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4.14 AVERAGE
4.14 AVERAGE
Morality is really complicated. Deciding which action is best can be extremely tough, especially if there are multiple competing ethical principles. This gets even harder when organizing a society. How should it be organized, and on what principles? Justice by Michael Sandel attempts to answer exactly this question. Does he succeed? Like morality, it's complicated.
The majority of the book is an exploration of various competing moral theories. Utilitarianism goes first. As an economics major, I must confess that I have a soft spot for Utilitarianism. It certainly lacks the glamor of the other theories in the book, but I find that it reflects everyday ethics more than the others. Michael Sandel does not agree, and for good reason. Utilitarianism can very easily lead to exploitation and prejudice when applied. He refers to a book by Ursula K. Le Guin that illustrated this objection. In this story, a prosperous utopia apparently depends on the extreme suffering of one individual. This injustice is permitted on utilitarian grounds. Basically, it seems to leave no room for fundamental human rights. This is so egregious that human lives can apparently be calculated to the dollar, which violates so much of our intuitive ethical feelings. Even John Stuart Mill couldn't avoid reasoning certain basic things without invoking rights, which can’t be explained through utility-based reasoning.
After this, Sandel goes through an interesting exploration of libertarian theory and certain market interactions. I honestly didn't expect to rethink so much of what I had previously thought, but this part made me do it. Should the military hire foreigners? Should surrogacy for babies be allowed? Should we be allowed to sell organs? Can we opt to be cannibalized? It's hard to say, but the issues are certainly less clear-cut than I thought. The core of the libertarian theory is self-ownership, earnings, and responsibility. These are compelling ideas but Sandel eviscerates them through examinations of moral luck, and a few other ideas.
After this is Kant, which was definitely my favorite part of the book. Kant's moral theory has always struck me as incredibly interesting. It’s a titan of enlightenment thought and Sandel largely does it justice. I don’t have much to say on it because I want to read his Groundwork before I really try to explain and criticize it.
Rawls is up next, and this is one of the weaker portions. I feel like I barely even know any of what Rawls actually thinks. A Theory of Justice is a massive and influential book, so I doubt that Sandel was suffering from a lack of information. Kant's Groundwork is tiny compared to Rawls's Theory, but Sandel had much more to say about Kant. The most I can tell is that he continues Kant’s project of rights and based his political philosophy on abstract, contract-based principles. Rawls imagined a group of people who were supposed to organize a just society, but they didn’t know what positions they would occupy in said society. The outcome of this “veil of ignorance” is that their society would be agreeable to any person regardless of feelings and opinions.
Aristotle comes next and I actually came to like him a lot. His line of moral and political thinking is fundamentally teleological, or about the purpose of things. This opens up more avenues of debate for practically every issue and I really liked that. This also leads Sandel into his own communitarian philosophy.
Sandel's view is that politics cannot be abstracted from everyday life. People have roles, morals, virtues, values, religions, and relationships. The other theories expect people to leave these at the door when designing a society. This is impossible and absurd. You can't separate these things from your political opinions, and confining them to private affairs can only lead to public frustration and superficiality. Sandel thinks we need a community based on solidarity and discussion. We need to unify around a central identity and then debate out what our values should be.
It's a compelling thesis but one that is pretty strange when you consider his applications. In a previous chapter, Sandel seemed to allude to the idea that we should prioritize domestic aid at the expense of foreign aid. He apparently thinks that Robert E. Lee had decent if misguided intentions and that family members can't snitch on each other even if the person being snitched on has committed horrific atrocities. Well, maybe he doesn’t explicitly think these things but they are strange examples to bring up when making a case for something.
These positions are based on the idea that moral weight should be given to relationships with land, family, and country. Okay, fair, but they are hard to justify when these are at the expense of others in such a vast sense. Should we really limit immigration from ailing countries because they will hurt the relatively better-off people in our own country? Sandel defends this by pointing to a few examples where it seems to be morally okay to value one person over another. Like, should a person support his own mother’s hospital bills over some random person? Is it okay to save your own child from drowning at the expense of some other person’s kid? Of course, it is! You may say these things are too subjective, but that's exactly the point. People are people, not bare, abstract entities. Even the existentialist school, who focused on human will so much, emphasized that people are thrown into specific cultural contexts and are raised in certain value systems. Knowing this, it’s weird to think that political theory has tried to see people as bare and unencumbered. Again, it's a compelling idea but it just needs to be expanded upon.
