John Rawls and Isaiah Berlin...

would approve of Barack Obama.

As I was listening to Obama's commencement speech at Notre Dame and his comments on abortion, I was momentarily brought back to my philosophizing college days. So I dug in the archives and looked up some old essays that I had read by John Rawls and Isaiah Berlin. Here are some quotes that I've culled for your (my) reading pleasure:

The concept of justice is independent from and prior to the concept of goodness in the sense that its principles limit the conceptions of the good which are permissible. A just basic structure and its background institutions establish a framework within which permissible conceptions can be advanced...Other things equal, a conception [of justice] will be more or less stable depending on how far the conditions to which it leads support comprehensive religious, philosophical, and moral doctrines which can constitute a stable overlapping consensus...It suffices to remark that in a society marked by deep divisions between opposing and incommensurable conceptions of the good, justice as fairness enables us to at least conceive how social unity can be both possible and stable. (Rawls, Justice as Fairness: Political not Metaphysical)

Principles are not less sacred because their duration cannot be guaranteed. Indeed, the very desire for guarantees that our values are eternal and secure in some objective heaven is perhaps only a craving for the certainties of childhood or the absolute values of our primitive past. "To realize the relative validity of one's convictions," said an admirable writer of our time (Joseph Schumpeter), "and yet stand for them unflinchingly is what distinguishes a civilized man from a barbarian." To demand more than this is perhaps a deep and incurable metaphysical need; but to allow such a need to determine one's practice is a symptom of an equally deep, and more dangerous, moral and political immaturity. (Berlin, Two Concepts of Liberty)

As a philosophical stance, liberalism is surely not unproblematic. However, the idea of an "overlapping consensus," the need to identify common ground in a pluralistic world and move productively forward from it, at least gives liberals in the United States a starting point when talking about "moral issues."

Dreams from My Father

I am a bit of a late-comer to the book, but I just finished it and am very glad I took the time to read it. It is very well written in my opinion, in terms of both its prose and its construction. Barack Obama writes about the various figures in his life with great empathy and does a good job preserving narrative momentum throughout.

In hero-journey fashion, the book begins with news of the loss of a father and concludes with a reconciliation of sorts. At once familiar and novel, the book achieves its resonance primarily through the strength of its archetype. And as an archetype in its broadest terms, Obama's story is truly one in which we can all inscribe our own anxieties, fears and dreams.

I run in circles that typically gush with Obama love, so I am sure that my praise will sound trite. Nonetheless, here I go. What really impresses me is Obama's strength, his willingness to probe at difficult questions that are sure not to yield easy or particularly palatable answers. In an exchange between Obama and his half-brother, Mark, who is also of mixed race, I am struck by the possibility of an alternative path, of it all being otherwise:

"Understand, I'm not ashamed of being half Kenyan. I just don't ask myself a lot of questions about what it all means. About who I really am." [Mark] shrugged. "I don't know. Maybe I should. I can acknowledge the possibility that if I looked more carefully at myself, I would..."
For the briefest moment I sensed Mark hesitate, like a rock climber losing his footing. Then, almost immediately, he regained his composure and waved for the check.
"Who knows? he said. "What's certain is that I don't need the stress. life's hard enough without all that excess baggage." (344)

What Mark regards as superfluous stress, "excess baggage," Obama considers the core of his existence. It is so easy to leave difficult questions for another day, to sweep inconvenient histories aside. Plenty of people choose to put on willful blinders and maybe it is easier that way to get by. But Obama refuses such easy answers, looks incessantly at the facts of his life that are most difficult to digest, and for this, I admire him greatly.