The Anti-Jewish Roots of John Rawls’s Political Philosophy

Long before he became one of the most influential liberal theorists of the 20th century, John Rawls was an aspiring Episcopal priest, writing an undergraduate thesis on sin, grace, and salvation. Eric Nelson demonstrates that the arguments in that thesis are recapitulated, in secularized form, in Rawls’s major philosophical work, A Theory of Justice—written after Rawls had cast aside his Christian faith. In the earlier work, Rawls rejects the supposition that righteous deeds can ever merit divine rewards; in the later, that hard work and ingenuity can ever merit earthly rewards.

In the thesis, Nelson explains, Rawls draws on traditional Christian arguments against what was known as the Pelagian heresy:

Human suffering, [according to the Pelagians], is the result of the free choice of free men, and, precisely because it is always in our power to merit God’s favor by doing right, we cannot deny that God justly punishes us when we sin. . . . Pelagianism was always regarded [in the early church] as a “Judaizing” or “Hebraizing” doctrine. Its enemies saw in it the sin of “pride”—the prideful insistence of the “chosen people” that one can follow God’s law and earn election without Christological intercession.

Borrowing Karl Marx’s terminology from [his notoriously anti-Semitic essay] On the Jewish Question—[Rawls] developed the argument of his source in a highly original direction. . . . It was the apostle Paul, Rawls explained, who first recognized “how easily legal righteousness comes to be infected by pride. He knew that the best efforts in Judaism were so corrupted—not the worst, but the best.”

There can be little doubt that Rawls’s attack on Pelagianism . . . reflects an encounter with Marx’s essay. The primary target is . . . “the barrier of the bargain basis,” or “the bargain scheme of redemption,” a term that does not appear in any of the neo-Orthodox or Lutheran sources with which the thesis engages [but does reflect Marx’s characterization of the essence of Judaism as bargaining]. Rawls likewise follows Marx in insisting that this mentality “manifests itself in the barrier of legalism in religion and in contract theories in politics.”

“Legalism” and “legal righteousness,” Nelson notes, can here be read as shorthand for Judaism. He goes on to argue that the major differences between Rawls and the theologians on whom he draws can be traced to the influence of “On the Jewish Question.” And that’s not all:

For Rawls, the “Jewish pride” that Paul rejected [in the Epistle to the Romans] was in fact Pelagianism. The “boastful self-confidence” of the Jew arises from his conviction that he can fulfill the law and be “immaculate by the standard of legal righteousness.” Rawls’s crucial claim is that “the best efforts in Judaism were so corrupted—not the worst, but the best”—that is, even when Judaism avoids the snare of national chauvinism, . . . it cannot free itself from the delusion of merit and desert. The conclusion is straightforward: “Man cannot allow any merit for himself. If Pelagianism is marked by a lack of faith, it is also condemned by its pride.”

Read more at Tablet

More about: Anti-Semitism, Karl Marx, Liberalism, Paul of Tarsus, Political philosophy, Theology

It’s Time for Haredi Jews to Become Part of Israel’s Story

Unless the Supreme Court grants an extension from a recent ruling, on Monday the Israeli government will be required to withhold state funds from all yeshivas whose students don’t enlist in the IDF. The issue of draft exemptions for Haredim was already becoming more contentious than ever last year; it grew even more urgent after the beginning of the war, as the army for the first time in decades found itself suffering from a manpower crunch. Yehoshua Pfeffer, a haredi rabbi and writer, argues that haredi opposition to army service has become entirely disconnected from its original rationale:

The old imperative of “those outside of full-time Torah study must go to the army” was all but forgotten. . . . The fact that we do not enlist, all of us, regardless of how deeply we might be immersed in the sea of Torah, brings the wrath of Israeli society upon us, gives a bad name to all of haredi society, and desecrates the Name of Heaven. It might still bring harsh decrees upon the yeshiva world. It is time for us to engage in damage limitation.

In Pfeffer’s analysis, today’s haredi leaders, by declaring that they will fight the draft tooth and nail, are violating the explicit teachings of the very rabbis who created and supported the exemptions. He finds the current attempts by haredi publications to justify the status quo not only unconvincing but insincere. At the heart of the matter, according to Pfeffer, is a lack of haredi identification with Israel as a whole, a lack of feeling that the Israeli story is also the haredi story:

Today, it is high time we changed our tune. The new response to the demand for enlistment needs to state, first and foremost to ourselves, that this is our story. On the one hand, it is crucial to maintain and even strengthen our isolation from secular values and culture. . . . On the other hand, this cultural isolationism must not create alienation from our shared story with our fellow brethren living in the Holy Land. Participation in the army is one crucial element of this belonging.

Read more at Tzarich Iyun

More about: Haredim, IDF, Israeli society