Justice

Author Michael Sandel teaches a popular course at Harvard University called “Justice,” which was the basis for this book. Throughout much of the book, Sandel presents different approaches to justice without explicitly endorsing or rejecting them. In the last two chapters of the book, however, Sandel argues for a particular view of justice that involves “cultivating virtue and reasoning about the common good” (260). He rejects the utilitarian, libertarian, and egalitarian approaches discussed in the book in favor of a society in which we would “reason together about the meaning of the good life” within a “public culture hospitable to the disagreements that will inevitably arise” (260).

Aristotle (384-322 BC) is an ancient philosopher with influential views on justice: “The notion that we identify the norms appropriate to social practices by trying to grasp the characteristic end, or purpose, of those practices is at the heart of Aristotle’s theory of justice” (98). Sandel devotes a full chapter to Aristotle’s views.

Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) is a powerful and influential philosopher who offers a theory of rights that “depends on the idea that we are rational beings, worthy of dignity and respect” (103). He “emphasizes the distinction between persons (worthy of respect) and mere objects or things (open to use) as the fundamental distinction in morality” (97).