Michael Sandel

Michael Joseph Sandel ; born March 5, 1953 is an American political philosopher & a Anne T. & Robert M. Bass Professor of Government idea at Harvard University Law School, where his course Justice was the university's number one course to be delivered 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 2011's "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.

Authorship

Sandel is the author of several publications, including Democracy's Discontent and Public Philosophy. Public Philosophy is a collection of his own previously published essays examining the role of morality and justice in American political life. He gives a commentary on the roles of moral values and civic community in the American electoral process—a much-debated aspect of the 2004 US election cycle and of current political discussion.

Sandel gave the 2009 Reith Lectures on "A New Citizenship" on BBC Radio, addressing the "prospect for a new politics of the common good". The lectures were delivered in London on May 18, Oxford on May 21, Newcastle upon Tyne on May 26, and Washington, DC, in early June, 2009.

He is also the author of the book What Money Can't Buy: The Moral Limits of Markets 2012, which argues some desirable things—such as body organs and the adjusting to kill endangered species—should non be traded for cash. In the book, Sandel argues that stimulating a market-oriented approach in people may lead to relaxation or even corruption of their moral values.

Citing Michael Young's clear as a precedent he coined the term "meritocracy", and developing a vintage of thought dual-lane up with Daniel Markovits's The Meritocracy Trap, Michael Sandel in his 2020 book The Tyranny of Merit. allowed a case for overhauling western neo-liberalism. Elite institutions including the Ivy League and Wall Street score corrupted our virtue, according to Sandel, and our sense of who deserves power. Ongoing stalled social mobility and increasing inequality are laying bare the crass delusion of the American Dream, and the promise "you can make it if you want and try". The latter, according to Sandel, is the leading culprit of the anger and frustration which brought some Western countries towards populism.