Summary of Justice for Hedgehogs: Keynote Address - Professor Ronald Dworkin

00:00:00 - 00:40:00

Professor Ronald Dworkin gives a keynote address on justice, discussing how it applies to different areas of life and how philosophers attempt to define it. He argues that claims of value are expressions of emotion or constructions of our personality, and that we need a more general theory of interpretation in order to understand them.

• 00:00:00 Professor Ronald Dworkin delivers a keynote address at the Justice for Hedgehogs conference, discussing the book's central argument that political morality must be based on the two principles of equal concern for the fate of every person and respect for the responsibility and right to make something of value out of one's life. This argument is then applied to questions of distributive justice, showing how they must be justified in terms of respecting the laws of the nation.
• 00:05:00 In this keynote address, Professor Ronald Dworkin provides a theory of justice that is based on the principle of respect for responsibility. He argues that market distributions do not inherently respect the responsibility of people to make something of their own lives, and that government should adopt a position that leads to great inequality in order to satisfy the desiderata of distributive justice. He describes an ideal state of affairs in which all resources are auctioned off, and people are free to make their own choices over risk.
• 00:10:00 The speaker explains how a theory of Liberty can help us understand how to protect our rights, including the right to freedom of speech and ethical independence. He argues that this theory is a buck passing theory, meaning that at each stage, we cannot isolate what Liberty requires from our conception of what democracy is, or what rights are rightfully ours. He also argues that taxation is not always justified, and can be justified in some cases on moral grounds.
• 00:15:00 Professor Ronald Dworkin delivers a keynote address on the theory of liberty, democracy, and equality. He distinguishes between three conceptions of democracy, and argues that the alleged conflict between these values disappears once we understand the place of law in a larger political morality.
• 00:20:00 In this keynote address, Professor Ronald Dworkin addresses the question of what it means to have a theory of justice or liberty. He distinguishes between interpretive and descriptive concepts, and explains that some concepts, such as justice and liberty, function as interpretive concepts in that we take them to describe values but we disagree about how those values should be expressed. This explains why different theories of constitutional law can still be considered genuine disagreements, despite their lack of shared criteria for application.
• 00:25:00 Professor Ronald Dworkin gives a keynote address on justice, discussing how it applies to different areas of life and how philosophers attempt to define it. He argues that claims of value are expressions of emotion or constructions of our personality, and that we need a more general theory of interpretation in order to understand them. He also discusses how claims of value are related to politics and how we cannot effectively govern ourselves without having a true understanding of what is justice.
• 00:30:00 In this speech, Professor Ronald Dworkin discusses the importance of morality, equality, and law, and how these concepts are interconnected. He also discusses a theory of responsibility, which he connects with a theory of interpretation. He then goes on to discuss personal morality, ethics, and political morality. He argues that interpretive reasoning is necessary to connect these areas of morality.
• 00:35:00 In his keynote address, Professor Ronald Dworkin discusses two principles of government - self-respect and the principle of living well. He argues that these principles are intrinsic to human morality, and that they provide the basis for a sound political morality. He returns to the Hedgehog analogy, explaining that, in spite of the inevitable challenges of politics, we can still live well by accepting our responsibility to ourselves and to one another.
• 00:40:00 Professor Ronald Dworkin delivers a keynote address on justice for hedgehogs, stressing the need for equal concern to be given to each individual in the political dimension.