From the issue dated December 13, 2002
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John Rawls, Friend and TeacherBy SAMUEL FREEMANThe philosopher John Rawls has died at 81. It's well known that he had an enormous influence on academic discussions of social, political, and economic justice: His 1971 book, A Theory of Justice, is widely recognized as the most significant work in political philosophy since J.S. Mill's 1869 On Liberty. So it's not surprising that, even in the short time since Rawls's death, we have already seen numerous tributes that focus on his formidable intellectual contributions. But I'd like to add some personal reflections. Rawls's lifelong interest in justice developed out of his early concern with the basically religious questions of why there is evil in the world and whether human existence is nonetheless redeemable. That concern, originating during World War II, while Rawls was first an undergraduate at Princeton and later a soldier in the Pacific, led him to inquire whether a just society is realistically possible. His life's work was aimed at discovering what justice requires of us, and then showing that it is within our human capacities to realize it. Rawls was born in Baltimore into a well-to-do family. His father was a prominent lawyer and his mother active in local politics. I was one of his Ph.D. students in the early 1980s, but was inspired by him even before we met. Upon reading A Theory of Justice after I was already a lawyer, I had decided to leave the law for graduate work in philosophy. I never dreamed, then, that I would have the great good fortune to study with Rawls, as well as to edit some of his work, much less to become his friend. Although I cannot be sure, I think Jack warmed to me because, like his father, I was from North Carolina; he felt at ease with a relaxed Southern manner and appreciated my friendly teasing. At the turn of the millennium, for example, the Modern Library ranked the top 100 nonfiction works in English in the 20th century. A Theory of Justice placed 28th, high for a philosophy book, but still bested by Russell and Whitehead's seminal work in logic, Principia Mathematica, ranked 23rd. "Jack, you should have worked harder," I joked, and he laughed heartily. Jack was a quiet, modest, and gentle man. He did not seek fame, and he did not enjoy the spotlight. A private person, he devoted himself to research and teaching, or to relaxing with his family and friends. He declined almost all requests for interviews and chose not to take an active role in public life. In part, that was because he felt uncomfortable speaking before strangers and large groups, and often stuttered in those settings. But he also believed that philosophers are almost always misunderstood when they address the public, and that, while political philosophy has considerable influence on people's lives, its effects are indirect, taking many years to become part of society's moral awareness. In 1999, Jack agreed to accept a National Humanities Medal from President Clinton, and also the University of Oxford's Rolf Schock Prize in Logic and Philosophy. Before those, he had regularly declined honors, because big prizes and awards made him uncomfortable. Knowing that, Mardy, his wife of 53 years, reports that when Jack was offered the Kyoto Prize, carrying $500,000, she declined on his behalf without even consulting him. When she told him, he said he might accept it, depending on the conditions. Upon learning, however, that those would require that he not only give three public lectures but also have lunch and dinner with the emperor of Japan, Jack reaffirmed the initial disclaimer. His daughter Liz said he was willing to do a lot of things, but not have lunch with the emperor. (Indeed, Jack regularly denounced the practice of royalty and the corrupting effects of privilege.) That explains his fondness for Abraham Lincoln. He admired Lincoln because he saw him as the president who most appreciated the moral equality of human beings, and because Lincoln was the rare statesman who did not compromise with evil. Jack frequently quoted Lincoln's assertion -- "If slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong" -- as the best example of a fixed moral conviction that anyone with a sense of justice must believe. The rightward drift of American politics distressed Jack. He said of Congress under Newt Gingrich's management, "They are destroying our democracy." He was appalled by the practice of allowing business lobbyists into committee meetings to help draft legislation. He condemned it, along with our system of corporate financing of political campaigns, as "selling the public trust." He judged the current administration and Congress by the same high standards. Jack was also a conscientious teacher. His lectures were carefully prepared and written out, and he continually revised them after reading the most recent scholarship and rethinking his positions. He made his lecture notes available to his students, acknowledging that he sometimes stuttered and was not sure that he could be understood. A better reason, surely, is that his lectures were very intense and hard to digest upon one hearing (or even