Reflection: What Do We Owe Each Other?

Prompts to consider

• Rawls''s difference principle says that economic inequalities are just only if they benefit the least advantaged members of society as much as possible. Think about the economic inequalities that exist in your own society. Do they satisfy this condition? And notice what your answer reveals about your deeper moral commitments: do you find the difference principle too demanding (requiring a level of redistribution that violates legitimate claims of the talented and successful), about right (reflecting a genuine commitment to the situation of the worst-off), or not demanding enough (since the difference principle permits large inequalities as long as they marginally benefit the least advantaged)?
• Rawls argues that the original position, by stripping away knowledge of our particular social position, models the requirement of impartiality in justice. Try to apply the veil of ignorance to a specific policy debate you have a view on: immigration, educational funding, healthcare distribution, criminal justice reform. Behind the veil, not knowing whether you would be a citizen or an immigrant, a wealthy taxpayer or a poor recipient, a crime victim or a convicted offender, would you choose the same policy you currently favor? If your view changes behind the veil, what does that tell you about the role of self-interest in your current political commitments?
• Rawls''s *Political Liberalism* argues that in a pluralist democracy, citizens owe each other justifications for political power that do not depend on any particular comprehensive doctrine. Think about your own deepest political commitments. Are they grounded in a comprehensive doctrine (religious, philosophical, or ideological) that not all of your fellow citizens share? And if they are, does Rawls''s public reason constraint ask you to translate those commitments into a publicly accessible language, or does it ask you to bracket them entirely? Is the distinction between translating and bracketing a genuine and practical one, or does the demand for public reason effectively ask citizens with deep comprehensive commitments to leave their most fundamental convictions at the door of the political sphere?