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Michael Sandel Biography

Michael J. Sandel (/ˌsænˈdɛl/; born March 5, 1953) is an American political philosopher and a political philosophy professor at Harvard University. His course “Justice” is the first Harvard course to be made freely available online and on television. It has been viewed by tens of millions of people around the world, including in China, where Sandel was named the “most influential foreign figure of the year” (China Newsweek). He is also known for his critique of John Rawls' A Theory of Justice in his first book, Liberalism and the Limits of Justice (1982). He was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2002.

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Michael Sandel Quotes

The way things are does not determine the way they ought to be

Determine, Doe, Ought, Things, Way

Human beings are empowered to exercise dominion over nature and even to be participants in creation; and yet, at the same time, there are strictures against idolatry, which is a kind of overreaching and confusing human beings' role with God's.

Confusing, Exercise, Nature, Overreaching, Roles

To argue about justice is unavoidably to argue about virtues, about substantive moral and even spiritual questions.

Justice, Moral, Spiritual, Substantive, Virtues

Markets are useful instruments for organizing productive activity. But unless we want to let the market rewrite the norms that govern social institutions, we need a public debate about the moral limits of markets.

Debate, Let, Limits, Needs, Want

I think the reason we might hesitate to pay cash to students for doing well on tests or getting good grades or reading books is that we sense that the monetary payment is an extrinsic reward.

Book, Monetary, Reading, Sense, Students, Thinking

In some parts of the world, that sex selection for boys - and it's usually for boys - reflects sex discrimination against girls, and it leads to very large imbalances - in China, in Korea, in India - in the population between boys and girls, a vast disproportion of boys to girls, and it reflects really this discriminatory attitude toward girls.

Attitude, Girl, India, Leads, Population, Sex

I almost became a political journalist, having worked as a reporter at the time of Watergate. The proximity to those events motivated me, when I wound up doing philosophy, to try to use it to move the public debate.

Journalist, Moving, Philosophy, Political, Public, Worked

You can't go wrong with fish and chips.

Chips, Fish, Fish And Chips, Fishes, Wrong

[T]he state should not impose a preferred way of life, but should leave its citizens as free as possible to choose their own values and ends, consistent with a similar liberty for others.

Citizens, Leave, Liberty, Life, Way

There are some religious traditions that view human beings as participants in creation. This is true of the Jewish tradition, from which I come.

Creation, Jewish Tradition, Religious, Traditions, True, Views

The most fateful change that unfolded during the past three decades was not an increase in greed. It was the expansion of markets, and of market values, into spheres of life where they don’t belong.

Belong, Expansion, Greed, Increase, Markets, Past

I would include non-medical sex selection as one of those practices that I think is morally questionable and that can carry adverse social consequences.

Carry, Practice, Questionable, Sex, Social, Thinking

Aiming at giving our kids a competitive edge in a consumer society - that, in principle, is a goal that is limitless.

Aiming, Edge, Giving, Goal, Kids

A market economy is a tool - a valuable and effective tool - for organizing productive activity. A market society is a way of life in which market values seep into every aspect of human endeavour. It's a place where social relations are made over in the image of the market.

Effective, Market, Place, Politics, Tools, Way

The other effect that I worry about is the effect on the parent, that the moral teaching of humility and of the limits to our control that parenthood teaches- - that that will be lost and that we will begin to think of children more as consumer goods than as gifts that we can't fully control and for which we aren't fully responsible.

Children, Effect, Humility, Limits, Teaching

Economics has increasingly become the science of human behavior in general, and it's all the more unlikely to think that it can possibly be value-free - and, in fact, it isn't. Economics rests on un-argued assumptions that need to be examined.

Assumption, Assumptions, Behavior, Examined, Science, Thinking

I have a broad but not an expert or scholarly background in the Jewish tradition. I've tried to learn what I can from childhood, but I am not an expert on Jewish teachings.

Childhood, Expert, Jewish, Jewish Tradition, Teaching, Tradition

What intrigued me most was not the technology as such but the questions about the human goods, the fundamental human values and virtues that are raised by debates over biotechnology.

Debate, Fundamental, Fundamentals, Technology, Virtues

I'm a supporter of embryonic stem cell research. I do think there are very important moral and also religious questions at stake in the debate over embryonic stem cell research.

Cell, Cells, Questions, Religious, Supporter, Thinking

If the spirit of their intercourse were still the same after their coming together as it had been when they were living apart,' Aristotle writes, their association can't really be considered a polis, or political community. 'A polis is not an association for residence on a common site, or for the sake of preventing mutual injustice and easing exchange. ' While these conditions are necessary to a polis, they are not sufficient. 'The end and purpose of a polis is the good life, and the institutions of social life are means to that end.

Aristotle, Good Life, Life, Mean, Preventing, Writing

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