I also think this book suffers from its structure. Justice is REALLY short, and it tries to pack in a lot of information throughout. Because of this, every section suffers from a serious lack of depth, and thus my memory likely won't be filled with Justice's contents for very long. This is okay because I will be doing further reading, but I wish that the book were double the length. More focus on each individual section would have been much appreciated. In the beginning, some controversial questions were introduced which Sandel would partially explore, then tuck away for later because we didn't have enough information yet. These were not sufficiently re-examined and I wish he had saved them for the end. It would have been a great capstone to re-visit all the theories we had explored.
I will say that despite my problems with it, Sandel writes in a very engaging style. I didn’t want to put this book down. It’s highly readable and always interesting. Sometimes, it is even funny.
Good book. A decent introduction to moral and political philosophy. If you’re well-read in these topics, definitely give it a skip. It’ll be unnecessary.
The majority of the book is an exploration of various competing moral theories. Utilitarianism goes first. As an economics major, I must confess that I have a soft spot for Utilitarianism. It certainly lacks the glamor of the other theories in the book, but I find that it reflects everyday ethics more than the others. Michael Sandel does not agree, and for good reason. Utilitarianism can very easily lead to exploitation and prejudice when applied. He refers to a book by Ursula K. Le Guin that illustrated this objection. In this story, a prosperous utopia apparently depends on the extreme suffering of one individual. This injustice is permitted on utilitarian grounds. Basically, it seems to leave no room for fundamental human rights. This is so egregious that human lives can apparently be calculated to the dollar, which violates so much of our intuitive ethical feelings. Even John Stuart Mill couldn't avoid reasoning certain basic things without invoking rights, which can’t be explained through utility-based reasoning.
After this, Sandel goes through an interesting exploration of libertarian theory and certain market interactions. I honestly didn't expect to rethink so much of what I had previously thought, but this part made me do it. Should the military hire foreigners? Should surrogacy for babies be allowed? Should we be allowed to sell organs? Can we opt to be cannibalized? It's hard to say, but the issues are certainly less clear-cut than I thought. The core of the libertarian theory is self-ownership, earnings, and responsibility. These are compelling ideas but Sandel eviscerates them through examinations of moral luck, and a few other ideas.
After this is Kant, which was definitely my favorite part of the book. Kant's moral theory has always struck me as incredibly interesting. It’s a titan of enlightenment thought and Sandel largely does it justice. I don’t have much to say on it because I want to read his Groundwork before I really try to explain and criticize it.
Rawls is up next, and this is one of the weaker portions. I feel like I barely even know any of what Rawls actually thinks. A Theory of Justice is a massive and influential book, so I doubt that Sandel was suffering from a lack of information. Kant's Groundwork is tiny compared to Rawls's Theory, but Sandel had much more to say about Kant. The most I can tell is that he continues Kant’s project of rights and based his political philosophy on abstract, contract-based principles. Rawls imagined a group of people who were supposed to organize a just society, but they didn’t know what positions they would occupy in said society. The outcome of this “veil of ignorance” is that their society would be agreeable to any person regardless of feelings and opinions.
Aristotle comes next and I actually came to like him a lot. His line of moral and political thinking is fundamentally teleological, or about the purpose of things. This opens up more avenues of debate for practically every issue and I really liked that. This also leads Sandel into his own communitarian philosophy.
Sandel's view is that politics cannot be abstracted from everyday life. People have roles, morals, virtues, values, religions, and relationships. The other theories expect people to leave these at the door when designing a society. This is impossible and absurd. You can't separate these things from your political opinions, and confining them to private affairs can only lead to public frustration and superficiality. Sandel thinks we need a community based on solidarity and discussion. We need to unify around a central identity and then debate out what our values should be.
