Who is My Neighbor? Globalization and the Good Samaritan

FAIN: FA-53567-07

Eric Sean Gregory
Princeton University (Princeton, NJ 08540-5228)

My project will examine religious and secular interpretations of the Good Samaritan parable in light of recent debates over the nature and scope of morality in an age of globalization. Many praise the Samaritan for his compassion and his willingness to transcend cultural boundaries in order to meet the desperate needs of a stranger. But not everyone shares the same convictions about what human beings owe one another. Two primary questions arise: 1) are boundaries (literal and figurative) necessary for the pursuit of justice? and 2) what is love's relation to justice? I focus my inquiry on three topics that invite comparison of cosmopolitan approaches to political morality: immigration, global poverty, and humanitarian intervention.