Michael
Sandel’s Public Philosophy is a remarkable collection of essays, the
topics of which range from the civic significance of sports to moral
permissibility of stem cell research, and from the analysis of liberal and
republican notions of freedom to a critique of John Rawls’s political
liberalism.  The underlying philosophical theme of Public Philosophy is
the role of value-theory in political reasoning.  The essays explore this theme
in a number of ways:  first, Sandel aims to provide an analysis of the use that
the branches of current political philosophy make of moral and religious
arguments; second, he develops a number of objections to the standpoint from
which contemporary liberal theory engages issues in politics, the standpoint
that divorces the questions concerning the good life from political inquiry;
finally, based on his criticism of liberalism and drawing from the American
political tradition, Sandel defends an alternative approach to justification in
politics and argues that it is not only possible but also necessary to let
arguments in political philosophy rest on a set of our substantive moral and
religious commitments.

Public
Philosophy consists of three
heterogeneous parts, each of which provides a unique contribution to Sandel’s
argument.  Part I — "American Civic Life" — sets to accomplish two
tasks.  On the one hand, Sandel provides an insightful excurse into the history
of American democracy with the view to show that in it various routes of
political justification (from conservative to early liberal) "drew
powerfully on moral, religious, and spiritual sources" (4) and that,
consequently, the contemporary liberals’ commitment to neutrality is a relatively
new philosophical phenomenon.  On the other hand, Sandel discusses how
"liberalism lost its moral and civil voice" (4) and argues
that it is nonetheless possible for liberalism to regain its reliance on the
resources of value-theory and to "rejuvenate" the tradition in
political philosophy that does not shy away from issues such as the nature of
the good life, civic duties, and moral ideals.  "American Civic Life"
is rich in analyses of philosophical concepts central to political liberalism.
(These analyses pave the road to Sandel’s theoretical objections to political
liberalism developed in Part III of the book — "Liberalism, Pluralism,
and Community".)  Most importantly, it is the (related) concepts of freedom
and of a person (or self) that come to the fore of Sandel’s
exposition.  Political liberalism today, Sandel argues, rests on the
understanding of freedom as the capacity to choose one’s ends for oneself;
furthermore, the self is understood as "prior to and independent of its
purposes and ends" (162).  Such understanding of freedom and self, Sandel
points out, is a recent departure from interpreting freedom as "sharing in
self-government" (10) and from interpreting the self as a "member of
community, bound by moral ties" (163).

Building
on the analyses of Part I, Part II of Public Philosophy — "Moral
and Political Arguments" — aims to bring to light the prominent
justificational problems that political liberalism faces today.  "Moral
and Political Arguments" considers many of the most widely discussed
topics in present day politics.  In a set of fourteen short essays, Sandel
takes a look at such diverse issues as affirmative action, abortion, gay
rights, pollution permits, presidential lying, and criminal punishment.  This
diversity of topics is bound together by the common question:  Can the new
liberal understanding of freedom and of the self provide an adequate basis for
a reasoned position on these hotly debated topics?  Or, as Sandel himself puts
it:  Can such liberal ideals as individual rights and freedom of choice
constitute "an adequate basis for a democratic society?"  The essays
in "Moral and Political Arguments" persuasively show that a sound
argument for (or against) policies concerning affirmative action, abortion,
etc. ought to rest on a wider basis than this and ought to consider such
notions as the common good, virtue, and the good life. 
Liberal arguments, on the other hand, in trying to do away with these important
notions and in trying to rely merely on the notions of individual rights and freedom,
fail to provide adequate justifications for the policies that they advocate.

In
fact, one of Sandel’s central arguments is to the conclusion that a liberal
standpoint cannot help but "betray a certain view of what makes life worth
living" (114) in spite of the liberals’ alleged commitment to neutrality
when it comes to the questions about the good life.  One of the most remarkable
essays in Part II — "Is there a Right to Assisted Suicide?" —
presents an especially strong case in support of this claim.  The essay’s focal
point is Sandel’s criticism of the famous "Philosophers’ Brief" filed
jointly by Ronald Dworkin, Thomas Nagel, Robert Nozick, John Rawls, Thomas
Scanlon, and Judith Jarvis Thomson ("the Dream Team of liberal political
philosophy") in defense of the right to physician-assisted suicide.  While
the brief’s argument is presented in terms of the commitment to government’s
neutrality on moral and religious questions, the argument implicitly rests on a
certain view concerning the good life or a "life that is worth
living".  The amici
curiae argue that the right
to physician-assisted suicide ought to be protected by a government which is
impartial with respect to a person’s conception of the good life, since death
(as the "final act of life’s drama") must reflect the person’s own
convictions.  Without this right, the argument goes, a person can no longer
make "choices central to personal dignity and autonomy" and the
government that denies its citizens this fundamental right imposes on them a certain
conception of what makes life worth living, a conception the citizens might not
share.  In response to this, Sandel points out that, instead of being neutral,
the argument essentially presupposes a certain view of the good life: 
"according to this view, the best way to live and die is to do so
deliberately [and] autonomously" (114).

