"I describe a conception of law that takes it to be not a rival system of rules that might conflict with morality but as itself a branch of morality. It is necessary, to make that suggestion plausible, to emphasize what might be called procedural justice, the morality of fair governance as well as just outcome. It is also necessary to understand morality in general as having a tree structure: law is a branch of political morality, which is itself a branch of a more general personal morality, which is in turn a branch of a yet more general theory of what it is to live well".
DWORKIN, Ronald. Justice for Hedgehogs. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2011, p. 5.
Prossegue: "We cannot defend a theory of justice without defending, as part of the same enterprise, a theory of moral objectivity. It is irresponsible to try to do without such a theory".
ResponderExcluirDworkin sobre "Ethics", em momento inspirado:
ResponderExcluir"What is the character of a life well lived? I emphasize here and throughout the book the disctinction between ethics, which is the study of how to live well, and morality, which is the study of how we must treat other people.
How, then, should we live? (...) We must treat the making of our lives as a challenge, one we can perform well or badly. We must recognize, as cardinal among our private interests, an ambition to make our lives good lives: authentic and worthy rather than mean or degrading. In particular we must cherish our dignity. The concept of dignity has become debased by flabby overuse in political rhetoric: every politician pays lip service to the idea, and almost every covenant of human rights gives it pride of place. But we need the idea, and the cognate idea of self-respect, if we are to make much sense of our situation and our ambitions. Each of us bursts with love of life and fear of death: we are alonea among animals conscious of that apparently absurd situation. The only value we can find in living in the foothills of death, as we do, is adverbial value. We must find the value of living - the meaning of life - in living well, just as we find value in loving or painting or writing or singing or diving well. There is no other enduring value or meaning is our lives, but that is value and meaning enough. In fact, it's wonderful."