books:

	Justice: What's the Right Thing to Do? Michael J. Sandel Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2009 - 320 pages average customer review:based on 60 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

What are our obligations to others as people in a free society? Should government tax the rich to help the poor? Is the free market fair? Is it sometimes wrong to tell the truth? Is killing sometimes morally required? Is it possible, or desirable, to legislate morality? Do individual rights and the common good conflict?

Michael J. Sandel?s ?Justice? course is one of the most popular and influential at Harvard. Up to a thousand students pack the campus theater to hear Sandel relate the big questions of political philosophy to the most vexing issues of the day, and this fall, public television will air a series based on the course. Justice offers readers the same exhilarating journey that captivates Harvard students. This book is a searching, lyrical exploration of the meaning of justice, one that invites readers of all political persuasions to consider familiar controversies in fresh and illuminating ways. Affirmative action, same-sex marriage, physician-assisted suicide, abortion, national service, patriotism and dissent, the moral limits of markets?Sandel dramatizes the challenge of thinking through these con?icts, and shows how a surer grasp of philosophy can help us make sense of politics, morality, and our own convictions as well. Justice is lively, thought-provoking, and wise?an essential new addition to the small shelf of books that speak convincingly to the hard questions of our civic life.

"This book is absolutely indispensable for anyone who wants to be a good citizen. It shows how to balance competing values, a talent our nation desperately needs nowadays."?Walter Isaacson, author of Benjamin Franklin: An American Life

?Michael J. Sandel is one of this generation?s most important philosophers because he combines a relentlessly inquiring spirit with a profound commitment to the idea of a common good. Justice is Sandel at his finest: no matter what your views are, his delightful style will draw you in, and he?ll then force you to rethink your assumptions and challenge you to question accepted ways of thinking. But Sandel does not leave you marooned on an island of skepticism. He calls us to a better way of doing politics, and a more enriching way of living our lives.??E. J. Dionne, Jr.

?Michael J. Sandel, political philosopher and public intellectual, is a liberal, but not the annoying sort. His aim is not to boss people around but to bring them around to the pleasures of thinking clearly about large questions of social policy. Reading this lucid book is like taking his famous undergraduate course ?Justice? without the tiresome parts, such as term papers and exams.??George F. Will

"A Harvard law professor explores the meaning of justice and invites readers on a journey of moral and political reflection, 'to figure out what they think, and why.' Does a veteran suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder 'deserve' the Purple Heart? Should the U.S. government formally apologize and make reparations for slavery? Is it wrong to lie to a murderer? Following the taxpayer bailout of the company, are executives at insurance giant A.I.G. still entitled to their bonuses? Should a professional golfer afflicted with a severe circulatory condition be allowed to use a golf cart during tournaments? Are you obliged to surrender your criminal brother to the FBI? Although Sandel concedes that answering the many questions he poses, bound up 'with competing notions of honor and virtue, pride and recognition,' is never easy and inevitably contentious, it's necessary for a healthy democracy. 'Justice,' he writes, 'is inescapably judgmental.' Using three approaches to justice?maximizing welfare, respecting freedom and promoting virtue?the author asks readers to ponder the meaning of the good life, the purpose of politics, how laws should be constructed and how society should be organized. Using a compelling, entertaining mix of hypotheticals, news stories, episodes from history, pop-culture tidbits, literary examples, legal cases and teachings from the great philosophers?principally, Aristotle, Kant, Bentham, Mill and Rawls?Sandel takes on a variety of controversial issues-abortion, same-sex marriage, affirmative action-and forces us to confront our own assumptions, biases and lazy thought. The author has a talent for making the difficult?Kant's 'categorical imperative' or Rawls's 'difference principle'?readily comprehensible, and his relentless, though never oppressive, reason shines throughout the narrative. Sparkling commentary from the professor we all wish we had."?Kirkus Review

"Harvard government professor Sandel dazzles in this sweeping survey of hot topics?the recent government bailouts, the draft, surrogate pregnancies, same-sex marriage, immigration reform and reparations for slavery?that situates various sides in the debates in the context of timeless philosophical questions and movements. Sandel takes utilitarianism, Kant's categorical imperative and Rawls's theory of justice out of the classroom, dusts them off and reveals how crucial these theories have been in the construction of Western societies?and how they inform almost every issue at the center of our modern-day polis. The content is dense but elegantly presente

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The text

Professor Sandel reads his text on these CDs. I know that is precisely what the description of this selection gives, but it certainly is apt. Now if you are unable to read the text because of other obligations and say, drive to work, perhaps these will come in handy. You can listen as you drive to work. But be careful! They say that is a dangerous way to drive. Music is better because it occupies a different part of the brain you do not use to drive. On the other hand, if you are blind, this is an excellent choice, and certainly it has a lot to be said for having the author read his own work. Otherwise, I would encourage reading Sandel's excellent text on Justice. It seems we learn more vocabulary that way.

