Justice: What's the Right Thing to Do?

Going on my Books Every Human Should Read list. This one is incredibly important, particularly for Americans, as it breaks down moral questions to a depth unheard of in our current public discourse. It ends on an optimistic note, suggesting how and why it matters that we discuss things like inequality in a particular way. Highly recommended, but plan time to work through this one slowly.

Michael J. Sandel is my new Mister Rogers. He's on my list of heroes along with Fred Rogers and Mother Teresa and Martin Luther King Jr.

Who is this Michael J. Sandel? He's a professor at Harvard. He teaches a very popular class called Justice. Sandel is a mesmerizing teacher, beginning each class by sharing a morally questional situation, provoking students to think in new ways, and always treating each student with deep respect.

I started reading the book over the Thankfully Reading Weekend. Bonnie of the blog Bonnie's Books saw I was reading the book and she shared the free lectures available online. I watched all twenty-four, like some people binge-watch Seinfeld or Big Bang. I shared a link to an interview with Sandel with friends and family. I keep bringing Sandel and his Justice course up in conversation with others.

The book and the course give me hope. The students were beautifully articulate and Sandel ran the class like I imagine Plato led his classes.

If you have a free weekend, you can't do better than to watch some of the lectures and read along in the book. It will refresh you in this toxic political atmosphere.

Reading alongside the popular Harvard course taught by the author (Here's the link if anyone wants to check it out - https://www.edx.org/course/justice-2), this was an extraordinary experience. Maybe my thoughts about this book got clouded by the thought-provoking lectures that accompany them, but that in no way takes away the credit of this book being an excellent introduction to political and moral philosophy.

Normally, I dislike the case-based approach of tackling a subject (I'm looking at you, Cal Newport), but it was the most suitable method of discussing disparate notions of moral philosophy. Prof. Sandel expertly intertwines the hard and difficult questions of the day - be it affirmative action, same-sex marriages or debates about rights - with the theories of political philosophers who attempt to answer them. I particularly loved this notion, which is present in all the debates throughout the course, that there's no such one perfect answer for these problems. You can't just say that one side is completely wrong and other is completely right. There's no black and white. Each side has merits and demerits and the real struggle exists in how to combine them together for an appropriate solution.

Apart from reading this book, I would highly recommend taking the course as well. You won't get solutions to all the mentioned problems, but you would come out with a greater understanding of problems themselves and how to tackle them.