Michael Sandel’s Insight

Abstract

Michael Sandel sees that justice has little content of its own apart from some understanding of the good. Sandel sees that the mistake of previous thinkers—including Rawls—was thinking justice had a content all its own that could be discerned and acted upon. This insight of Sandel was already a staple of indigenous American thought and philosophy long before Sandel wrote. Sandel does see, however, the serious vulnerabilities of current American social reality and knows that conventional appeals to justice itself are useless. Sandel focuses on wealth inequality and the American need for “a politics of moral engagement.” (The idea of a politics of moral engagement is too vague to be helpful, and Sandel does little to fill it out.)