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A Readable, Contemporary Primer on Moral Philosophy

The author provides an interesting journey through the classical moral philosophy. Much more readable and accessible than its bibliography, the book covers morality and ethics from utilitarianism, to Kant, and back to Plato by illuminating how we look at contemporary ethical questions. A great read for those who struggle to articulate why the torture or terrorists might be wrong, but why killing of innocents in time of war might be morally permissible.


A lot of real-life topics!

If you like ethics, this is the right book for you.
I like it because it mentions and debate over many real-life topics that are quite interesting.
The book is easy to read. It makes think about ethical topics that you might have not thought about before.
It lets you see life for a different perspective.
I recommend this book for people who are interested in ethics and morals.

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Socratic

After reading Michael Sandel's Justice: What's the Right Thing To Do?, I found it easy to understand why his Harvard class is so popular. Sandel makes philosophy feel alive as he poses tough questions about who we are as individuals and within a society and who we strive to be. This is not a finger-pointing presentation of moral philosophy; it's a challenging presentation of questions that we ask ourselves and how others have answered them, leaving gaps and consequences. Many of our current political conflicts relate to matters of virtue and the common good: financial bailouts, taxation, health care, war, national defense. Using Sandel's questions as a guide, we can explore the ways in which we formulate answers both as individuals and within a society.

Rating: Four-star (Highly Recommended)

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Clear But Thin

Sandel is a renowned teacher and this book is apparently based on a popular course of the same title he teaches at Harvard. It is a solid effort to provide a clear, basic introduction to what has been the major issue in modern political philosophy - the nature of justice. The strengths of the book are Sandel's friendly, clear, and almost conversational writing style, his solid explication of the basics of important positions, and his selection of appropriate current issues to illustrate the relevance of and differences between the basic positions. Sandel does a good job of explaining the basic features of utilitarianism, libertarianism, the deontological-contract tradition that includes Kant, and most importantly, the great American philosopher John Rawls, and the virtue ethics position that begins with Aristotle. These good exposition sections would have been improved by provision of an appendix of recommended texts. The quality of these expository sections is marred, however, by some surprising errors. Readers of this book would infer that the influential libertarian philosopher Robert Nozick was a market libertarian. Nozick actually made the much more ambitious (and difficult to sustain) claim that his version of libertarianism allowed pursuit of a wide variety social models. Sandel's discussion of the horrible dilemma faced by Marcus Luttrell while serving in Afghanistan as a real life analogue of the famous trolley problem is both misframed and omits a crucial fact about Luttrell's situation. Its not true that the US Constitution was ratified by the states.

Sandel is less than convincing when he argues for his preferred approach to justice. Sandel made his reputation as a "communitarian" writing in reaction to Rawls powerful system and inspired generally by Aristotle's view of virtue ethics and civic engagement as a key feature of personal and social life. Sandel argues that the Rawlsian liberal (and he is not using the term liberal in the conventional political sense) is "thin" because it emphasizes a "neutral" role for government and neglects the soical pursuit of the good that is important for a just and personally fulfilling life. This is questionable in several ways. As Sandel himself points out, the Kantian-Rawlsian approach precludes governments based on theocracy, inherited position, authoritarian states, and totalitarian states. This excludes almost all governments in human history and many, many contemporary societies. This "thin" conception sets a pretty demanding standard. Sandel misrepresents the power of Rawls's concepts. Even in the more circumscribed version he advocated in later writings, Rawls ideas of political life requiring what he called public reason and demanding a stringent level of civility are quite demanding and would transform our present society if applied rigorously. As Rawls remarks in his last (and unfinished) work, Justice as Fairness, a systematic application of his ideas would place real limits on how parents would educate children, hardly a "thin, neutral" position.

Sandel's advocacy of his Aristotleian position also has significant problems. How is the good defined? Sandel's view of the good is almost certainly significantly different from the view of Alasdair MacIntyre, another advocate of virtue ethics he cites in his discussion. Unless you can identify some supervening principle to adjudicate different versions of the good, you're going to be forced back to some kind of liberal view of tolerating different versions of the good within the limits of generally agreed political principles, the "thin" position that Sandel criticizes. Sandel's efforts to address the demands of his ideas of solidarity suffers from is-ought problems and difficulties in differentiating good from vicious aspects of human relationships.

For readers interested in this topic and looking for a better introduction, I recommend Adam Swift's very good and short textbook on political philosophy.

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reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10

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