What
can we learn from analyses of liberal justification of the right to
physician-assisted suicide, abortion, affirmative action, etc?  The lessons,
according to Sandel, are at least two:  first, liberal justification (in spite
of its explicit claims to the contrary) is value-laden and is based on a
conception of the good life that liberal philosophers (explicitly or
implicitly) hold to be privileged; second, political discourse ought not and
cannot be separated from other value-considerations (such as moral and
religious concerns).  Consequently, Part III of Public Philosophy —
"Liberalism, Pluralism, and Community" — aims to show that
"pluralistic society need not shrink from engaging the moral and religious
convictions its citizens bring to public life" (5).  The essays in
"Liberalism, Pluralism, and Community" have a twofold purpose.  On
the one hand, Sandel’s project is critical of liberalism in general and John
Rawls’s political liberalism in particular.  Sandel provides compelling
considerations that target both the validity and the soundness of Rawls’s
arguments in A Theory of Justice and in his later Political
Liberalism.  On the other hand, Sandel argues that it is possible to be
committed to pluralism and still to engage political questions from moral and
religious points of view.  In fact, Sandel acknowledges that Rawls’s justice as
fairness does have the conceptual resources to deal with pluralism in a way that
does not "bracket" moral and religious concerns from political
inquiry.

One
particularly interesting argument (from the essay "Political
Liberalism") combines both lines of thought.  In this argument, Sandel
first considers Rawls’s conception of the "fact of reasonable
pluralism":  while Rawls rightly acknowledges the plurality of
reasonable conceptions in morality and religion, Sandel argues, Rawls wrongly
assumes there is no "fact of reasonable pluralism" concerning justice. 
According to Sandel, we ought to take seriously the different philosophical
conceptions of justice in politics, conceptions that are irreconcilable but are
nonetheless (for the most part) reasonable.  Modern societies, "are
teeming with disagreements about justice" (232) both on theoretical level
(e.g., Rawls contra Nozick) and with respect to more practical issues
(e.g., debates about taxation, health care, immigration, etc.)  According to
Sandel, instead of defending justice as fairness as the approach to
issues in social, economic, and political justice, Rawls ought to have
recognized the plurality of conceptions of justice itself.  Sandel points out
(charitably enough to Political Liberalism) that Rawlsian conception of
philosophical justification does allow for dealing with the "fact of
reasonable pluralism" in justice:  the method of reflective equilibrium
(which Rawls advocates) can be used for conflict-resolution in issues of
theoretical and applied justice.

The
diversity of topics and arguments discussed in Public Philosophy serves
a dual purpose:  on the one hand, it allows the reader to take a look at a wide
range of issues and to compare liberal and communitarian takes on each of them;
on the other hand, Public Philosophy unites this diversity by a common
thread of subtle criticisms of political liberalism.  Political liberalism,
Sandel argues, does not have the conceptual resources to provide adequate
justification for its main tenets and of particular policies that it
advocates:  values such as individual rights, freedom of choice, and autonomy
are insufficient for serving as a foundation for sound arguments in politics. 
Furthermore, liberal justification oftentimes helps itself to the kinds of
arguments that it claims to avoid, arguments such as we saw in amici curiae defense
of the right to the physician-assisted suicide.  Implicitly, arguments such as
this rely on a liberal conception of the good life.  Sandel argues that,
instead of privileging this conception under the guise of neutrality, liberals
ought to recognize that it is one of many reasonable conceptions of the
good.  The two lines of criticism above are explored in detail and from
different angles in the essays in Public Philosophy.  Unfortunately, the
two lines of criticism are not brought into connection with one another (if
Sandel believes that such connection exists) and oftentimes they are not
separated from one another quite clearly.  Thus, Sandel argues that
liberalism’s restriction on what considerations can be admitted into political
discussion "impoverishes political discourse and rules out important
dimensions of public deliberation" (224) — which shows the moral poverty
of liberalism.  But at the same time Sandel argues that liberal arguments,
which are allegedly neutral with respect to the question of the good life,
oftentimes "presuppose the answer to this question" (133).  The
reader is now challenged to determine whether there is a relation between these
two claims and what this relation amounts to.

Sandel’s
Public Philosophy is a thought-provoking collection of essays that would
enrich anyone who is interested in political philosophy (classical and
contemporary), political theory, or politics.  The essays are lucid enough to
engage a reader who is not well-versed in the texts that lay at the foundation
of Sandel’s arguments and are the targets of his criticisms.  However, this
philosophical lucidity does not detract from the depth of Sandel’s arguments
and a professional Rawls scholar will learn quite a few lessons from Public
Philosophy.

© 2006 Tatiana Patrone

Tatiana Patrone, PhD,
Visiting Assistant Professor, Department of Philosophy, University of Arkansas

Categories: Philosophical, Ethics