The challenge of R. Dworkin’s practical philosophy: the problem of a grounding of morality

Dissertation analyses Ronald Dworkin’s position that morality is an independent department of thought and knowledge and his thesis that every attempt to ground morality should be internal to morality and consist of evaluative judgments that do not need any help from morally external theoretical or empirical domains. It is argued that this autonomy is linked to the first-person perspective of a moral subject and opposes a dominating tendency in contemporary moral philosophy to approach morality from an external, Archimedean, third-person perspective, which interprets and studies morality as an external object or phenomenon. Dissertation argues that, despite Dworkin’s critique for an external approach to morality, his conception of a position that would be internal to morality and to the perspective of a moral subject is not sufficiently explicated to achieve his aim of an autonomous non-objectified conception of morality. It also argues that this challenge can be overcome by invoking a concept of a person. It is shown that this concept helps to articulate and explicate an approach that would be internal to morality and avoids difficulties that troubled Dworkin’s position. It also shows that, despite of Dworkin’s contrary belief, the question of the grounding of morality can be raised and answered from a position that is itself internal to morality and the perspective of a moral subject