A renowned political philosopher updates his classic book on the American political tradition to address the perils democracy confronts today.

The 1990s were a heady time. The Cold War had ended, and America's version of liberal capitalism seemed triumphant. And yet, amid the peace and prosperity, anxieties about the project of self-government could be glimpsed beneath the surface.

So argued Michael Sandel, in his influential and widely debated book Democracy's Discontent, published in 1996. The market faith was eroding the common life. A rising sense of disempowerment was likely to provoke backlash, he wrote, from those who would shore up borders, harden the distinction between insiders and outsiders, and promise a politics to 'take back our culture and take back our country, ' to 'restore our sovereignty' with a vengeance.

Now, a quarter century later, Sandel updates his classic work for an age when democracy's discontent has hardened into a country divided against itself. In this new edition, he extends his account of America's civic struggles from the 1990s to the present. He shows how Democrats and Republicans alike embraced a version of finance-driven globalization that created a society of winners and losers and fueled the toxic politics of our time.

In a work celebrated when first published as a remarkable fusion of philosophical and historical scholarship (Alan Brinkley), Sandel recalls moments in the American past when the country found ways to hold economic power to democratic account. To reinvigorate democracy, Sandel argues in a stirring new epilogue, we need to reconfigure the economy and empower citizens as participants in a shared public life.

A renowned Harvard professor's brilliant, sweeping, inspiring account of the role of justice in our society--and of the moral dilemmas we face as citizens

For Michael Sandel, justice is not a spectator sport, The Nation's reviewer of Justice remarked.

In his acclaimed book--based on his legendary Harvard course--Sandel offers a rare education in thinking through the complicated issues and controversies we face in public life today. It has emerged as a most lucid and engaging guide for those who yearn for a more robust and thoughtful public discourse. In terms we can all understand, wrote Jonathan Rauch in The New York Times, Justice confronts us with the concepts that lurk . . . beneath our conflicts.

Affirmative action, same-sex marriage, physician-assisted suicide, abortion, national service, the moral limits of markets--Sandel relates the big questions of political philosophy to the most vexing issues of the day, and shows how a surer grasp of philosophy can help us make sense of politics, morality, and our own convictions as well.

Justice is lively, thought-provoking, and wise--an essential new addition to the small shelf of books that speak convincingly to the hard questions of our civic life.

A Times Literary Supplement's Book of the Year 2020
A New Statesman's Best Book of 2020
A Bloomberg's Best Book of 2020
A Guardian Best Book About Ideas of 2020

The world-renowned philosopher and author of the bestselling Justice explores the central question of our time: What has become of the common good?

These are dangerous times for democracy. We live in an age of winners and losers, where the odds are stacked in favor of the already fortunate. Stalled social mobility and entrenched inequality give the lie to the American credo that you can make it if you try. The consequence is a brew of anger and frustration that has fueled populist protest and extreme polarization, and led to deep distrust of both government and our fellow citizens--leaving us morally unprepared to face the profound challenges of our time.

World-renowned philosopher Michael J. Sandel argues that to overcome the crises that are upending our world, we must rethink the attitudes toward success and failure that have accompanied globalization and rising inequality. Sandel shows the hubris a meritocracy generates among the winners and the harsh judgement it imposes on those left behind, and traces the dire consequences across a wide swath of American life. He offers an alternative way of thinking about success--more attentive to the role of luck in human affairs, more conducive to an ethic of humility and solidarity, and more affirming of the dignity of work. The Tyranny of Merit points us toward a hopeful vision of a new politics of the common good.

In What Money Can't Buy, renowned political philosopher Michael J. Sandel rethinks the role that markets and money should play in our society.

Should we pay children to read books or to get good grades? Should we put a price on human life to decide how much pollution to allow? Is it ethical to pay people to test risky new drugs or to donate their organs? What about hiring mercenaries to fight our wars, outsourcing inmates to for-profit prisons, auctioning admission to elite universities, or selling citizenship to immigrants willing to pay?

In his New York Times bestseller What Money Can't Buy, Michael J. Sandel takes up one of the biggest ethical questions of our time: Isn't there something wrong with a world in which everything is for sale? If so, how can we prevent market values from reaching into spheres of life where they don't belong? What are the moral limits of markets?

Over recent decades, market values have crowded out nonmarket norms in almost every aspect of life. Without quite realizing it, Sandel argues, we have drifted from having a market economy to being a market society.

