On Justice and Charity
Justice requires we repay our debts whenever possible. If I borrow your lawnmower, I canât just keep it. If I find your wallet somewhere, I have to return it.
Thereâs not a lot of room for excuses. It doesnât matter if I want to keep your wallet. It doesnât matter if I didnât ask to find your wallet. It doesnât matter if somebody else stole your wallet and gave it to me. It doesnât even matter if I think I can legally get away with keeping your wallet. And you definitely canât be willfully ignorant about whether the wallet, by rights, is somebody elseâs who probably wants it back. (I earned this!) I have to return your wallet, unless I want to be a failure as a human being.
The only real exception is if Iâm literally starvingâand maybe then we have to do what we have to do to survive. But even then, Iâve got a big debt to repay down the road.
Inheriting the fruit of a history of unjust conduct is a lot like finding a wallet. Itâs on you to make things right, even if you donât want to. (C.f. Failure as a Human Being, supra.)
I resist calling anti-poverty work âcharity.â It implies that we donât have an existing obligation, that the privileges I enjoy arenât a direct result of others being denied the same opportunities. Fixing injustice is not some optional, magnanimous thing. We donât return the lost wallet because weâre feeling exceptionally generous that day. Keeping the wallet was never a real option.
















