Between unity and incommensurability: Dworkin and Raz on moral and ethical values

Abstract

ABSTRACT Dworkin and Raz reject moral skepticism and offer holistic and non-derivative defenses of the objectivity of value. Furthermore, they acknowledge a role for social practices in the explanation of the emergence and interpretation of values. I discuss here two theses that have an important impact in ethics and morality. First, Dworkin's unity of value; second, Raz's claim that there is room for incommensurability in our rational actions. One may think that if we accept these two theses a dilemma will appear: We need unity to interpret values, but incommensurability leads to pluralism and fragmentation. Is this a real dilemma? Is there a way to get around it? I argue that although there is a tension between these ideas, this tension is not a reason for worry in the realm of personal ethics. It becomes problematic when it comes to interpersonal morality, but even in that domain it does not affect the core of our moral system if two conditions are satisfied: first, if incommensurability (in the domain of interpersonal morality) appears in rare or exceptional cases; second, if we read the thesis of the unity of value more like a methodological assumption than like an ontological claim.