In Justice, an international bestseller, Sandel showed himself to be a master at illuminating, with clarity and verve, the hard moral questions we confront in our everyday lives. Now, in What Money Can't Buy, he provokes a debate that's been missing in our market-driven age: What is the proper role of markets in a democratic society, and how can we protect the moral and civic goods that markets do not honor and money cannot buy?

Justice brings together in one indispensable volume essential readings on justice and moral reasoning. With readings from major thinkers from the classical era up to the present, the collection provides a thematic overview of the concept of justice. Moreover, Sandel's organization of the readings and his own commentaries allow readers to engage with a variety of pressing contemporary issues. Looking at a host of ethical dilemmas, including affirmative action, conscription, income distribution, and gay rights, from a variety of angles--morally, legally, politically--the collection engages with the core concerns of political philosophy: individual rights and the claims of community, equality and inequality, morality and law, and ultimately, justice. With concise section introductions that put the readings in context, this anthology is an invaluable tool for students, teachers, and anyone who wishes to engage in the great moral debates that have animated politics from classical times to our own.

Sandel explores a paramount question of our era: how to extend the power and promise of biomedical science to overcome debility without compromising our humanity. His arguments are acute and penetrating, melding sound logic with compassion.
--Jerome Groopman, author of How Doctors Think

Breakthroughs in genetics present us with a promise and a predicament. The promise is that we will soon be able to treat and prevent a host of debilitating diseases. The predicament is that our newfound genetic knowledge may enable us to manipulate our nature--to enhance our genetic traits and those of our children. Although most people find at least some forms of genetic engineering disquieting, it is not easy to articulate why. What is wrong with re-engineering our nature?

The Case against Perfection explores these and other moral quandaries connected with the quest to perfect ourselves and our children. Michael Sandel argues that the pursuit of perfection is flawed for reasons that go beyond safety and fairness. The drive to enhance human nature through genetic technologies is objectionable because it represents a bid for mastery and dominion that fails to appreciate the gifted character of human powers and achievements. Carrying us beyond familiar terms of political discourse, this book contends that the genetic revolution will change the way philosophers discuss ethics and will force spiritual questions back onto the political agenda.

In order to grapple with the ethics of enhancement, we need to confront questions largely lost from view in the modern world. Since these questions verge on theology, modern philosophers and political theorists tend to shrink from them. But our new powers of biotechnology make these questions unavoidable. Addressing them is the task of this book, by one of America's preeminent moral and political thinkers.

In this book, Michael Sandel takes up some of the hotly contested moral and political issues of our time, including affirmative action, assisted suicide, abortion, gay rights, stem cell research, the meaning of toleration and civility, the gap between rich and poor, the role of markets, and the place of religion in public life. He argues that the most prominent ideals in our political life--individual rights and freedom of choice--do not by themselves provide an adequate ethic for a democratic society. Sandel calls for a politics that gives greater emphasis to citizenship, community, and civic virtue, and that grapples more directly with questions of the good life. Liberals often worry that inviting moral and religious argument into the public sphere runs the risk of intolerance and coercion. These essays respond to that concern by showing that substantive moral discourse is not at odds with progressive public purposes, and that a pluralist society need not shrink from engaging the moral and religious convictions that its citizens bring to public life.

A liberal society seeks not to impose a single way of life, but to leave its citizens as free as possible to choose their own values and ends. It therefore must govern by principles of justice that do not presuppose any particular vision of the good life. But can any such principles be found? And if not, what are the consequences for justice as a moral and political ideal? These are the questions Michael Sandel takes up in this penetrating critique of contemporary liberalism. This new edition includes a new introduction and a new final chapter in which Professor Sandel responds to the later work of John Rawls.

In the West, Harvard philosopher Michael Sandel is a thinker of unusual prominence. In China, he's a phenomenon, greeted by vast crowds. China Daily reports that he has acquired a popularity usually reserved for Hollywood movie stars. China Newsweek declared him the most influential foreign figure of the year. In Sandel the Chinese have found a guide through the ethical dilemmas created by the nation's swift embrace of a market economy--a guide whose communitarian ideas resonate with aspects of China's own rich and ancient philosophical traditions.

Chinese citizens often describe a sense that, in sprinting ahead, they have bounded past whatever barriers once held back the forces of corruption and moral disregard. The market economy has lifted millions from poverty but done little to define ultimate goals for individuals or the nation. Is the market all there is? In this context, Sandel's charismatic, interactive lecturing style, which roots moral philosophy in real-world scenarios, has found an audience struggling with questions of their responsibility to one another.

