Liberalism and the Limits of Justice

by Michael J. Sandel

A liberal society seeks not to impose a single way of life, but to leave its citizens as free as possible to choose their own values and ends. It therefore must govern by principles of justice that do not presuppose any particular vision of the good life. But can any such principles be found? And if not, what are the consequences for justice as a moral and political ideal? These are the questions Michael Sandel takes up in this penetrating critique of contemporary liberalism. This new edition includes a new introduction and a new final chapter in which Professor Sandel responds to the later work of John Rawls.

Genres: Philosophy, Politics, Nonfiction, Justice, Law, Political Science, Academic

252 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1982

About the author

Michael J. Sandel is an American political philosopher who lives in Brookline, Massachusetts. He is the Anne T. and Robert M. Bass Professor of Government at Harvard University, where he has taught since 1980. He is best known for the Harvard course 'Justice', which is available to view online, and for his critique of John Rawls' A Theory of Justice in his first book, Liberalism and the Limits of Justice (1982). He was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2002.

Reviews

[Neal Alexander · Rating 4 out of 5]

A critique of Rawls’ A Theory of Justice which aims - - successfully I think - - to show that the ‘veil of ignorance’ trope - - defining a just society prior to knowing one’s place in it - - can only work by denying that shared concepts and values are integral to our identities.

[Jumanah · Rating 5 out of 5]

إن المجتمعات الليبرالية تقام على أسس سياسية وما ينطلق منها أخلاقيًا في خدمة السياسة، ولكن كيف يمكن تأسيس مجتمع أخلاقي دون فرض "رؤية مسبقة للحياة الخيرة" ودون الإخلال بأسس المذهب الليبرالي أيضًا؟ هذا السؤال هو محور الكتاب التي يقلبها وينتقدها المؤلف مايكل سانديل، أستاذ العلوم السياسية في جامعة هارفرد، بين نظرية رولز ونوزيك وكانت للعدالة.
بعيدًا عن تسطيح الليبرالية واستعمالها الخاطئ لتبرير رغبات طبيعية في الحياة الهنيئة يقارن المؤلف أبسط الموضوعات الليبرالية تدريجيًا من حرية الرأي والحرية الدينية إلى مسائل أكثر تعقيدًا موضحًا أن الليبرالية ليست موقفًا واحدًا منتهيًا بعد ذلك بنقده للآراء المطروحة.


بعد قراءة هذا الكتاب أشعر بحاجة إلى تنهيدة عظيمة لأن القراءة ثقيلة والمفاهيم والمصطلحات جديدة بالنسبة لي. إضافة إلى ذلك، الموضوعات المطروحة معقدة وواجهة صعوبات كثيرة في فهم كل ما قرأت ولا أزعم أنني قد فهمت كل ما كُتب ولكنني بلا شك سأعود إلى الكتاب بعد ما أصل إلى مستوى أعلى منه. عمومًا أنصح به للمهتمين بهذا المجال ومن لهم خلفية سياسية وليس المبتدأ او الفضولي.
جعة

[Mistypane611 · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm studying Public Choice and I found this book really useful for articulating the main reason I find that approach problematic. There isn't enough emphasis on debate and engagement. Towards the end of the book, in the part that updates the argument following 'Political Liberalism' Sandel sums it up perfectly for me
"Whether a moral or political controversy reflects reasonable but incompatible conceptions of the good, or whether it can be resolved by due reflection and deliberation, can only be determined by reflecting and deliberating. But this raises another difficulty with political liberalism. For the political life it describes leaves little room for the kind of public deliberation necessary to test the plausibility of contending comprehensive moralities - to persuade others of the merits of our moral ideals, to be persuaded by others of the merits of theirs."

