Taking as his battling protagonists the archetypal liberal, cosmopolitan, and Ivy League-educated Jew “Heidi” and the traditionalist, European-born, Holocaust survivor “Shimen,” Moshe Koppel contrasts their views on the role of state and community. Heidi believes the state, not the community, should be responsible for the social welfare of its citizens, but ought not legislate moral behavior. But she is equally uncomfortable with communities like Shimen’s that enforce moral norms by consensus. She defends her position by an appeal to the philosophy of John Rawls, who argued that people make the best political decisions when they remove themselves from any of their individual characteristics. Thus Rawls imagines that the best society would be one crafted by a group of people who do not know what their race, gender, social position, or communal affiliation might be:
[S]ince, [in the hypothetical scenario Rawls employs], people don’t know anything about their prior moral affiliations and commitments, they’d all agree that the state should not impose any particular community’s definition of what constitutes morality. In fact, “comprehensive doctrines”—Rawls’s fancy way of referring to religion—are to be banned from public discourse as grounds for promoting policy. . . .
Teasing out the assumptions that underlie Rawls’s thought experiment gives away the game. How would I wish to organize society after I peeled away my affiliations, loyalties, and beliefs and everything else that makes me me? The question hardly seems coherent. . . . Rawls and Heidi simply assume that there is some “unencumbered self,” as [the philosopher] Michael Sandel puts it, independent of and prior to the affiliations that constitute my identity, and that we can somehow imagine all of these unencumbered selves organizing themselves politically.
Rawls’s thought experiment resonates more with Heidi than it does with Shimen; it seems that in real life Shimen and Heidi are not equally encumbered. Shimen’s life is defined by his identification with a specific people committed to the perpetuation and development of a specific culture. . . . What would Shimen want if he were not a Jew? For him, it’s not a meaningful question.
On the other hand, banning “comprehensive doctrines” from public discourse doesn’t cost Heidi a thing. While Shimen wants freedom to participate in a specific communal project that connects the past with the future and that gives his life meaning and purpose, Heidi wants freedom from such projects. Heidi’s aspiration for freedom for herself and for others is understandable and worthy, but the struggle for freedom from, that isn’t primarily a struggle for freedom to, generates a lot of negative energy. Instead of giving moral communities space to flourish, as the Rawlsian model would seem to suggest, Heidi does subtle combat with them.
Read more on Judaism without Apologies: https://moshekoppel.wordpress.com/2017/12/03/unencumbered-heidi/