Encountering China brings together leading experts in Confucian and Daoist thought to explore the connections and tensions revealed in this unlikely episode of Chinese engagement with the West. The result is a profound examination of diverse ideas about the self, justice, community, gender, and public good. With a foreword by Evan Osnos that considers Sandel's fame and the state of moral dialogue in China, the book will itself be a major contribution to the debates that Sandel sparks in East and West alike.

A classic collection of writings on political philosophy from leading thinkers of the late 20th century

Much contemporary political philosophy has been a debate between utilitarianism on the one hand and Kantian, or rights-based ethics on the other. However, in recent decades liberalism has faced a growing challenge from a different direction, from a view that argues for a deeper understanding of citizenship and community than the liberal ethic allows.

The writings collected in this volume present leading statements of rights-based liberalism and of the communitarian, or civic republican alternatives to that position. With contributions from leading theorists such as Isaiah Berlin, John Rawls, Alasdair MacIntyre, Liberalism and Its Critics shifts the focus from the familiar debate between utilitarians and Kantian liberals to consider a more powerful challenge to the rights-based ethic--a challenge indebted to Aristotle, Hegel, and the civic republican tradition.

El profesor de filosofía más famoso del mundo, analiza el fracaso del sistema meritocrático y aborda la pregunta más importante de nuestra época: qué ha sido del bien común?

Las sociedades occidentales padecen dos males relacionados, la desigualdad económica y la polarización política. En el marasmo resultante, parece que hemos perdido de vista la noción clave del bien común. En esta obra fundamental, Michael J. Sandel se plantea cómo recuperarla.

Cuando solo hay ganadores y perdedores y la movilidad social se ha atascado, resulta inevitable la combinación de ira y frustración que alimenta la polarización y la protesta populista, además de reducir la confianza en las instituciones y en nuestros conciudadanos. Así no podemos hacer frente moralmente a los retos actuales.

Sandel, premio princesa de Asturias de Ciencias Sociales y uno de los filósofos más prestigiosos de nuestra época, sostiene que para superar las crisis que asedian nuestras sociedades hemos de repensar las ideas de éxito y fracaso que han acompañado la globalización y el aumento de la desigualdad. La meritocracia genera una complacencia nociva entre los ganadores e impone una sentencia muy dura sobre los perdedores. Sandel defiende otra manera de pensar el éxito, más atenta al papel de la suerte, más acorde con una ética de la humildad y la solidaridad y más reivindicativa de la dignidad del trabajo. Con esos mimbres morales, La tiranía del mérito presenta una visión esperanzadora de una nueva política centrada por fin en el bien común.

ENGLISH DESCRIPTION

A Times Literary Supplement's Book of the Year 2020
A New Statesman's Best Book of 2020
A Bloomberg's Best Book of 2020
A Guardian Best Book About Ideas of 2020

The world-renowned philosopher and author of the bestselling Justice explores the central question of our time: What has become of the common good?

These are dangerous times for democracy. We live in an age of winners and losers, where the odds are stacked in favor of the already fortunate. Stalled social mobility and entrenched inequality give the lie to the American credo that you can make it if you try. The consequence is a brew of anger and frustration that has fueled populist protest and extreme polarization, and led to deep distrust of both government and our fellow citizens--leaving us morally unprepared to face the profound challenges of our time.

World-renowned philosopher Michael J. Sandel argues that to overcome the crises that are upending our world, we must rethink the attitudes toward success and failure that have accompanied globalization and rising inequality. Sandel shows the hubris a meritocracy generates among the winners and the harsh judgement it imposes on those left behind and traces the dire consequences across a wide swath of American life. He offers an alternative way of thinking about success--more attentive to the role of luck in human affairs, more conducive to an ethic of humility and solidarity, and more affirming of the dignity of work. The Tyranny of Merit points us toward a hopeful vision of a new politics of the common good.

Un extraordinario ensayo que nos muestra cu l es el papel adecuado de los mercados en una sociedad.

PREMIO PRINCESA DE ASTURIAS DE CIENCIAS SOCIALES 2018

Deber amos pagar a los ni os para que lean libros o saquen buenas notas? Deber amos permitir que las empresas compren el derecho a contaminar el medio ambiente? Es tico pagar a gente para probar nuevos medicamentos peligrosos o para donar sus rganos? Y contratar mercenarios que luchen por nosotros? O vender la ciudadan a a los inmigrantes que quieran pagar?

