[Aristotle] rejects the notion that the purpose of politics is to satisfy the preferences of the majority ... The end of the state is not “to provide an alliance for mutual defense ... or to ease economic exchange and promote economic intercourse” [Politics (3:9:1280b)]. For Aristotle, politics is about something higher. It is about learning how to live a good life. The purpose of politics is nothing less than to enable people to develop their distinctive capabilities and virtues—to deliberate about the common good, to acquire practical judgment, to share in self-government, to care for the fate of the community as a whole.
Justice (8), pp. 193-194
Rawls proposes that we deal with these facts [the disparity of innate talents and contingencies of social circumstance] by agreeing “to share one another’s fate,” and “to avail [ourselves] of the accidents of nature and social circumstance only when doing so is for the common benefit.” Whether or not this theory of justice ultimately succeeds, it represents the most compelling case for a more equal society that American political philosophy has yet produced.
Justice (6), p. 166