[سلمان · Rating 3 out of 5]

المناقشة شيقة..الاعتراضات لها جانبها من الصحة،،بنهاية قراءة هذا الكتاب...زادت عندي الرؤية الشاملة للعدالة..ولازلت مؤمنا بالليبرالية كحل مثالي لتحقيقها..ليبرالية تتكيف مع الواقع .. وتتقبل النقد..لانه حرية:)

[Steve]

Got 10 or so pages in, realized that I wasn't up to the work that was going to be required to read this book. Not indecipherable but I guess I'm getting a little lazy.

[Parisa Dabestani · Rating 4 out of 5]

در این کتاب مایکل سندل به بررسی لیبرالیسم وظیفه‌گرایانه‌ی رالز که آن را بر مبنای عدالت بنا می‌‌کند می‌پردازد و نشان می‌دهد که چگونه مفروضات عدالت اصول فردگرایانه لیبرالیسم را مختل می‌کند.

[Curtis · Rating 4 out of 5]

Definitely need to have read Rawls first to have any chance on this.

[Larry · Rating 3 out of 5]

The basis of the Rawls/Sandel debate is an interrogation of the relationship between justice and good. One wonders whether a society's principles of justice can be neutral in relation to the contradictory moral, religious and cultural conceptions that coexist in that society. There are two ways of conceiving this neutrality:

(1) The idea that individuals have fundamental rights whose respect takes precedence over the general welfare (Kant, Nozick);
(2) The idea that the justification of the principles of justice is not based on any conception of the good life (Rawls).

The communitarian position is to criticize (2). There are two ways of conceiving of this criticism, i.e. of linking the articulation of principles of justice to the good, one that is communitarian (1') and another that is not necessarily communitarian (2'):

(1') The idea that justice is deaf to community values, although there may be debate within the community as to which values best fit the community;
(2') The idea that the justification of the principles of justice depends on the moral value of the purposes of these principles, regardless of whether or not the moral value of the purpose belongs to the community.

(2') retranscribes the Aristotelian option of seeking the most desirable life to conform to the model constitution. (1') can be criticized in the same way as (1) insofar as these options avoid questioning the ends of the chosen principles of justice. The debate can be illustrated in the case of religious freedom: liberals defend it by virtue of the fact that the belief was freely acquired, but not by virtue of the moral value of that belief, defined as the set of behaviours and attitudes to which that belief leads the individual, who may not conceive of it as a free choice. Another justification of religious freedom, axiologically neutral as well, is to avoid a religious war; but this is not a moral justification. However, it is not up to the judge, in each case, to evaluate the moral value of the religious practice submitted to his examination: to the first principles of justice must therefore be added rules of evaluation. And yet, some judges have used the ultimate moral purpose of the problematic practice to challenge the rules of evaluation in some cases : Sandel reminds us of the case of Judge Frank Johnson who authorized the famous march of Martin Luther King from Selma to Montgomery (1965) when it had been banned by the Governor of Alabama on the grounds that states had the right to regulate the use of their highways and that a mass march on those highways exceeded what was constitutionally permissible: Judge Johnson referred to the "enormity of the wrongs to be protested" to overturn the Governor's decision (Williams v. Wallace).
In short, Sandel contrasts the liberal, axiologically neutral conception of rights (which would, for example, permit a Nazi parade and a parade of civil rights activists alike) with a conception (2' ) "that wishes to base rights on a substantive moral judgment about the purposes that those same rights serve to promote", which is therefore also different from the communitarian option (1'), which would not prohibit the Nazi parade any more than the liberals would, because it recognizes the values of each community, the black community as well as the Nazi community.

Sandel then opposes two strands of liberalism: a Kantian deontological liberalism (Fiat justitia pereat mundus) and a liberalism inherited from Mill. Kant writes in fact that the principles of justice are inferred independently of any particular conception of the good. The moral law is not valid by virtue of a moral end but by virtue of itself, which plays a regulating role in relation to other ends, whereas Mill subordinates justice to the pursuit of happiness, defined in terms of social utility. Kant rejects this conception, because to base morality on an empirical datum such as utility is to condemn it to be changeable and to risk drifts contrary to justice. Kant places the foundation of morality not in the object but in the subject. There is therefore in me both an object of experience and a substrate subject that is the condition of possibility of the experience and that is always anterior to it (and which therefore makes the exercise of autonomy possible). Sandel considers that this conception is too abstract, shows that Rawls tries to conceive a deontological and empirical liberalism, i.e. detached from this Kantian metaphysics, and that he fails.

