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fredreadinghistory's review against another edition
4.0
由电车难题出发，发散出三种讨论公正的方式：功利主义，自由选择，公益。从亚里士多德，到边沁、洛克、卢梭，再到罗尔斯、麦金泰尔，再加上奥巴马与肯尼迪，了解了过去争论的脉络，才知道今日民主社会议题的焦点所在。探讨很深入，很有启发。
milavmossel's review against another edition
Finished the course I had to read this for. Didn't feel like finishing it.
pascalibrary's review against another edition
4.0
Morality is really complicated. Deciding which action is best can be extremely tough, especially if there are multiple competing ethical principles. This gets even harder when organizing a society. How should it be organized, and on what principles? Justice by Michael Sandel attempts to answer exactly this question. Does he succeed? Like morality, it's complicated.
The majority of the book is an exploration of various competing moral theories. Utilitarianism goes first. As an economics major, I must confess that I have a soft spot for Utilitarianism. It certainly lacks the glamor of the other theories in the book, but I find that it reflects everyday ethics more than the others. Michael Sandel does not agree, and for good reason. Utilitarianism can very easily lead to exploitation and prejudice when applied. He refers to a book by Ursula K. Le Guin that illustrated this objection. In this story, a prosperous utopia apparently depends on the extreme suffering of one individual. This injustice is permitted on utilitarian grounds. Basically, it seems to leave no room for fundamental human rights. This is so egregious that human lives can apparently be calculated to the dollar, which violates so much of our intuitive ethical feelings. Even John Stuart Mill couldn't avoid reasoning certain basic things without invoking rights, which can’t be explained through utility-based reasoning.
After this, Sandel goes through an interesting exploration of libertarian theory and certain market interactions. I honestly didn't expect to rethink so much of what I had previously thought, but this part made me do it. Should the military hire foreigners? Should surrogacy for babies be allowed? Should we be allowed to sell organs? Can we opt to be cannibalized? It's hard to say, but the issues are certainly less clear-cut than I thought. The core of the libertarian theory is self-ownership, earnings, and responsibility. These are compelling ideas but Sandel eviscerates them through examinations of moral luck, and a few other ideas.
After this is Kant, which was definitely my favorite part of the book. Kant's moral theory has always struck me as incredibly interesting. It’s a titan of enlightenment thought and Sandel largely does it justice. I don’t have much to say on it because I want to read his Groundwork before I really try to explain and criticize it.
Rawls is up next, and this is one of the weaker portions. I feel like I barely even know any of what Rawls actually thinks. A Theory of Justice is a massive and influential book, so I doubt that Sandel was suffering from a lack of information. Kant's Groundwork is tiny compared to Rawls's Theory, but Sandel had much more to say about Kant. The most I can tell is that he continues Kant’s project of rights and based his political philosophy on abstract, contract-based principles. Rawls imagined a group of people who were supposed to organize a just society, but they didn’t know what positions they would occupy in said society. The outcome of this “veil of ignorance” is that their society would be agreeable to any person regardless of feelings and opinions.
Aristotle comes next and I actually came to like him a lot. His line of moral and political thinking is fundamentally teleological, or about the purpose of things. This opens up more avenues of debate for practically every issue and I really liked that. This also leads Sandel into his own communitarian philosophy.
Sandel's view is that politics cannot be abstracted from everyday life. People have roles, morals, virtues, values, religions, and relationships. The other theories expect people to leave these at the door when designing a society. This is impossible and absurd. You can't separate these things from your political opinions, and confining them to private affairs can only lead to public frustration and superficiality. Sandel thinks we need a community based on solidarity and discussion. We need to unify around a central identity and then debate out what our values should be.
It's a compelling thesis but one that is pretty strange when you consider his applications. In a previous chapter, Sandel seemed to allude to the idea that we should prioritize domestic aid at the expense of foreign aid. He apparently thinks that Robert E. Lee had decent if misguided intentions and that family members can't snitch on each other even if the person being snitched on has committed horrific atrocities. Well, maybe he doesn’t explicitly think these things but they are strange examples to bring up when making a case for something.
These positions are based on the idea that moral weight should be given to relationships with land, family, and country. Okay, fair, but they are hard to justify when these are at the expense of others in such a vast sense. Should we really limit immigration from ailing countries because they will hurt the relatively better-off people in our own country? Sandel defends this by pointing to a few examples where it seems to be morally okay to value one person over another. Like, should a person support his own mother’s hospital bills over some random person? Is it okay to save your own child from drowning at the expense of some other person’s kid? Of course, it is! You may say these things are too subjective, but that's exactly the point. People are people, not bare, abstract entities. Even the existentialist school, who focused on human will so much, emphasized that people are thrown into specific cultural contexts and are raised in certain value systems. Knowing this, it’s weird to think that political theory has tried to see people as bare and unencumbered. Again, it's a compelling idea but it just needs to be expanded upon.
