Evan Rosa: For the Life of the World is a production of the Yale Center for Faith and Culture. For more information, visit faith.yale.edu.

John Hare: Dignity requires respect. Kant says we have to treat humanity and every person as an end in itself and not merely a means, and to treat humanity as an end in itself means to share that person's ends, to make those ends our own ends, our own purposes, our own goals, as far as we can. That's what respect requires.

And we haven't done that. 

Evan Rosa: This is for the life of the world, a podcast about seeking and living a life worthy of our humanity. I'm Evan Rosa, with the Yale center for Faith and Culture. 

In a June 25th opinion by David Brooks in the New York times, he counts five crises, really seismic shifts, whose collective weight is currently overwhelming America.

I bet you could name them even if you haven't read the article, but in order: there's 1) COVID-19 which increased by 45,000 cases during the last week. 2) A rapid education for white America, about the long historical oppression of black Americans. 3) Political realignment against the personality cult of Trump. 4) In Brooks's terms, quote "a quasi-religion called social justice is seeking control of America's cultural institutions." 5) Worries that we may be on the verge of an economic depression. You can find a link to that op-ed in the show notes, but the collective overwhelm can easily leave a person feeling numb, angry, confused, or with a feeling of lost agency, as if nothing you do or say matters.

But nothing could be further from the truth. So now is not the time for giving up. We need a new resolve, a new sense of peace, a new sense of agency. And we've got to keep human dignity and respect as one of the grounding features for that resolve. As Yale philosopher and ethicist John Hare says "that means we must make the ends of others our own ends."

Seeking a life worthy, of your humanity means seeking it for the other. This episode is a previously unreleased segment from our May 16th episode, featuring John Hare titled "What is a Human Life Worth?" Here's Miroslav to introduce this clip, and make sure to stick around for his comments following. He draws out some really significant and centering comments on capitalism and Christianity and giving priority to respect for people over economic success.

Miroslav Volf: Friends, thank you for listening to "For the Life of the World." We want to share an extended discussion from my conversation with philosopher, John Hare. We edited this out because it made sense to publish it as a standalone episode. It is about a question that we must continually face during this epidemic, and especially as the world recovers. Here are a few minutes of my conversation about this question with John Hare. And I will share just a few more brief thoughts following this clip.

So, we have talked about a relationship between the expense and the dignity of human life, how incommensurable these things are. And we've done so with regard to those who have contracted an illness, who themselves are in danger. But, especially in the times of pandemic, there are other folks whose lives have been exposed to risk, and those are the so-called essential workers whom we individually celebrate as our heroes.

When I walked down my street I see a number of homes that have hearts in front, or have signs that are celebrating those who risk their lives in order to fight the pandemic in order to attend to the problems that we are all, all facing. What's our responsibility as a society toward people who we require to take those risks. 

John Hare: I have a bittersweet reaction to all of those hearts, because now we need them and we call them heroes. And we value them so highly because our need for them has become so conspicuous to us. But actually before this, they were doing those same jobs and we didn't value them. And this is something else about dignity.

Dignity requires respect from us. Kant says we have to treat humanity in every person as an end in itself and not merely a means, and to treat humanity as an end in itself means to share that person's ends, to make those ends our own ends, our own purposes, our own goals, as far as we can. That's what respect requires.

And we haven't done that. We haven't done that. And we see now the consequences. They become very vivid to us, when we see that a disproportionate number of those who die from this disease are people of color. I think that this is disease has illuminated for us how little we respected those in our society that are in that situation of having to work under these conditions.

Miroslav Volf: It's really tied also to the larger question of how we organize our economic life. Not just economic life. There are other, kind of cultural components, to it, but it becomes almost tangible in cases where an essential worker has contracted the virus and, obviously cannot work, but nobody's there to take care.

Nobody wants to assume responsibility for the costs of their healthcare. So, again, it's a question of, how might we do better organizing, our economic life, in general. And I had conversation, on this podcast with Willie Jennings, our colleague, and he pointed out, very, very vividly what has been the obvious for some time before, what Max Weber knew as well is that, economy doesn't have people as ends. In economy, people functions as means to a particular goal. And we think that profit-making or whatever, maybe even creation of wealth if you want to say a little bit less one-sidedly, that wealth creation would somehow redound then to the people and they can be served. But, people in the economy function as means rather than as ends. And that seems take us in that situation, especially if we don't regulate the market, where they are exploited. We pay as little as possible to the means to produce the wealth that we have.