Rawls mainly supports the priority of the righteous over the good; this is his disagreement with the utilitarians, and the aspect by which he approaches Aristotle. The satisfaction of one's desires has no value in itself, and should be taken into account only if the purpose of the desire is in accordance with justice. Rawls argues that justice is a special value in that it is also the yardstick by which values are judged. It is the "value of values", the standard by which conflicting values are reconciled. This raises the question of the origin of this norm: if it is immanent to the values of society, it cannot exceed them; if it is abstract, it cannot be applied to them. The problem of justice is reflected in the epistemological conception of the subject: he should be endowed with dignity as the substratum of his choices and preferences. This "abstract" conception is indispensable to the deontological position. It introduces the "original position" of Rawls, the thought expriment of the veil of ignorance, which is Rawls's response to Kant. Because they do not know what makes them individuals, the actors of the experiment are pure "persons" in the sense that they have only what is universally given to all men (for example, they are rational) while keeping within themselves the possibility of future particularization in a society that does not yet exist. But this is the whole problem: justice does not emerge outside of an objective (scarcity of resources) and subjective (the pursuit of one's own good) context of conflict, which, as Hume's analysis shows, implies that there is another norm for situations of non-conflict (as for courage in war and tranquility in peace). This Humian view is consistent with Sandel's final critique of the Rawlsian disencumbered self in his conclusion, where he explains that the disencumbered self cannot be a moral subject in a community, because if it is only the contingent substratum of detached or detachable attributes, it cannot love or do good to others. In the long run, Sandel goes so far as to write that we could go beyond the present limitation of our knowledge of the good of others, which makes justice necessary, towards a "community" where precisely this knowledge would be possible (as it is between friends), and where justice would become superfluous. Paradoxically, there may indeed be an absence of justice in a context of supreme conflict (the Hobbesian state of nature e.g.) or in a system of understanding where affection predominates (family and friends), both of which are outside the law. Sandel's point is not to confuse society and family but to show that there are relevant contexts for the application of justice as a virtue, which relativizes its status as an overriding norm. On the one hand, depending on the context, virtue will be beneficial or deleterious to the association; on the other hand, justice disappears in extremely happy or unhappy forms of association (Humian argument).

Since justice emerges in a context of plurality, Rawls criticizes utilitarianism in so far as it wants to extend norms that apply to individuals to a whole society. The fact that we are distinct persons, defined by systems of different purposes, is therefore a prerequisite for justice, and in this sense it can be said that the plurality of subjects is given before their unity, that the relationship precedes its terms. But where Rawls considers that each individual has a single system of ends, utilitarianism, like all intersubjective conceptions of society (those that recognize entities such as the "nation", for example), considers that there are several, therefore there are several "I's" within the individual. Rawls acknowledges the relevance of utilitarianism for private moral choices, insofar as the individual is not allowed to have preferences that are inconsistent over time because this would mean not considering oneself as an identical person over time: it is to this extent that the concept of justice also applies in private moral decisions. By making it impossible for systems of ends to modify the identity of the self, Rawls poses, in the "original position", a constraint on conceptions of the good in society. From this point of view, Rawls' deontological liberalism is thus not axiologically neutral.