I also think this book suffers from its structure. Justice is REALLY short, and it tries to pack in a lot of information throughout. Because of this, every section suffers from a serious lack of depth, and thus my memory likely won't be filled with Justice's contents for very long. This is okay because I will be doing further reading, but I wish that the book were double the length. More focus on each individual section would have been much appreciated. In the beginning, some controversial questions were introduced which Sandel would partially explore, then tuck away for later because we didn't have enough information yet. These were not sufficiently re-examined and I wish he had saved them for the end. It would have been a great capstone to re-visit all the theories we had explored.
I will say that despite my problems with it, Sandel writes in a very engaging style. I didn’t want to put this book down. It’s highly readable and always interesting. Sometimes, it is even funny.
Good book. A decent introduction to moral and political philosophy. If you’re well-read in these topics, definitely give it a skip. It’ll be unnecessary.
The majority of the book is an exploration of various competing moral theories. Utilitarianism goes first. As an economics major, I must confess that I have a soft spot for Utilitarianism. It certainly lacks the glamor of the other theories in the book, but I find that it reflects everyday ethics more than the others. Michael Sandel does not agree, and for good reason. Utilitarianism can very easily lead to exploitation and prejudice when applied. He refers to a book by Ursula K. Le Guin that illustrated this objection. In this story, a prosperous utopia apparently depends on the extreme suffering of one individual. This injustice is permitted on utilitarian grounds. Basically, it seems to leave no room for fundamental human rights. This is so egregious that human lives can apparently be calculated to the dollar, which violates so much of our intuitive ethical feelings. Even John Stuart Mill couldn't avoid reasoning certain basic things without invoking rights, which can’t be explained through utility-based reasoning.
After this, Sandel goes through an interesting exploration of libertarian theory and certain market interactions. I honestly didn't expect to rethink so much of what I had previously thought, but this part made me do it. Should the military hire foreigners? Should surrogacy for babies be allowed? Should we be allowed to sell organs? Can we opt to be cannibalized? It's hard to say, but the issues are certainly less clear-cut than I thought. The core of the libertarian theory is self-ownership, earnings, and responsibility. These are compelling ideas but Sandel eviscerates them through examinations of moral luck, and a few other ideas.
After this is Kant, which was definitely my favorite part of the book. Kant's moral theory has always struck me as incredibly interesting. It’s a titan of enlightenment thought and Sandel largely does it justice. I don’t have much to say on it because I want to read his Groundwork before I really try to explain and criticize it.
Rawls is up next, and this is one of the weaker portions. I feel like I barely even know any of what Rawls actually thinks. A Theory of Justice is a massive and influential book, so I doubt that Sandel was suffering from a lack of information. Kant's Groundwork is tiny compared to Rawls's Theory, but Sandel had much more to say about Kant. The most I can tell is that he continues Kant’s project of rights and based his political philosophy on abstract, contract-based principles. Rawls imagined a group of people who were supposed to organize a just society, but they didn’t know what positions they would occupy in said society. The outcome of this “veil of ignorance” is that their society would be agreeable to any person regardless of feelings and opinions.
Aristotle comes next and I actually came to like him a lot. His line of moral and political thinking is fundamentally teleological, or about the purpose of things. This opens up more avenues of debate for practically every issue and I really liked that. This also leads Sandel into his own communitarian philosophy.
Sandel's view is that politics cannot be abstracted from everyday life. People have roles, morals, virtues, values, religions, and relationships. The other theories expect people to leave these at the door when designing a society. This is impossible and absurd. You can't separate these things from your political opinions, and confining them to private affairs can only lead to public frustration and superficiality. Sandel thinks we need a community based on solidarity and discussion. We need to unify around a central identity and then debate out what our values should be.
It's a compelling thesis but one that is pretty strange when you consider his applications. In a previous chapter, Sandel seemed to allude to the idea that we should prioritize domestic aid at the expense of foreign aid. He apparently thinks that Robert E. Lee had decent if misguided intentions and that family members can't snitch on each other even if the person being snitched on has committed horrific atrocities. Well, maybe he doesn’t explicitly think these things but they are strange examples to bring up when making a case for something.
