Michael J Sandel (1953–) is a professor of political philosophy at Harvard University. He is best known as an advocate of communitarianism — a position opposed to what it perceives as the excesses of liberalism and one which stresses the importance of community and civil society. In this essay (published 1984), Sandel criticizes what he sees as Kantian / Rawlsian foundations of American liberalism, arguing that it is in some way responsible for the detachment many people feel from politics and their communities. ### Introduction In this essay, Sandel will explore and evaluate the political philosophy implicit in our practices and institutions. ### tl;dr Michael Sandel discusses the liberal vision that prioritizes justice, fairness, and individual rights over a collective notion of the “good.” In a phrase, "the right is prior to the good." Sandel notes that this vision has a strong philosophical appeal but ultimately fails to stand up to scrutiny. The reason for both its allure and its failure, according to Sandel, lies in the concept of the “unencumbered self,” an idea of the individual as a wholly autonomous moral agent. ## Summary Liberalism emphasizes justice, fairness, and individual rights. Liberalisms core thesis: > “…a just society seeks not to promote any particular ends, but enables its citizens to pursue their own ends, consistent with a similar liberty for all” > > “What justifies these principles above all is not that they maximize the general welfare, or cultivate virtue, or promote the good, but rather they conform to the concept of *right*, a moral category given prior to the good, and independent of it. Liberalism doesn’t aim for a particular end (“good”) but instead seeks to provide a framework within which citizens can pursue their own values and ends. This ideal might be summed up as, “the right is prior to the good.” | “The right is prior to the good” | |--------------------------------------------------------------| | The philosophical principle that, in a society with different beliefs about what’s morally or ethically good (e.g., religious beliefs, personal morals), what’s “right” or just takes precedence. (e.g., freedom of speech or the right to vote.) | Sandel notes three striking facts about this claim: 1. It has a compelling philosophical appeal. 2. However, prioritizing the right over the good fails under scrutiny. 3. Despite it’s problems, it’s the liberal vision in which we live our lives today. At the heart of this liberal ethic lies a vision of “the unencumbered self”, that both inspires us and undoes us. ### Kantian Foundations According to both Kant and Rawls, justice should be the priority independent of personal desire or notions of happiness. This insists on an independent, objective foundation for justice. However, it’s unclear where such could come from. > The liberal ethic asserts the priority of right, and seeks principles of justice that do not presuppose any particular conception of the good. This is what Kant means by the supremacy of the moral law, and what Rawls means when he writes that “justice is the first virtue of social institutions.” Justice is more than just another value. It provides the framework that regulates the play of competing values and ends; it must therefore have a sanction independent of those ends. But it is not obvious where such a sanction could be found. The basis for universal moral law (the categorical imperative), according to Kant, is found in the subject’s capacity for for autonomous will, rather than any empirical reasoning. To establish a more practical foundation for justice and rights that is prior to the good, Rawls aims to modernize Kant’s abstract transcendental idealism through the more practical and empirical “original position” thought experiment. > [Rawls] wants to save the priority of right from the obscurity of the transcendental subject. > [\…] "To develop a viable Kantian conception of justice," Rawls writes, "the force and content of Kant's doctrine must be detached from its background in transcendental idealism" and recast within the "canons of a reasonable empiricism. | John Rawls’ “Original Position” | |--------------------------------------------------------------| | Rawls conceived of the “original position” as a thought experiment to help us think about how to build a just society. In the original position, you are tasked with setting laws and structuring society, with one important catch: you won’t know what your position in society will be. This includes your wealth, gender, race, abilities, or even your interests. According to Rawls, this compels individuals to be reasonable and fair in their assessments. | This calculation presupposes a person for whom justice is the first virtue. This is “the unencumbered self”— a person separate from, and not defined by, their own role or desires. Instead, what matters most to this self is the *capacity to choose* rather than the actual choices. Under this formulation, the self is prior to its ends and therefore the right is prior to the good. | Explaining the self being prior to its ends | |---------------------------------------------| | Sandel argues against the liberal idea that individuals are independent entities who choose their own goals and values. In this view, the self is seen as existing before and independently of its purposes, desires, and social roles. In a liberal framework, a person choosing a career is seen as independent of their social context. However, Sandel would argue that this choice is deeply influenced by their upbringing, culture, and community values. | The vision of the unencumbered self is at once both liberating and limiting. It allows us to join communities by choice but also limits our ability to belong to communities that define us morally. It envisions ourselves as independent agents freed from natural and social confines, the authors of our own aims and moral meaning. However, Sandel questions whether this self-image can fully capture the complexities of our moral and political existence. ### Justice and Community Rawls articulates two main principles of justice: 1. Universal equal liberties guaranteeing basic rights. 