Could you make me clear about the sentence below:
What we owe is only our fair share of the burden of securing for others what they are owed.
Would the meaning change if we changed that last part to "what they owe"?
What we owe is only our fair share of the burden of securing for others what they owe.
What I am unclear is this phrase: of securing for others what they are owed.
There are several meanings for the word of "secure."
The context is an article of New York Times:
"Our obligations to make the world better are limited by simple principle: What we owe is only our fair share of the burden of securing for others what they are owed."
The fuller context is:
This ideal of a liberal education is profoundly democratic, aiming at enlarging the possibilities and the contributions of the largest possible number of people. It’s good news that there are more first-generation college students than there used to be. Such an education enables and encourages people to be capable citizens, better able to evaluate the arguments that circulate in public life and better positioned to take the obligations of citizenship seriously.
But all these benefits depend on students’ being prepared for the courses they take and their being engaged with them in a serious way. The value of education comes not from their mere physical presence in the classroom or the lab or the library but from their doing course work as well as they can. If students aren’t prepared, if they don’t have the right motivations, if they don’t have the necessary time or resources for study, or if professors don’t have the time to give them the attention they need, the value of a college education is diminished.
Where do you come in? Our obligations to make the world better are limited by a simple principle: What we owe is only our fair share of the burden of securing for others what they are owed. What has gone wrong at your university won’t be set right by anything that can reasonably be expected of you.