These positions are based on the idea that moral weight should be given to relationships with land, family, and country. Okay, fair, but they are hard to justify when these are at the expense of others in such a vast sense. Should we really limit immigration from ailing countries because they will hurt the relatively better-off people in our own country? Sandel defends this by pointing to a few examples where it seems to be morally okay to value one person over another. Like, should a person support his own mother’s hospital bills over some random person? Is it okay to save your own child from drowning at the expense of some other person’s kid? Of course, it is! You may say these things are too subjective, but that's exactly the point. People are people, not bare, abstract entities. Even the existentialist school, who focused on human will so much, emphasized that people are thrown into specific cultural contexts and are raised in certain value systems. Knowing this, it’s weird to think that political theory has tried to see people as bare and unencumbered. Again, it's a compelling idea but it just needs to be expanded upon.
I also think this book suffers from its structure. Justice is REALLY short, and it tries to pack in a lot of information throughout. Because of this, every section suffers from a serious lack of depth, and thus my memory likely won't be filled with Justice's contents for very long. This is okay because I will be doing further reading, but I wish that the book were double the length. More focus on each individual section would have been much appreciated. In the beginning, some controversial questions were introduced which Sandel would partially explore, then tuck away for later because we didn't have enough information yet. These were not sufficiently re-examined and I wish he had saved them for the end. It would have been a great capstone to re-visit all the theories we had explored.
I will say that despite my problems with it, Sandel writes in a very engaging style. I didn’t want to put this book down. It’s highly readable and always interesting. Sometimes, it is even funny.
Good book. A decent introduction to moral and political philosophy. If you’re well-read in these topics, definitely give it a skip. It’ll be unnecessary.
blackjessamine's review against another edition
3.0
Quando sono forzata a leggere qualcosa lo studio, difficilmente mi godo la lettura come farei se fossi spinta solamente dalla curiosità, a prescindere dalla lettura in questione. In questo caso, devo ammettere di non avere avuto troppe difficoltà: "Giustizia" è una lettura agevole e fruibile, dà qualche interessante spunto di riflessione e presenta una panoramica riassuntiva su alcune teorie filosofiche non troppo impegnativa ma sufficiente a orientarsi agevolmente in una riflessione etica sui confini e sulla natura della giustizia.
Certo, in un corso di laurea magistrale è forse un po' riduttivo comprimere Kant in un capitoletto smilzo smilzo, però senza dubbio è un buon modo per far capire a chi invece non si è mai avvicinato a queste tematiche quali sono gli orizzonti di senso di una discussione del genere.
Fra aneddoti ed esempi tratti dalla quotidianità Sandel accompagna il lettore attraverso il pensiero degli utilitaristi, dei libertari, passando per quello di Kant e Aristotele, muovendo critiche e mostrando contraddizioni, fino ad arrivare a discutere di tematiche estremamente attuali. Prende anche una posizione, Sandel, ma lo fa in maniera un po' "comoda", parlando di principi un po' vaghi e generici, senza mai scendere nei dettagli (nelle discussioni etiche non possiamo prescindere dalle nostre convinzioni, dobbiamo ragionare sul bene comune, rafforzare la solidarietà, puntare sul potenziamento dei servizi comunitari...), ma poi tace sulle questioni più dibattute, complesse e compromettenti.
Insomma, avrei apprezzato un maggiore approfondimento filosofico, o per lo meno una più netta presa di posizione, ma tutto sommato si è trattato di una lettura piacevole e per certi versi stimolante.
Certo, in un corso di laurea magistrale è forse un po' riduttivo comprimere Kant in un capitoletto smilzo smilzo, però senza dubbio è un buon modo per far capire a chi invece non si è mai avvicinato a queste tematiche quali sono gli orizzonti di senso di una discussione del genere.
Fra aneddoti ed esempi tratti dalla quotidianità Sandel accompagna il lettore attraverso il pensiero degli utilitaristi, dei libertari, passando per quello di Kant e Aristotele, muovendo critiche e mostrando contraddizioni, fino ad arrivare a discutere di tematiche estremamente attuali. Prende anche una posizione, Sandel, ma lo fa in maniera un po' "comoda", parlando di principi un po' vaghi e generici, senza mai scendere nei dettagli (nelle discussioni etiche non possiamo prescindere dalle nostre convinzioni, dobbiamo ragionare sul bene comune, rafforzare la solidarietà, puntare sul potenziamento dei servizi comunitari...), ma poi tace sulle questioni più dibattute, complesse e compromettenti.
Insomma, avrei apprezzato un maggiore approfondimento filosofico, o per lo meno una più netta presa di posizione, ma tutto sommato si è trattato di una lettura piacevole e per certi versi stimolante.
mkpatt's review against another edition
5.0
An interesting examination into the philosophical bases for many of our policies and laws. I may not always agree with the author's conclusions but he makes compelling arguments. Undeniably an interesting read.