For some time it has been
fashionable to deride the supposed flabbiness of liberal man. His political commitments, it is supposed,
fall out of convenience and self-interest rather than reflection and principled
argument. Phil Ochs captured this mood of scepticism with characteristic bitter
humour when he described liberals as the “shadiest” of “the varying shades of [American] political
opinion” – “ an outspoken group on many subjects; ten degrees to the left of
centre in good times,” and “ ten degrees to the right of centre if it affects
them personally.”

It is time, then, for liberals either to own up to their narcissism or
to demonstrate that their position is motivated by a genuine concern for the
commonweal. Some libertarian texts have cheerfully embraced the former strategy
while Ronald Dworkin’s new book, Sovereign Virtue, offers substantial
cause for thinking the latter course the better one.

Dworkin is chiefly known as a legal theorist, and though this text
contains fascinating reflections on the comportment of the courts (he examines
decisions concerning euthanasia, assisted suicide, affirmative action, and
sexual independence), Sovereign Virtue principally is an exercise in
political philosophy. The first two
chapters of the book consist in a painstaking effort to defend a conception of
justice in distribution which is, to use Dworkin’s terminology, both
“choice-sensitive” and “circumstance-insensitive.” He foregrounds the fact that even in a fictionally simplified
society (of the sort that economists devise) a scrupulously fair initial
distribution inevitably will result in inequities. Some citizens are more industrious or prudent than their
neighbours, and many of us think that these are virtues that ought to be
rewarded. Their greater returns may be
cause for rivalry or, if we are petty, for resentment, but not for
redistribution. However, differences
owing to naturally occurring disparities in talent, health, and disability
strain our intuitions. How are we to
treat the suspect virtue of lady luck?
She is notoriously partial and capricious, and we are powerless to halt
the unequal distribution of her favours.
Moreover, although we are sometimes able to minimise their impact, it is
far from clear that we should attempt to do so. One way of framing the problem might be to suggest that the
egalitarian theorist wants to penalise those with good fortune by making them
bear the costs of their neighbours’ disappointments.

The appeal of Dworkin’s solution is that it offers a principled basis
for distinguishing between those cases when the state ought to correct for
Fate’s interventions and when it ought not do so. A concrete example may make this clearer. Dworkin supposes that most of us would want
to be able to count on some substantial measure of state support should we find
ourselves burdened with a disability, particularly one which would make
participation in the workforce impossible.
To test that intuition he asks us to imagine a hypothetical insurance market
that allows us to bid, as in an auction, on a share of our society’s
resources. He asks us to assume an
equal initial distribution of wealth, and an equal ignorance of our present and
future health status. We are awarded
100 clamshells each, and with these we are afforded an opportunity to purchase
insurance coverage against imagined disabilities. (Of course, other variables will enter our deliberations as
well. We will want to weigh our worries
about illness alongside other concerns.
We might, for example, decide to insulate ourselves from shortfalls in
intellect or charm as well. After all,
these variables also can have a great influence on the quality of our
lives.) Dworkin maintains that our tax
system ought to effect a distribution very much like the one that would fall
out of our collective choices at auction.

For those attracted to liberal political theory the appeal of the
hypothetical auction is obvious. One
needn’t feel too guilty about enjoying the fruits of one’s labour, provided the
needs and preferences of others are on an equal footing. Few would argue that this is currently the
case in America, Dworkin least of all, but this imaginary insurance scheme does
offer a starting point for efforts at reform.
Details are sketchy, as is the case with any highly theoretical account,
but we can feel confident, for example, that current levels of state support
for the disabled would fail to meet this liberal-egalitarian challenge.

The insight which motivates this methodology, is quintessentially Dworkinian;
that is, the idea that the principles of equality and liberty needn’t be
in tension with one another. A certain
measure of choice (including the liberty to make poor decisions) is essential
if a society is to respect the equality of its citizens. To return to the terminology introduced
earlier, a liberal society will be “circumstance insensitive” but “choice sensitive.” It will compensate for the sorts of
disadvantages which are owing to matters beyond our control (for example, our
health status, intellectual capacity, talents or lack thereof), but will not
force a re-distribution to correct for differences in ambition, industry,
prudence or risk-taking behaviour.

Dworkin opens his new book with the claim that the sovereign virtue
of political leadership is an equal
concern for the fate of all of its citizens.
He has long maintained that this ideal is best respected in a liberal
community, and this work gives those who have followed the progress of his
thought further reason for thinking that this is the case. Many will be interested to see how he
tackles controversial substantive issues he hasn’t addressed before (including
cloning and genetic testing) and will be inclined to test his intuitions
against their own. What is most
exciting about his approach, however, is his ability to apply principles to
cases – to justify and illustrate the nature of the values lying at the core of
liberal commitment. Sovereign Virtue
reaffirms the fact that Dworkin’s liberalism is a muscular version, quite
unlike the flabby caricature drawn by his conservative critics. It is far from agnostic about value, rather
it draws its strength from a core value, what Dworkin long ago described
as “equality of concern and respect.”

© 2003 Ann
Heesters

Ann Heesters is a doctoral candidate in the philosophy programme at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario. Although she specialises in legal theory, she also works in applied ethics and is currently serving as the clinical ethics intern for Hamilton Health Sciences.

Categories: Philosophical, Ethics