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True justice involves virtue as well as choice.

Dr. Michael J. Sandel is the Anne T. and Robert M. Bass Professor of Government at Harvard University, where he has taught political philosophy since 1980. Two of Professor Sandel’s books – Justice: What’s The Right Thing To Do? & What Money Can’t Buy: The Moral Limits of Markets – should be required reading for every America today (click here for links to them). Below is the definition of “virtue” followed by an excerpt from his book on justice.

virtue: from vertu (c. 1200); moral life and conduct; a particular moral excellence;[i] conformity of one's life and conduct to moral and ethical principles.[ii]

Professor Sandel:

The great questions of political philosophy are:

Does a just society seek to promote the virtue of its citizens? Or should law be neutral toward competing conceptions of virtue, so that citizens can be free to choose for themselves the best way to live?

According to the textbook account, this question divides ancient and modern political thought. In one important respect, the textbook is right. Aristotle teaches that justice means giving people what they deserve. And in order to determine who deserves what, we have to determine what virtues are worthy of honor and reward. Aristotle maintains that we can’t figure out what a just constitution is without first reflecting on the most desirable way of life. For him, law can’t be neutral on questions of the good life.

By contrast, modern political philosophers – from Immanuel Kant in the eighteenth century to John Rawls in the twentieth century – argue that the principles of justice that define our rights should not rest on any particular conception of virtue, or of the best way to live. Instead, a just society respects each person’s freedom to choose his or her own conception of the good life.

So you might say that ancient theories of justice starts with virtue, while modern theories start with freedom . . . But it’s worth noticing at the outset that this contrast can mislead.

For if we turn our gaze to the arguments about justice that animate contemporary politics – not among philosophers, but among ordinary men and women – we find a more complicated picture.

It’s true that most of our arguments are about promoting prosperity and respecting individual freedom, at least on the surface. But underlying these arguments, and sometimes contending with them, we can often glimpse another set of convictions – about what virtues are worthy of honor and reward, and what way of life a good society should promote.

Devoted though we are to prosperity and freedom, we can’t quite shake off the judgmental strand of justice. The conviction that justice involves virtue as well as choice runs deep. Thinking about justice seems inescapably to engage us in thinking about the best way to live.[iii]

In order to have a just society, individuals must consciously choose and share core values about the best way to live and hold a common standard that is used to judge the actions of all members of the society equally. This is not the case with Americans today.




[iii] Justice: What’s the Right Thing To Do? By Michael J. Sandel © 2009; Farrar, Straus and Giroux, New York, NY; pp. 9-10.

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