Hedgehogs and Justice, Coffee Faeries and Chocolate

Visited Dean E., on Saturday evening, a local genius when it comes to law and politics. In a carousing evening of wine followed by scotch, eventually ventured home with a copy of Roland Dworkin's Justice for Hedgehogs. The title is from the ancient Hellenic poet, Archilochus: "The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing". Dworkin attempts to establish, philosophically, the existence of objective morality and metaphysically independent value. In both these claims I do not think he is successful, however the political and legal conclusions he comes to are excellent, mapping an interdependence of liberty, democracy, and justice, concepts which are often considered at odds. In many ways the lengthy, readable, but not very dense text reminds me of John Rawls' A Theory of Justice. Just as Rawls could have saved himself many chapters of mental gymnastics of ethically grounded notions of redistributed wealth by reviewing the political economy of natural resources (e.g., David Ricardo, Henry George), so too Roland Dworkin could have saved himself a great deal of text struggling over trying to pin down an objective theory of morality and metaphysical value in favour of intersubjective universal morality (e.g., Jurgen Habermas, Karl-Otto Apel) with contemporary pragmatism.

Paula, the anarchist Magic Coffee Faerie (and convener of the Adelaide Isocracy Network), and partner Craig are visiting Melbourne. We caught up all too briefly today and, true to our shared interests, spent some time at the New Internationalist Bookshop, where we all accumulated a good swag (Paula is also celebrating her fortieth birthday, so she received hers gratis). This evening attended a chocolate appreciation night at Xocolatl, as part of the Kew Festival, and sampled such wares from Peru, Cuba, Madagascar, and Venezuela as part of the lecture. Informed the presenters of the health benefits of the emulsifier lecithin . True to gendered assumptions about such tastes, there were 26 women and 4 men in the audience; including - quite unexpectedly - one of caseopaya's former workmates.