It's a compelling thesis but one that is pretty strange when you consider his applications. In a previous chapter, Sandel seemed to allude to the idea that we should prioritize domestic aid at the expense of foreign aid. He apparently thinks that Robert E. Lee had decent if misguided intentions and that family members can't snitch on each other even if the person being snitched on has committed horrific atrocities. Well, maybe he doesn’t explicitly think these things but they are strange examples to bring up when making a case for something.
These positions are based on the idea that moral weight should be given to relationships with land, family, and country. Okay, fair, but they are hard to justify when these are at the expense of others in such a vast sense. Should we really limit immigration from ailing countries because they will hurt the relatively better-off people in our own country? Sandel defends this by pointing to a few examples where it seems to be morally okay to value one person over another. Like, should a person support his own mother’s hospital bills over some random person? Is it okay to save your own child from drowning at the expense of some other person’s kid? Of course, it is! You may say these things are too subjective, but that's exactly the point. People are people, not bare, abstract entities. Even the existentialist school, who focused on human will so much, emphasized that people are thrown into specific cultural contexts and are raised in certain value systems. Knowing this, it’s weird to think that political theory has tried to see people as bare and unencumbered. Again, it's a compelling idea but it just needs to be expanded upon.
I also think this book suffers from its structure. Justice is REALLY short, and it tries to pack in a lot of information throughout. Because of this, every section suffers from a serious lack of depth, and thus my memory likely won't be filled with Justice's contents for very long. This is okay because I will be doing further reading, but I wish that the book were double the length. More focus on each individual section would have been much appreciated. In the beginning, some controversial questions were introduced which Sandel would partially explore, then tuck away for later because we didn't have enough information yet. These were not sufficiently re-examined and I wish he had saved them for the end. It would have been a great capstone to re-visit all the theories we had explored.
I will say that despite my problems with it, Sandel writes in a very engaging style. I didn’t want to put this book down. It’s highly readable and always interesting. Sometimes, it is even funny.
Good book. A decent introduction to moral and political philosophy. If you’re well-read in these topics, definitely give it a skip. It’ll be unnecessary.
This book started out strong, using thought-provoking examples to ask how one can determine the basis for deciding what's just. For example, we might say it's OK to torture a terrorist to find out where they put a bomb that is going to kill hundreds of people, but is that partly because we want to punish the terrorist? If it was just about saving those people through any means necessary, then wouldn't it be even more effective to torture the terrorist's daughter? These kinds of thought experiments, where Sandel challenges what we think we believe, were fascinating and gave the book a good hook for the first few chapters.
Unfortunately, it soon became obvious that this book was based on a class, as Sandel never manages to get too far away from that type of format. After starting out in a readable, engaging format, the book suddenly dives deep into an explanation of various philosophies — Kant's, Rawls', Aristotle's — spending pages and pages trying to help the reader understand each philosophy in detail, punctuated only very occasionally with real-life examples to illustrate the points. Only at the very end does Sandel share his own thoughts, in contrast to all these other philosophies, the way a professor might introduce you to a wide range of opinions on a topic and only reluctantly tell you his personal beliefs at the end of the semester. From a book, I expect the author to share a premise — this is what I believe — and then draw on a combination of research and historical precedent to support or contrast with his idea. I did not expect a series of dry lectures about the history of political philosophy, particularly not after the engaging opening. There was also a lot of repetition, with certain ideas being re-explained more than once, which got old quickly.
I wouldn't say I disliked the book, as I did learn a lot, though the real-life examples and hypothetical scenarios are what is going to stay with me, not the exact beliefs that Kant or Rawls held. This book would have benefited from some heavier editing — it was clear at points that someone just stuck a heading in to break up an excessively long passage. I'm glad this book was recommended to me, but I'm also glad this particular "class" is over for me now.
