Michael Sandel
Professor of Government, Harvard University
Michael J. Sandel is the Anne T. and Robert M. Bass Professor of Government at Harvard University, where he has taught political philosophy since 1980. He is the author of Liberalism and the Limits of Justice (Cambridge University Press), Democracy's Discontent: America in Search of a Public Philosophy (Harvard University Press, 1996), Public Philosophy: Essays on Morality in Politics (Harvard University Press, 2005), and The Case against Perfection: Ethics in the Age of Genetic Engineering (Harvard University Press, 2007). His writings have also appeared in such publications as The Atlantic Monthly, The New Republic, and The New York Times. The recipient of three honorary degrees, he has received fellowships from the Carnegie Corporation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Ford Foundation. From 2002 to 2005, he served on President Bush's Council on Bioethics, a national council appointed by the President to examine the ethical implications of new biomedical technologies. A summa cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Brandeis University (1975), Sandel received his doctorate from Oxford University (D.Phil.,1981), where he was a Rhodes Scholar. He lives with his wife and two sons in Brookline, Massachusetts.
Michael Sandel: I think the reason we have such an impoverished public debate is that we are too reluctant to take on hard controversial, but important moral questions that really go to the heart of the question of what kind of society do we want to live in.
To what extent do we want to live in a society where everything is up for sale?
The more ambitious economics becomes the more it has to engage with hard moral questions.
If you look at the terms of political discourse today in the United States, it’s not a pretty picture.
We need to step back and have a morally robust debate about where markets belong and where they don’t.
The political philosopher and Harvard professor on the limits of the free market.
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14 min
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Those at the top of society should not feel divine for their accomplishments.
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4 min
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Humans have a yearning to think beyond themselves.
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3 min
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Politics must confront moral and religious questions.
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5 min
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Sandel talks about what we should be asking about the marketplace.
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2 min
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Michael Sandel frames the stem cell debate.
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4 min
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Michael Sandel discusses the idea of the prestige of rigor and the relationship between philosophy and science.
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3 min
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Political philosophy has to be engaged in life.
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3 min
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We don’t live in small city-states anymore and so must craft a form of governance suited to a global order, says Michael Sandel.
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2 min
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Sandel talks about the impact of his first book.
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4 min
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Robert Kennedy was poised to redefine American liberalism.
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