Ronald Dworkin Book order

A forceful and landmark defence of individual rights, Taking Rights Seriously is one of the most important political philosophical works of the last 50 years.

In his final work, Dworkin explores profound questions about religion, the role of God, and the concepts of death and immortality, delving into the essence of these timeless themes.

The fox knows many things, the Greeks said, but the hedgehog knows one big thing. In his most comprehensive work, Ronald Dworkin argues that value in all its forms is one big thing: that what truth is, life means, morality requires, and justice demands are different aspects of the same large question. He develops original theories on a great variety of issues very rarely considered in the same book: moral skepticism, literary, artistic, and historical interpretation, free will, ancient moral theory, being good and living well, liberty, equality, and law among many other topics. What we think about any one of these must stand up, eventually, to any argument we find compelling about the rest. Skepticism in all its forms—philosophical, cynical, or post-modern—threatens that unity. The Galilean revolution once made the theological world of value safe for science. But the new republic gradually became a new empire: the modern philosophers inflated the methods of physics into a totalitarian theory of everything. They invaded and occupied all the honorifics—reality, truth, fact, ground, meaning, knowledge, and being—and dictated the terms on which other bodies of thought might aspire to them, and skepticism has been the inevitable result. We need a new revolution. We must make the world of science safe for value.

How should a judge's moral convictions bear on his judgments about what the law is? This book presents a collection of essays that focus on the roles of justice in law.

Politics in America are more polarized and trivialized than ever, with fierce battles between the right and left resembling contact sports. This deeply depressing political culture, as noted by Ronald Dworkin, is ill-equipped to tackle social justice or emerging threats like terrorism. Yet, can hope for change emerge? Dworkin, a prominent legal and political philosopher, identifies core principles of personal and political morality that can unite citizens. He argues that recognizing these shared principles can foster substantial political discourse and replace contempt with mutual respect, enabling democracy's full promise to be realized. The two core principles he emphasizes are: first, the intrinsic and equal value of each human life; and second, the inalienable personal responsibility of individuals to identify and realize value in their lives. Dworkin explores the implications of these principles for human rights, the role of religion in public life, economic justice, and the essence of democracy. He posits that liberal conclusions naturally arise from these principles, which challenge the goals of religious conservatives and current tax and social policies, as well as aspects of the War on Terror. Ultimately, Dworkin aims to persuade Americans across the political spectrum—and citizens of similar cultures worldwide—that they can and must defend their convictions through their interpretations of these shared values.

Dworkin argues that equality, freedom, and individual responsibility are not in conflict, but flow from and into one another as facets of the same humanist conception of life and politics. He applies his principles to contemporary controversies such as the distribution of health care, affirmative action, assisted suicide, and genetic engineering.

Law's Empire provides a judicious and coherent introduction to the place of law in our lives.

This is a book about the interplay of urgent political issues and hotly debated questions of moral philosophy. The controversies it joins are old; but history has given them fresh shape. Dworkin addresses questions about the Anglo-American legal system as protector of individual rights and as machinery for furthering the common good.