Unfortunately, it soon became obvious that this book was based on a class, as Sandel never manages to get too far away from that type of format. After starting out in a readable, engaging format, the book suddenly dives deep into an explanation of various philosophies — Kant's, Rawls', Aristotle's — spending pages and pages trying to help the reader understand each philosophy in detail, punctuated only very occasionally with real-life examples to illustrate the points. Only at the very end does Sandel share his own thoughts, in contrast to all these other philosophies, the way a professor might introduce you to a wide range of opinions on a topic and only reluctantly tell you his personal beliefs at the end of the semester. From a book, I expect the author to share a premise — this is what I believe — and then draw on a combination of research and historical precedent to support or contrast with his idea. I did not expect a series of dry lectures about the history of political philosophy, particularly not after the engaging opening. There was also a lot of repetition, with certain ideas being re-explained more than once, which got old quickly.
I wouldn't say I disliked the book, as I did learn a lot, though the real-life examples and hypothetical scenarios are what is going to stay with me, not the exact beliefs that Kant or Rawls held. This book would have benefited from some heavier editing — it was clear at points that someone just stuck a heading in to break up an excessively long passage. I'm glad this book was recommended to me, but I'm also glad this particular "class" is over for me now.
challenging
hopeful
informative
inspiring
reflective
slow-paced
challenging
informative
medium-paced
This book made me grapple with some though questions as well as what lay bellow my answers to them.
I think it gives a thorough and nuanced approach to looking at justice and how we can build a better society where everyone can be better engaged in a productive civic discourse.
I think it gives a thorough and nuanced approach to looking at justice and how we can build a better society where everyone can be better engaged in a productive civic discourse.
challenging
informative
reflective
slow-paced
would’ve liked more if I didn’t have to annotate. lots of food for thought but got more biased at the end
informative
reflective
medium-paced
Livre très intéressant, j’ai beaucoup aimé l’utilisation d’exemples concrets qui permettaient une vraie vulgarisation des enjeux philosophiques. Cependant, j’avoue que quelques fois j’avais un peu du mal à suivre (mais ça c’est sûrement parce que je suis bête). En tout cas, ça me donne envie de lire d’autres livres de réflexion
informative
reflective
medium-paced
Interesting backstory of different philosophers, interesting application of theory into practical examples most of the time. Does fall off a bit after aristotle chapter and the last chapter is genuinely kind of garbage. But like 80% of the book is worth reading especially if you haven't studied Kant or Aristotle or other philosophers. Good for beginners mostly with only some terminology that is hard to grasp but the author does his best to try and explain.
Sandel is a practical philosopher; not content to educate his audience with the theories of Aristotle and Kant, of Rawls and Locke, he applies philosophic schools of argument to practical cases from modern society. He looks at solutions provided by Utilitarianism and Libertarianism in their various incarnations to well acknowledged problems in our modern western societies - from abortion and gay marriage to conscription and questions of historical culpability.
And in doing this, he truly makes us think and appraise the way that Neoliberalism, the religious right and Democrats have become tangled and disarmed by their own inconsistencies of argument, through adopting principles of, for example, morally neutral legislation and governance to cases where moral judgement is needed.
I respect the fact that Sandal is prepared to be consistent with his own view of civic engagement by declaring his stance on government and civil society, and even uses his prodigious mind and arguments to suggest ways forward to improve engagement of citizens in civic discourse, tracing some of the path we have taken to arrive at the state of disengaged voters and partial government that we encounter today.
This is a vital book, so much more than a book of philosophy, it is a mirror and a call for change, a critique, map and blueprint of ourselves and our collective decisions as a society in the western world.
And in doing this, he truly makes us think and appraise the way that Neoliberalism, the religious right and Democrats have become tangled and disarmed by their own inconsistencies of argument, through adopting principles of, for example, morally neutral legislation and governance to cases where moral judgement is needed.
I respect the fact that Sandal is prepared to be consistent with his own view of civic engagement by declaring his stance on government and civil society, and even uses his prodigious mind and arguments to suggest ways forward to improve engagement of citizens in civic discourse, tracing some of the path we have taken to arrive at the state of disengaged voters and partial government that we encounter today.
This is a vital book, so much more than a book of philosophy, it is a mirror and a call for change, a critique, map and blueprint of ourselves and our collective decisions as a society in the western world.
challenging
informative
inspiring
reflective
slow-paced