2. Social or economic inequalities should benefit the least advantaged members of society. (The “Difference Principle.”) With these two principles, Rawls is critically engaging two predominant ethical alternatives: utilitarianism and libertarianism. In Rawls’ view, utilitarianism flattens and ignores the diversity of desires and aims in society into a single utility-maximizing function. This can treat people as a means to an end and sacrifice them for some “greater good”. Thus, Rawls emphasizes basic liberties for all. Libertarianism, on the other hand, fails to acknowledge the arbitrary distribution of fortune. They hold a meritocratic view, believing that outcomes from an efficient market economy are just, and so oppose redistribution. Rawls opposes this by underscoring the moral arbitrariness in the distribution of talents and assets; some are lucky and some are unlucky. Thus, he advocates for a more collective social responsibility. However, Sandel critiques the difference principle, contending that it doesn’t offer compelling rationale for why society should redistribute “accidental” talents or wealth. It assumes a communal obligation to redistribution without justifying why such a moral community should exist. In the end, the difference principle paradoxically treats individuals as means towards collective ends, thereby undermining its liberal foundations prioritizing individuality and freedom. > “For there is no reason to think that their location in society's province or, for that matter, within the province of humankind, is any less arbitrary from a moral point of view. And if their arbitrariness within me makes them ineligible to serve my ends, there seems no obvious reason why their arbitrariness within any particular society should not make them ineligible to serve that society's ends as well.” > > “Short of the constitutive conception, deploying an individual's assets for the sake of the common good would seem an offense against the “plurality and distinctness" of individuals this liberalism seeks above all to secure.” According to Sandel, there’s a tension between communal redistributive ethics and liberal ideals that uphold individual rights as the highest form of justice. Put concretely, imagine you’ve earned $1000 through hard work. Liberal justice would argue for your right to own and keep it. But, oppositely, the difference principle would advocate for it to be redistributed to the less fortunate. Sandel elaborates by claiming that the liberal focus on individual autonomy often betrays a life of moral richness and depth of character earned through community and collective goals. The unencumbered self is alienated from its own history, emotionally distant, and unable to form healthy relationships. > Denied the expansive self-understandings that could shape a common life, the liberal self is left to lurch between detachment on the one hand, and entanglement on the other. Such is the fate of the unencumbered self, and its liberating promise. ### The Procedural Republic Sandel considers a counter-argument: Is he asking too much from a community on the scale of a nation-state? The liberal project has run its course from the New Deal and into the present, yet it seems to have created a paradox: Despite increased individual rights and state intervention, both individuals and the state appear increasingly powerless to affect change. > On the one hand, increasing numbers of citizens view the state as an overly intrusive presence, more likely to frustrate their purposes than advance them. And yet, despite its unprecedented role in the economy and society, the modern state seems itself disempowered, unable effectively to control the domestic economy, to respond to persisting social ills, or to work America's will in the world. The story of the procedural republic has roots in the founding of the United States but experienced a crucial shift at the start of the 20th century. As the economy grew and became more centralized, so too did the political power of the country. This culminated in the New Deal, when American liberalism shifted from focusing on small-scale, decentralized democratic communities to embracing concentrated, centralized power and a strong national identity as essential for modern governance. However, by the mid-to-late twentieth century, the national republic proved too large a scale to maintain a meaningful community. Thus began the shift from a governance of shared goals to one of fair procedures and individual rights, from a national republic to a procedural republic. | Defining “The Procedural Republic” | |------------------------------------| | | ### Our Present Predicament The shift from a national republic to a procedural republic brought about two broad trends: 1. A limiting of democratic possibilities, 2. An undermining of the type of community it relies on. In the procedural republic, liberty is defined in opposition to democracy, as an individual’s guarantee against the majority’s will. Power nationalized as individual rights gained supremacy and were seen as requiring protection from the whims of small-scale, decentralized community. Power shifts away from democratic institutions (such as legislatures and political parties) and toward institutions designed to be insulated from democratic pressures, and hence better equipped to dispense and defend individual rights (notably the judiciary and bureaucracy).