Sublime

Rawls’s Two Principles of Justice First principle: Each person has an equal claim to a fully adequate scheme of equal basic rights and liberties, which scheme is compatible with the same scheme for all; and in this scheme the equal political liberties, and only those liberties, are to be guaranteed their fair value.

Ceux qui refusent de réagir de manière adéquate pour protéger leur territoire risquent autant de se faire exploiter que ceux qui ne peuvent se défendre pour des raisons d’incapacité ou de déséquilibre flagrant des forces en présence.

If we understand ourselves as free and independent selves, unbound by moral ties we haven’t chosen, we can’t make sense of a range of moral and political obligations that we commonly recognize, even prize. These include obligations of solidarity and loyalty, historic memory and religious faith—moral claims that arise from the communities and tradit

By the measure of the theory of honour, only God could pay it off himself. But it isn’t God who owes it, so who is to pay it off, and to whom? That’s the human predicament.

Liberalism is an ideology that contains seven political concepts that interact at its core: liberty, rationality, individuality, progress, sociability, the general interest, and limited and accountable power.

For Hoffer, “True loyalty between individuals is possible only in a loose and relatively free society.” And this is true on a smaller scale and in less extreme situations as well. The genuine community is open to thinking and questioning, so long as those thoughts and questions come from people of goodwill.*5

Second principle: Social and economic inequalities are to satisfy two conditions: first, they are to be attached to positions and offices open to all under conditions of fair equality of opportunity; and second, they are to be to the greatest benefit of the least advantaged members of society, consistent with the just savings principle.

One other oddly big thing happened to Sam at the beginning of his junior year. Completely out of the blue, a twenty-five-year-old lecturer in philosophy at Oxford University named Will Crouch* reached out and asked to meet with him. Sam never learned how the guy had found him—probably from the writing Sam had been doing on various utilitarian messa