Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Abbreviations for Rawls’s texts
- Introduction
- A
- B
- C
- D
- E
- F
- G
- H
- I
- J
- K
- L
- M
- N
- O
- P
- R
- S
- 195 Sandel, Michael
- 196 Scanlon, T. M.
- 197 Self-interest
- 198 Self-respect
- 199 Sen, Amartya
- 200 Sense of justice
- 201 Sidgwick, Henry
- 202 Sin
- 203 Social choice theory
- 204 Social contract
- 205 Social minimum
- 206 Social union
- 207 Socialism
- 208 Society of peoples
- 209 Soper, Philip
- 210 Sovereignty
- 211 Stability
- 212 Statesman and duty of statesmanship
- 213 Strains of commitment
- 214 Supreme Court and judicial review
- T
- U
- W
- Bibliography
- Index
195 - Sandel, Michael
from S
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 February 2015
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Abbreviations for Rawls’s texts
- Introduction
- A
- B
- C
- D
- E
- F
- G
- H
- I
- J
- K
- L
- M
- N
- O
- P
- R
- S
- 195 Sandel, Michael
- 196 Scanlon, T. M.
- 197 Self-interest
- 198 Self-respect
- 199 Sen, Amartya
- 200 Sense of justice
- 201 Sidgwick, Henry
- 202 Sin
- 203 Social choice theory
- 204 Social contract
- 205 Social minimum
- 206 Social union
- 207 Socialism
- 208 Society of peoples
- 209 Soper, Philip
- 210 Sovereignty
- 211 Stability
- 212 Statesman and duty of statesmanship
- 213 Strains of commitment
- 214 Supreme Court and judicial review
- T
- U
- W
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
Michael Sandel (b. 1953) is an American political theorist and public intellectual. He earned his Ph.D. from Oxford University in 1981, where he was a Rhodes Scholar. He currently is Anne T. and Robert M. Bass Professor of Government at Harvard University, where he teaches a popular course on Justice that has become the subject of a PBS series, Justice: What’s the Right Thing to Do?
Sandel focuses on the relationship between ethics and politics, and he is especially concerned with the question of whether a democratic state should aspire to be neutral with respect to moral controversies. Much of his work is critical of prevailing forms of liberalism, which contend that states must be neutral when it comes to controversies concerning the good life. Holding that such neutrality is chimerical and that the aspiration to it is socially perilous, Sandel advocates a communitarian form of civic republicanism according to which political participation and moral engagement with one’s fellow citizens is an essential element of a good life. He sees the job of the democratic state to be that of inculcating among its citizens the virtues and attitudes appropriate to citizenship in self-governing communities.
Sandel’s irst book, Liberalism and the Limits of Justice (1982) is an extended criticism of liberalism aimed in particular at John Rawls’s A Theory of Justice. Along with influential works by Charles Taylor, Alastair MacIntyre, and Michael Walzer, Sandel’s book remains a definitive articulation of “the communitarian critique of liberalism.” Taking Rawls’s original position to capture the core liberal commitment to the priority of the right to the good, Sandel argues that liberalism as such presupposes a conception of the self according to which selves are always prior to, and thus detachable from, the moral ends they affirm.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Cambridge Rawls Lexicon , pp. 755 - 756Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2014