Sandel's critique will focus precisely on this conception of the person, showing that we do not consider ourselves that coherently (we are not "the kind of creatures that deontological ethics would like us to be"), and that when we do, this conception of the person is not sufficient to found Rawls' position.
The Rawlsian conception of the person has important implications in the field of distributive justice, in that it distinguishes what one is from what one has (as a possession), and Rawls argues that individual talents derived from innate dispositions that are necessarily unequally distributed are possessions of which I am only the custodian, and which are therefore not individual talents to which I would have a primitive right, but a common resource to which the institutions give me a positive right in an institutional framework where the exercise of my talents is regulated in such a way that it benefits others and especially the most disadvantaged maximally: I have no natural right to a private exercise of my talents. The initial distribution is not fair, it is random and arbitrary; the libertarian position does not consist, for Rawls, in preserving justice, but in perpetuating natural arbitrariness; it is not the initial distribution that is unjust, but the institutional neutrality of which it is the object. Rawls thus attacks meritocratic conceptions of justice by arguing that egalitarian redistribution does not violate individual identity; he goes so far as to say that the notion of "merit" does not apply either to individuals who make more effort than others, because the willingness to make more effort than others may well also be innate. Rawls rejects any pre-institutional notion of virtue, which is consistent with the pre-eminence of justice over virtue and good in his theory.

Nozick may blame Rawls, by subtracting individual talents from the "person," for reverting to an abstract and purified conception that Rawls was fleeing from in Kantian ethics. Sandel proposes to save Rawls' "principle of difference" by defending not that others do not violate my identity when they use the resource of my talents, because these talents are only detachable attributes of my person, but by defending that it is not "others" who invade my self by using these resources, because the self is intersubjective and constituted by the community for all its non-genetic characteristics (temperament, humor, culture, manners). This argument supports the idea that there is no assignable intrinsic merit, but it can be reversed: if there is no assignable intrinsic merit, there is no demerit (assignable intrinsic) either. Therefore, why, if a man who builds a window cannot enjoy the totality of the benefits of his productive conduct, should I suffer the totality of the costs of my negative conduct when I am punished for breaking the window? Obviously, if the self has only attributes, if it is "unencumbered", as Rawls calls it, and the characteristics are randomly distributed, then one comes to punish actions and not men, and Rawls thus gives birth to a non-moral theory of punishment that conflicts with human dignity (Nozick). Moreover, even if one accepts Rawls' theory of the unencumbered self, with characteristics falling from the sky and people without any attributes, it does not follow that, under the pretext that no one deserves the characteristics falling from the sky, they should be redistributed.

Since the characteristics come to exist already "in" persons, and since this mode of existence does not violate any rights, it follows that these individuals, while not deserving their possessions, are nonetheless entitled to them. Sandel challenges the Nozickian argument by saying that rights require an institutional structure (and therefore we are back to square one), but this is not the case for Nozick, because the rights he is talking about are natural rights. Second, if one follows the Rawlsian position of randomly distributed characteristics, it is not clear how society comes to own, if not by common agreement of individuals, but since individuals do not, according to Rawls, have a right to their characteristics, it is not clear how they would transfer this right to society by contract, and therefore, by extension, why their common agreement would carry any weight. Even if I admit that the characteristics of my social environment (there should be a term that precisely designates 'properties that do not depend on me' but I do not have any) determine to some extent my faculties, two people with the same basic characteristics may end up with different faculties in the long run and two people with the same faculties did not necessarily have the same basic characteristics. So the reasoning doesn't hold.

This brings us back to Rawls' theory of the contract, doubly hypothetical, since it describes an event that did not take place (which is not the case with all contractualist theories, as Sandel, 162, points out) between individuals who do not and cannot exist. There are two ways of conceiving the legitimacy of a contract: (1) voluntary consent and (2) the fairness of these terms. These two approaches complement and compete with each other (consent to the contract can provide a moral basis for obliging contractors to honour an inequitable commitment or vice versa).

The Rawlsian contract is not a contract in this sense of the term: it does not give rise to obligations but to principles of justice, which are of two types :
a) Principles applicable to institutions,
b) Principles applicable to individuals.
b) establishes the duties and obligations of individuals towards institutions and towards each other. Let us define these two categories (duties and obligations) :
i. Natural duties, i.e. what is morally owed to individuals without their consent (example: the duty to help others when they are in distress),
ii. Obligations, which are moral ties voluntarily agreed to, but which are binding only if what we agree to is right. It is not the promise that binds but the principle of fidelity that says "keep your word", and which is based on a just background.

