Jesus summarized all of the law and the prophets with the commandment that we are to love God and to love our neighbor as ourselves.
When a lawyer asked him to be more specifi c - “Who is my neighbor?” - Jesus told the story of the Good Samaritan, a story about a heretic foreigner who spent his time and money to help an unknown person hurt by the side of the road. Jesus’ point - your neighbor is whoever is needy. Love your neighbor as yourself.
American philosopher John Rawls (1921-2002) created a theory of justice that seems to model the teachings of Jesus. He tried to imagine how a society might create a fair and just system for our collective life.
Rawls devised a thought experiment. Imagine that you do not know what your circumstances willbe. You do not know what family you will be born into - your race or wealth or opportunities; your neighborhood or health or talents; your parents’ education or their stability.
If you didn’t know what advantages or disadvantages you would inherit, how would you develop laws and economic principles to create a just and fair society?
Rawls said that fi rst and foremost you would want a society with basic freedoms and liberties - freedom of speech, conscience, free association and religion.
“Each person has an equalclaim to a fully adequate scheme of equal basic rights and liberties,” Rawls asserts.
But what are we to say and do about inequalities?
Life is not fair. We don’t all start from the same place.
Some are born into great privilege. Others begin with daunting disadvantages.
Rawls justifi ed inequalities in distribution of income and opportunity as long as they are based on factors that are not arbitrary from a moral point of view. A free market system is fairer than a caste system, for instance.
The free market is even fairer if it simultaneously corrects for social and economic disadvantage, providing equal educational opportunities and other structures to allow everyone, regardless of class or family background, to start at the same starting point.
“Only if everyone begins at the same starting line can it be said that the winnersof the race deserve their rewards,” writes Michael Sandel, who explains Rawls’ philosophy, among others, in his Harvard ethics class that goes viral on YouTube.
If the starting point is equal and the field is fl at for all, let those who work hard and who use and develop their talents enjoy their prosperity. But, Rawls insisted, we are all in this together. The winnings of the successful and prosperous do not belong to them alone, but should be shared with those who lack similar gifts.
How does he justify that? In part, by the moral assertion that we are all neighbors. But also, because even success in a particular society has a moral arbitrariness. Diff erent societies value diff erent things. The Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court earns $223,500 a year; TV’s Judge Judy earned $45 million in 2010. Sheis not more virtuous or deserving than the Chief Justice. She’s lucky. She lives in a society that rewards TV stars. She would not be so prosperous in a warrior society, for instance.
Do not imagine you are more virtuous or deserving just because you happen to live in a society that rewards your particular gifts. We share in each other’s fates.
If I am privileged in this time and place to be lucky by accidents of nature and environment, then it is good for me to be humble enough about that to desire an increase in privilege and opportunity for those who are not as lucky as I am.
That’s the politics of the common good.
Jesus said something similar in his parable in Matthew 25, where he pictured the nations judged solely on the basis of their treatment of “the least of these.”
Rawls’ philosophy justifi esa progressive tax system, where tax rates increase as income increases, in order to invest in the infrastructure to create a more egalitarian society.
Professor Sandel imagines “public schools to which rich and poor alike would want to send their children;
public transportation systems reliable enough to attract upscale commuters;
and public health clinics, playgrounds, parks, recreation centers, libraries, and museums that would, ideally at least, draw people out of their gated communities into the common spaces of a shared democratic citizenship.” (Justice, p. 267)
Democracy thrives on community. Community is created when we love our neighbors as ourselves. We can do that.
LOWELL GRISHAM IS AN EPISCOPAL PRIEST WHO LIVES IN FAYETTEVILLE.
Opinion, Pages 15 on 02/26/2012