And then we end up in situations that discriminates, that is creating danger for many of them. 

John Hare: Yes. I like Willie Jennings' point here. I strongly agree with it. And when the discussion is posed in terms of, human life on the one hand being balanced against the economy on the other, then I think we've distorted the picture. Because as you say, the economy reduces human beings to priced inputs and outputs. And if human life has dignity, it doesn't have price in that way. So, to pose the dilemma in terms of the economy is already to distort the question.

Miroslav Volf: That's right. But, it means also that we need to start thinking, economy in a different way. Either, strongly curtail the kind of dominance of economic thinking more broadly culturally, or rethink how we think economy, because we are going to... the human beings are increasingly then become, means toward some ends, and priced inputs and outputs as you have, put it. Does that take us in a very radical direction?

John Hare: So if we were to start with the person. Not with the economy, but with the person and what the person values, what the person wants and needs. Then we can construct an economy that's based on value in that person's ends and purposes as though they were my own purposes. And that is very radical. So, let me give you an example.

I'm considering buying a new couch for my living room and I have to consider to myself, I'm going to spend all that money. I could be sending that to those who are suffering in Zambia. I have a son who worked in the Bush, in Zambia. And at the end of the dry season, routinely, the family has to decide which children are going to eat because there isn't enough food.

And, there's my couch. I think that the conclusion of this way of thinking of respecting the dignity of every human person that is very... it is very radical. It means that we're living too richly in our part of the world. We're not considering the needs of those in the rest.

Miroslav Volf: In this conversation, John helpfully raised the problem of how richly Americans and others in prosperous countries live. His radical suggestion was that we need to make our neighbors ends our own ends. This means that we need to pay careful attention to what we do with our wealth, indeed, with every paycheck we receive.

But I think that this has also implications for how we think about our entire economy, about structuring it around people as ends themselves rather than as means to the production of wealth. Now, there are no good alternatives to capitalism in today's world. That's why I believe that capitalism needs reformation. And the kind of reformation capitalism needs concerns one of its central features.

Over a century ago, famous sociologist, Max Weber noted in his book, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, that the most striking and the most unique thing about capitalism when we compare it to all economic systems that proceeded it was this. Under capitalism, the goal of economic activity is not the flourishing of individuals and societies. The goal of economic activity is much narrower. It is profit or money making. With profits or money in hand, it is then to each one of us or to all of us collectively as a society to decide about what to do with money generated, either to put it to the ends aligned with our humanity or to those contrary to it.

And that's where the decision about which John speaks in our conversation, whether to purchase that new couch or to give money to the poor in Zambia comes in. Or how much to pay for teachers in our public schools, or to essential workers during pandemic. These are really important decisions. And the good of capitalism is that it allows us to make these decisions. Why? Because it delivers into our hands money that we can spend. 

But then an economic system must give us more than just money to spend. A morally responsible economic system must not reduce our work to mere means of creating profit. Our work must have its own human end by being part of creating what is true wealth.

Also a morally responsible economic system must respect humanity of those who work. For instance, by paying them adequately, or by protecting them from harm as they do their work, or by creating humane cultures in the workplace, et cetera. In a phrase, within the economic system, human beings cannot be mere means of moneymaking. They in their activity must also be ends in themselves.

Now to some of you, this may sound radical. But these kinds of considerations, these kinds of convictions have long history in Christian moral teaching. They fit, I think, the teaching of Jesus who insisted that even Sabbath was created for human beings and not human beings for Sabbath. How much more must that be true of our everyday work?

Jesus Christ said of himself that he is the Lord of Sabbath. Jesus Christ is the Lord of our everyday life and everyday work. Jesus Christ is also the Lord of our economy.

Evan Rosa: That's our episode. Thanks for listening today.

For the Life of the World is a production of the Yale Center for Faith and Culture at Yale Divinity School. This episode featured theologian, Miroslav Volf, and philosopher, John Hare. I'm Evan Rosa, and I edited and produced the show. For more information, visit us online at faith.Yale.edu. And we'd be honored if you'd subscribe to the show. It's available wherever you can listen to podcasts and new shows drop at least every Saturday.

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Thanks for tuning in. We'll be back with more this coming week. Peace to you, and don't give up.