John Rawls the Theologian?!

All his life, John Rawls was interested in the question whether and to what extent human life is redeemable – whether it is possible for human beings, individually and collectively, to live so that their lives are worth living…So long as we are justifiably confident that a self-sustaining and just collective life among human beings is realistically possible, we may hope that we or others will someday, somewhere, achieve it – and can then also work towards this achievement. By modeling a realistic utopia as a final moral good for our collective life, political philosophy can provide an inspiration that can banish the dangers of resignation and cynicism and can enhance the value of our lives even today.

– Thomas Pogge, John Rawls: His Life and Theory of Justice (2007), pp. 26-27

Many Christians are particularly suspicious of politics. We hold that God is remaking this world, saving it, and so perhaps political work for progress is a way of not having faith to let God do his work. We believe that, in the words of one poet (let the reader understand), “there is a Kingdom and there is a King”, and it is not of this world, so perhaps working for any kind of here and now political improvement is pointless, or is not committing ourselves to the right type of task. Any talk of achieving utopia is certainly out. (For the record, I have reservations about all three sentences.)

What I like about this fairly gushy biographical remark from one of John Rawls’s students, Yale philosopher Thomas Pogge, is the way in which he characterizes the energy and motivation behind one of the Twentieth Century’s best political philosopher’s work. Inspiration and redemption. Rawls hoped that political philosophy could redeem human life, and could inspire activity towards that end. He hoped it could present people with a picture of how just, good and fulfilling life could be, and that this picture would inspire people to get involved in attempting to be agents of change for this in their communities, working against institutionalized injustice, evil and the damaging of human life.

Do you think those goals are too audacious for an activity like philosophizing about collective life to achieve? Do you think that Christianity could make exactly the same claim, perhaps an even stronger claim – to, in the words of Pogge, hold out that ‘human life is redeemable’, and to hold out an inspiring picture which banishes resignation and cynicism, and inspires people to get involved, to get on board, and ‘enhance the value of their life’?

It’s sometimes said that Christianity is outdated, irrelevant, or blind to the needs of contemporary society and modern life. The words in which Pogge summed up the project of the most celebrated political philosopher (at least in the anglo-phone world) of the Twentieth Century suggests otherwise to me.

What do you think?