[Sam Mattingly · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is hard to review, and I was between 3 and 4 stars (Goodreads really needs to make the rating system out of 10). To be honest, when I read A Theory of Justice, I did not get the impression that the view of the self that Rawls was employing played much of a role in his theory. Really, I was not even aware that there was any substantive view of the self at play. Sandel, however, argues that when we look critically at the view of the self that Rawls employs, one that he claims is unencumbered and unattached from any goals or relationships, we can see the flaws in his theory.

I am sympathetic to what has come to be called the communitarian critique of liberalism, but I found myself somewhat skeptical that Rawls' theory of justice really does depend on this view of the self. That said, Sandel offers an impressive argument that it does, and he pulls directly from the text and from other critics of Rawls, often critics who do not see eye to eye with him, to make this case.

I found Sandel's idea of discovering rather than choosing one's ends to be compelling, although I would have appreciated more of a direct account of what is involved in such a thing. A lot of the criticism in this book was great, but to the extent that there is a positive thesis being advanced, it is fairly underdeveloped. I would need to read this book again to have a more well thought out view of it, but I do not think that is going to happen anytime soon.

[Michal Lipták · Rating 4 out of 5]

Powerful and correct critique of liberalism as self-declared "default neutral". Much of this critique I have already worked out myself, but here it's presented by extremely detailed dissection of Rawls' now-archetypal A Theory of Justice, poking holes in its contradictions. In the end you see this (according to Sandel indeed admirable) effort "provokes discussion", but ultimately fails, and you are left with two options: either recast Rawls' argument once again as purely transcendentalist, or return constitutive power of community back into game. In other words, either Kant or Hegel. And let's say that times when I would've chosen Kant are long gone.

[Shayan Hamraz · Rating 5 out of 5]

همان طور که مترجم هم می‌گوید کتاب به شدت سخت و سنگین است. و ترجمه دقیق و غیر آزاد مترجم هم به سختی آن می‌افزاید. به شکل ریز و موشکافانه‌ای به نقد نظریه رالز می‌پردازد. لذا تسلط به آثار رالز لازمه فهم این کتاب است. و در کل برای کسانی که به دنبال تعمّق در نظریه عدالت رالز هستند، اثر به شدت ارزشمند و قابل تأملی است.

[Billie Pritchett · Rating 4 out of 5]

Michael Sandel's Liberalism and the Limits of Justice is an argument against Classical Liberalism, at least as Classical Liberalism is expressed in the political philosophy of John Rawls. Rawls, in his book A Theory of Justice, argued that the role of government is social justice. He defended the view that there are certain basic freedoms that everyone should respect regardless of the person and that cannot be violated. He also claimed that any social inequality that arises should be allowed provided the society and the government helps to make the poorest and the least advantage better off, and this is to be a constant challenge for any government.

Sandel challenges Rawls's position on the grounds that Rawls's theory of justice implies too limited a view of human nature and the self. According to Sandel, Rawls's theory conceives of persons apart from the societies in which they grow up and the other aspects that in ordinary life would normally form their identity. Sandel thinks that if we are to consider questions of justice, among other sorts of values, we have to take seriously a view of persons that includes their social milieus and that aims at some view of what a good life would be like for them.

I won't get into it here, but I think Sandel actually mischaracterizes Rawls' position, and is in some sense arguing at cross purposes. But that is another discussion and I'll leave it for readers familiar with Rawls to decide that.