En Lo que el dinero no puede comprar, Michael J. Sandel se plantea una de las mayores cuestiones ticas de nuestro tiempo: hay algo malo en que todo est a la venta? Si es as , c mo podemos impedir que los valores del mercado alcancen esferas de la sociedad donde no deben estar? Cu les son los l mites morales del mercado? En las ltimas d cadas, los valores del mercado han expulsado a las dem s normas en casi todos los aspectos de la vida cotidiana - medicina, educaci n, gobierno, ley, arte, deporte, incluso la vida familiar y las relaciones personales. Sin darnos cuenta, dice Sandel, hemos pasado de tener una econom a de mercado a ser una sociedad de mercado. Es eso lo que queremos ser?

Si en su extraordinario libro Justicia Sandel demostr su maestr a a la hora de explicar con claridad y vigor las duras cuestiones morales que afrontamos en el d a a d a, en este nuevo libro provoca una discusi n esencial que en esta era dominada por el mercado necesitamos tener: cu l es el papel adecuado de los mercados en una sociedad democr tica y c mo podemos proteger los bienes morales y c vicos que los mercados ignoran y que el dinero no puede comprar.

ENGLISH DESCRIPTION

A renowned political philosopher rethinks the role that markets and money should play in our society

Should we pay children to read books or to get good grades? Should we put a price on human life to decide how much pollution to allow? Is it ethical to pay people to test risky new drugs or to donate their organs? What about hiring mercenaries to fight our wars, outsourcing inmates to for-profit prisons, auctioning admission to elite universities, or selling citizenship to immigrants willing to pay?

In his New York Times bestseller What Money Can't Buy, Michael J. Sandel takes up one of the biggest ethical questions of our time: Isn't there something wrong with a world in which everything is for sale? If so, how can we prevent market values from reaching into spheres of life where they don't belong? What are the moral limits of markets?

In recent decades, market values have crowded out nonmarket norms in almost every aspect of life. Without quite realizing it, Sandel argues, we have drifted from having a market economy to being a market society.

In Justice, an international bestseller, Sandel showed himself to be a master at illuminating, with clarity and verve, the hard moral questions we confront in our everyday lives. Now, in What Money Can't Buy, he provokes a debate that's been missing in our market-driven age: What is the proper role of markets in a democratic society, and how can we protect the moral and civic goods that markets do not honor and money cannot buy?

Una recopilaci n de ensayos imprescindible sobre la moral en pol tica.

En este libro, Michael Sandel aborda algunos de los temas morales y pol ticos m s controvertidos de nuestro tiempo, incluidos el suicidio asistido, el aborto, la investigaci n con c lulas madre, la brecha entre ricos y pobres, el papel de los mercados y el lugar de la religi n en la vida pol tica. Sostiene que los ideales m s prominentes en nuestra vida pol tica, los derechos individuales y la libertad de elecci n, no proporcionan por s mismos una tica adecuada para una sociedad democr tica. Estos ensayos demuestran que el discurso moral no est re ido con los prop sitos progresivos, y que una sociedad pluralista no necesita evitar involucrarse en las convicciones morales y religiosas que sus ciudadanos aportan a la vida p blica.

ENGLISH DESCRIPTION

In this book, Michael Sandel takes up some of the hotly contested moral and political issues of our time, including affirmative action, assisted suicide, abortion, gay rights, stem cell research, the meaning of toleration and civility, the gap between rich and poor, the role of markets, and the place of religion in public life.

He argues that the most prominent ideals in our political life--individual rights and freedom of choice--do not by themselves provide an adequate ethic for a democratic society. Sandel calls for a politics that gives greater emphasis to citizenship, community, and civic virtue, and that grapples more directly with questions of the good life.

Liberals often worry that inviting moral and religious argument into the public sphere runs the risk of intolerance and coercion. These essays respond to that concern by showing that substantive moral discourse is not at odds with progressive public purposes, and that a pluralist society need not shrink from engaging the moral and religious convictions that its citizens bring to public life.

A liberal society seeks not to impose a single way of life, but to leave its citizens as free as possible to choose their own values and ends. It therefore must govern by principles of justice that do not presuppose any particular vision of the good life. But can any such principles be found? And if not, what are the consequences for justice as a moral and political ideal? These are the questions Michael Sandel takes up in this penetrating critique of contemporary liberalism. This new edition includes a new introduction and a new final chapter in which Professor Sandel responds to the later work of John Rawls.