that each person commands, not in the success he or she achieves. Equality, freedom, and individual responsibility are therefore not in conflict, but flow from and into one another as facets of the same humanist conception of life and politics. Since no abstract political theory can be understood except in the context of actual and complex political issues, Dworkin develops his thesis by applying it to heated contemporary controversies about the distribution of health care, unemployment benefits, campaign finance reform, affirmative action, assisted suicide, and genetic engineering.
(20010426)
Customer Reviews
Average Rating: 
Rating: - A Theory - And a Theory Only
I have for some time trying to find a good book speaking the liberal cause, as the few books I have read in this area were full of rhetoric while scant in logic - this in comparison with many serious thinkers and writers in the libertarian and conservative bent. I had high hopes on this book.
Professor Dworkin is no doubt a serious thinker and a very good writer. However, I am disappointed in his book. His theory in equality is well written but not well reasoned. It seems that the professor ... Read More
Rating:  - Lazy Scholarship
Ron Dworkin doesn't work through his views very well if this book is characteristic of his thinking. In the first few chapters, he builds an imaginary world in which the government confiscates (read taxation)all resources in the nation and auctions them off evenly among the population. But auctions are just the beginning of his idealistic approach to political philosophy.
True, this portion of the book is theory, but his theories are fantasies. They're not realistic at all.
The ... Read More
Rating:  - an ingenious argument for a subtle conception of liberal equ
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 ... Read More
Rating: - Impossibly Interesting
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 ... Read More
Related Categories:
| |
 |