[Sergei Moska · Rating 4 out of 5]

... more like 3.5 stars, but it makes sense to round up just because it's a very high-quality argument and a seminal communitarian critique of liberalism. Sandel was not persuasive to me - the points with which I agreed were (in my opinion) trivial or unproblematic, and the points in which I disagreed were due (again, in my opinion) to an unnecessarily uncharitable reading of Rawls as well as to occasional equivocation of what Rawls means by "I" when discussing the original position. That said, a good book is a good book.

This is not a beginners' book, though. You should have a decent grasp of "Theory of Justice" before reading it.

[Tobey · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very helpful for understanding Rawls and what is at stake in deontological views of justice. Not sure how much of his criticism is not found in Nozick but his criticism is free from the most unappealing and least plausible aspects (self-ownership, etc.) of Nozick's own libertarian theory.

[Roberto · Rating 5 out of 5]

Uno de los mejores libros...

[Kim · Rating 5 out of 5]

A difficult, but very worthwhile, read. Makes me thirst for more.

[Jacob · Rating 4 out of 5]

A brilliant attack on John Rawls "A Theory of Justice".

[John C. Duff · Rating 4 out of 5]

A thorough critique and argument for the inadequacy of Rawlsian liberalism in support of Rawls' justice as fairness principle.

[Zachary · Rating 5 out of 5]

In the introduction to Liberalism and the Limits of Justice, Michael Sandel, a well-known critic of liberal political theory, calls attention to two different ways in which philosophers have understood the right as prior to the good. In the first, “moral” sense, this idea describes a first-order ethic that stipulates certain absolute duties and prohibitions that override other moral and practical concerns, even the overall welfare of a political community. In the second, “foundational” sense, it describes “a form of justification in which first principles are derived in a way that does not presuppose any final human purposes or ends, nor any determinate conception of the human good” (3). Now, some liberal theorists, like J. S. Mill, the famous nineteenth-century utilitarian, affirm the first sense of the right as prior to the good but not the second; for Mill, justice is merely a matter of social utility, and utility is metaethically prior to the (more or less) absolute rights and duties that tend to promote it. Conversely, for Immanuel Kant and liberal idealists of his ilk, the two senses in which the right is prior to the good are intimately connected: certain duties and prohibitions must take unqualified precedence over other moral and practical concerns, since first principles of right are derived a priori and not from unstable and epistemically dubious empirical circumstances. One of the central assertions in Liberalism and the Limits of Justice is that John Rawls, the most influential liberal political theorist of the twentieth century, inherits and modifies this Kantian connection between the two senses in which the right is prior to the good, which, Sandel contends, presupposes a certain conception of the self as prior to its ends. That is, a subject for whom justice is primary in the ways Rawls insists must be a subject “unencumbered” by constitutive purposes and values, even if Rawls himself disavows the Kantian conception of the noumenal self and its basis in transcendental idealism. It is this portrait of the “unencumbered” liberal self that Sandel calls into question.

To be sure, Rawls aims to disjoin the primacy of justice (in the moral and foundational senses) from its Kantian metaphysical basis so as to render his theory of justice more plausible; he in no way seeks to defend transcendental idealism as a requisite component of justice as fairness. To this end, he appropriates from Hume the “circumstances of justice,” i.e. the empirical conditions that make human cooperation both possible and necessary, in his description of the original position, which effectively replaces the noumenal self of transcendental idealism. In this way, Rawls thinks that he can preserve the moral force of the primacy of justice within the scope of an empirical theory. Yet this attempt to situate his theory somewhere between Kant and Hume, Sandel claims, is unsatisfactory: the “notion of right which Rawls seeks to recapture derives its force from a moral metaphysic that rules out precisely the appeal to [empirical] human circumstances on which Hume’s account of the virtue of justice is based” (36). For Kant, any appeal to empirical circumstances in the attempt to formulate moral laws is conditional and, for that reason, unreliable, as the principles derived from such circumstances are inextricably linked with those circumstances, and if they should alter or at some point not obtain, then the principles would be rendered null. If the moral law is universal, Kant insists, it must be deduced a priori. Sandel also detects a set of objections to Rawls from the Humean side: Rawls wants to defend the primacy of justice as the first virtue of social institutions, yet there seem to be some institutions, like the family, in which it is plausible that justice should not be the first virtue. As Hume himself maintains, justice has a remedial character that presupposes another set of virtues of at least a comparable and perhaps even superior order (like love or benevolence), such that the Humean empiricist is likely to hold that “justice is the first virtue of social institutions not absolutely, as truth is to theories, but only conditionally,” i.e. when the circumstances of justice obtain (31). In sum, Rawls’s attempt to replace Kantian metaphysics with a more modest Humean empiricism as the basis for his account of the original position leads to several inconsistencies and contradictions.