two or three). Two of three volumes of those lecture notes are now available. Jack had initially resisted publication, but former students like Barbara Herman appealed to his sense of fairness by saying that, while his own students continued to benefit professionally from his teachings, others could not. He also resisted publishing his collected papers; he said he saw them as opportunities to experiment with ideas, which would later be revised or rejected in a book. When told that students and scholars were spending hours hunting down his many short essays, he agreed to issue one volume. Unlike that of most Anglo-American philosophers of his time, who emphasized the analysis of language, logic, and concepts, Rawls's work was systematic and driven by a comprehensive vision. For the most part, it was a dialogue with the great figures in modern moral and political philosophy -- the social-contractarians Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau; the utilitarians Hume, Mill, and Sidgwick; and the German idealists Kant, Hegel, and Marx. Indeed, not only in its structure but also in its prose, A Theory of Justice reads like the work of a 19th-century philosopher. (As his colleague and close friend Burton Dreben once said, it reads as if translated from German.) In all his works, Jack was very generous in citing others, even when they said little that had to do with his points. Only very rarely did he respond to critics (most notably to H.L.A. Hart, on liberty), and only then when he felt that their criticisms were serious and constructive. Most often, he thought his critics (who are legion) misunderstood him. While self-effacing in person and in print, Jack was also sparing in his praise. I think he probably believed what Hume said in criticizing Locke's social contract (though not in that particular instance): There is little ever new in philosophy, and that which is new is almost always wrong. It was not easy handing over one's work to Jack to read. Jack was, nevertheless, always supportive. He taught me and his other students to look behind the intricate or clever arguments that philosophers make, to see whether those thinkers are doing anything important. At the same time, he encouraged us to try to discover the best in positions we disagree with, and to respond to that. He often told us that we should assume that the philosophers we read "are at least as smart as you are, and that if you think of an objection, they probably have thought of it, too." He was a tall, lanky man, with piercing blue eyes. He had participated in sports at Princeton and was an excellent sailor. He exercised until well into his 70s, biking, jogging, hiking, and he took daily walks until a few days before his death. Popular legend -- and some obituaries -- to the contrary, he never played professional baseball. That rumor was fabricated by a master at Harvard's Leverett House after Jack had hit a number of home runs in an intramural softball game. The losing students were distressed at being humiliated by an aging professor, and the house master assuaged them with the story that Jack, a "ringer," had played for the Yankees. He had a taste for oatmeal cookies served with tea. Recently, I spent part of an afternoon with him when Mardy went out to play tennis. She left him a large cookie, which she felt was all he should have. As I got up to leave, he asked me to look through the kitchen cabinets for a bag of oatmeal cookies. Guiltily, I complied and left him the bag. The next afternoon, after I had eaten some cookies that she had set out, he asked me if I wanted more. I said that, good as they were, I had better not. He then called definitively, "Mardy, Sam wants another cookie, and I think I'll have another one, too." Jack had a mischievous streak. In mid-October, I drove out to his rambling house in Lexington, Mass., carrying the newly published The Cambridge Companion to Rawls, only the second time a volume in that wide-ranging series has been devoted to a living philosopher. (The volume on Jürgen Habermas is the other.) Many of Jack's students and friends had contributed articles. His portrait, on the cover, had been painted by his wife. He had objected vigorously to any picture, saying that he did not see why people cared what he looked like. Only when I told him that every single volume in the series had portraits did he cease protesting. He appreciated the book's tribute, saying, "It looks great, Sam." It was to be the last time I would see Jack. His wife called on Sunday, November 24, to tell me that he had died at 9:30 that morning, peacefully at home, of heart failure. He had his wits until the very end. He will be greatly missed. Samuel Freeman is a professor of philosophy and law at the University of Pennsylvania. He edited John Rawls's Collected Papers (Harvard University Press, 1999) and the forthcoming Lectures in the History of Political Philosophy. He also edited and contributed to The Cambridge Companion to Rawls (Cambridge University Press, 2002). http://chronicle.com Section: The Chronicle Review Volume 49, Issue 16, Page B12
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Copyright © 2002 by The Chronicle of Higher Education