Introduction

Introduction

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When John Rawls died in 2002, there was found among his files a short statement entitled “On My Religion,” the second of the two texts included in this volume. He had apparently written it in the 1990s, not for publication but perhaps for the interest of family and friends—though he did not distribute it. Rawls describes the history of his religious beliefs and attitudes toward religion, and refers to a period during his last two years as an undergraduate at Princeton (1941–42) when he “became deeply concerned with theology and its doctrines,” and considered attending a seminary to study for the Episcopal priesthood. But he decided to enlist in the army instead, “as so many of my friends and classmates were doing.” By June of 1945, he had abandoned his orthodox Christian beliefs. With characteristic tentativeness and a disclaimer of self-knowledge, Rawls speculates that his beliefs changed because of his experiences in the war and his reflections on the moral significance of the Holocaust. When he returned to Princeton in 1946, it was to pursue a doctorate in philosophy. Friends of Rawls knew that before the war he had considered the priesthood, but they did not know of any surviving writings that expressed his religious views from that period, and “On My Religion” does not mention any. Not long after Rawls’s death, however, Professor Eric Gregory of the Princeton religion department made the startling discovery that just such a document, the more substantial of the two texts included here, was on deposit in the Princeton library. A Brief Inquiry into the Meaning of Sin and Faith: An Interpretation Based on the Concept of Community is Rawls’s senior thesis, submitted to the philosophy department in December 1942, just before the accelerated completion of his bachelor’s degree. Gregory came upon it while idly browsing the catalogue for senior theses by famous Princeton graduates, but when he ordered a copy and read it, he immediately recognized its importance and decided to write about it. Gregory has discovered that the two readers of the thesis were Walter Stace and Theodore M. Greene, and that they gave it a grade of 98 out of 100. Rawls also thanks the Reformation historian E. Harris Harbison at one point in a footnote. But it has not been possible to identify Rawls’s adviser. (Stace was his adviser for the Ph.D. thesis.) In 2006 Gregory approached John Rawls’s widow, Margaret Rawls, with the suggestion that the thesis be published. This presented Mrs. Rawls and her fellow literary executor, T. M. Scanlon, with a difficult decision. Another copy of the thesis had remained in Rawls’s possession, the one he got back from the two faculty readers with their initialed comments in the margins. On deposit in the Rawls archive at the Harvard library, it had not yet attracted attention. Now copies were made and circulated to several friends and former students of Rawls. The period of Rawls’s final illness and the years since his death have seen the publication of several works brought to completion with the help of others, but they are all books to which he had given his approval. This was entirely different: a youthful work written under pressure of time to meet a college requirement, meant only for the eyes of two faculty members, and expressing views that he had long since abandoned. It seemed clear that Rawls had never imagined that the thesis might one day be published, and that if the question had been put to him, he would certainly have refused. That was a serious reason against publication, and in favor of leaving the thesis accessible only by the much more limited and cumbersome route of consultation through the Princeton and Harvard libraries. Another question was whether, apart from what Rawls would have wished, publishing the thesis would be a disservice to him, in light of its unevenness and occasional lack of polish. While there was some difference of opinion over how much weight should be given to the generally acknowledged hypothetical truth that Rawls would not, if asked, have consented to its publication, it seemed significantly less than the decisive weight owed to an actual refusal of consent. And this made it necessary for us to consider more directly whether publication would be consistent with our obligations of loyalty to Rawls and our respect for his memory. A favorable answer to this question comes from the character of the thesis itself. To read it is a moving experience: the thesis is an extraordinary work for a 21-year-old, animated by youthful passion and powerful ethical conviction, often vividly expressed, and informed by erudition and deep philosophical reflection. Though the quality is not uniform (Chapters Two and Three are weaker than the rest), the intellectual force and the moral and spiritual motivation that made Rawls who he is are already there. The thesis was written in the middle of the war that Rawls was about to join as a combatant, and this somber background is palpable through his reflections on Fascism and Nazism. Given the estimable intellectual and personal qualities the thesis displays, making it more widely available cannot be regarded as a disservice to his memory. If publication is not on balance contrary to Rawls’s interest, then it can be justified if it benefits a wider public, and that seems clearly true. Apart from its purely biographical importance, the thesis is a remarkable resource for understanding the development of his thought. Although it can in no sense be presented as a publication of John Rawls, it seems permissible to bring it out as a publication by others of an important piece of writing by John Rawls—comparable to the publication of letters by a writer that shed light on his published work. An alternative was to make the thesis available on the Harvard philosophy department website, but it seemed preferable to bring it out in book form, together with “On My Religion,” and to include some commentary both on its relation to Rawls’s later work and, more important, on its theological content and background. The latter is the particular concern of Robert Adams’s essay in this volume. After extended deliberation the literary executors concluded that publication was warranted, and Harvard University Press accepted the proposal. This book is the result.

Source Publication

John Rawls, A Brief Inquiry into the Meaning of Sin and Faith: With "On My Religion"

Source Editors/Authors

Thomas Nagel

Publication Date

2009

Introduction

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