Michael Sandel

Michael Sandel is an American political philosopher who has taught at Harvard University since 1981. His first book, Liberalism and the Limits of Justice, criticised John Rawls for picturing the self as unencumbered by community and shared goods, and made him a leading voice of the communitarian critique of liberalism. His Harvard course Justice became one of the best-known university lectures in the world. Later books ask what money should not buy and how the ideal of merit has fed resentment and division.

Key ideas

• Liberal theories of justice assume an 'unencumbered self' that can stand apart from its attachments and commitments.
• Questions of justice cannot be settled without arguing about the good life and the purpose of social practices.
• Markets can crowd out non-market values, so some goods should not be bought and sold.
• The ideal of meritocracy encourages winners to think they deserve their success and losers to think they deserve their failure.
• Democratic life needs a shared sense of the common good, not only neutral procedures.

Major works

• Justice: What's the Right Thing to Do? (2009)
• Liberalism and the Limits of Justice (1982)
• The Tyranny of Merit (2020)
• Democracy's Discontent (1996)
• The Case Against Perfection (2007)
• What Money Can't Buy (2012)

In the Book corner

• Liberalism and the Limits of Justice 1982; second edition 1998 · Advanced
  A critical study of John Rawls's A Theory of Justice that became a founding text of the communitarian critique of liberalism, though…
• Justice: What’s the Right Thing to Do? 2009 · Beginner
  A book for general readers based on Sandel's popular Harvard course, Justice. It introduces the main theories of justice through hard cases.…
• The Tyranny of Merit 2020 · Beginner
  A critique of meritocracy, written after Brexit and Donald Trump's 2016 election and opening with the 2019 American college admissions scandal. Sandel…

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