Beyond these inconsistencies, Sandel detects a far more fundamental problem with the original position. The key to his critique lies in Rawls’s notion of reflective equilibrium, a dialectical method of justification in which we sometimes adjust the conditions of the contractual circumstances of the original position in view of our considered convictions about what is just, and sometimes withdraw our considered convictions and conform them to the principles of justice once we find the premises of the original position reasonable. If the principles derived from the original position are accountable to our considered convictions about what is just, by what standard, Sandel asks, are we to find the premises of the original position plausible? For Sandel, it must be the case that “the independent yet provisional standard by which the reasonableness of our descriptive assumptions [that structure the original position] is assessed” is provided by “the nature of the moral subject as we understand it,” or put differently, how we understand ourselves as moral persons (48). In other words, if we take the double-barreled approach of reflective equilibrium seriously, the original position is not merely a handy heuristic device to be dispensed with once the principles of justice have been worked out, but a clue to who we are as moral subjects.

With this clue in mind, Sandel attempts to reconstruct Rawls’s conception of the moral subject and identifies two salient features: the first is plurality, or the antecedent individuation of distinct persons with separate systems of ends. By plurality, Sandel (and by extension Rawls) means simply that we are distinct individuals before we form relationships and cooperate with others for the sake of mutual benefits; plurality therefore describes “the terms of relation between the self and the other that must obtain for justice to be primary” (53). The second salient feature of Rawls’s moral subject, inferred from the parties’ “mutual disinterest” in the original position, is that the self is a subject of possession, i.e. a self that is prior to and distanced from ends it comes to possess by voluntary choice. Mutual disinterest, Sandel astutely notes, “is not an assumption about what motivates people [i.e. that they are solely interested in their own ends], but an assumption about the nature of subjects who possess motivations”—it simply “holds that all interests must be the interests of some subject” (54). Such a self may or may not have communitarian aims, it may or may not pursue exclusively private ends not shared with anyone else—in either case the choice is its own. That the self can make such a choice implies, however, that the moral subject Rawls has in mind exists independently of the interests it possesses; as prior to its ends, “its bounds [are] fixed once and for all such that they are impermeable, invulnerable to transformation by experience” (57). Sandel contrasts this Rawlsian conception of the “unencumbered” moral subject with an intersubjective conception of the “encumbered” self for whom the primary question is not, “What ends should I choose,” but rather, “Who am I?” This is because the encumbered self is “crowded by the claims and pressures of various possible purposes and ends,” all of which help constitute my identity, and in relation to which I must discern what is me from what is mine (57-9). Such a self is not prior to its ends but discovers itself amidst ends that already encroach upon it; its task of self-command is therefore not one of will, but of intellect.

In what amounts to the basic thesis of the book, Sandel contends that Rawls’s conception of the unencumbered moral subject cannot support his theory of justice. To demonstrate this, he appropriates Robert Nozick’s critique of the difference principle. For Nozick, the difference principle (i.e. the first part of the second principle of justice), which permits social and economic inequalities only insofar as they benefit the least well-off in society, uses persons as mere means and not also as ends in themselves. This is because the difference principle, on Rawls’s own interpretation of it, treats the arbitrary (from a moral point of view) distribution of individuals’ natural talents as a common asset, on account of which it only permits inequalities linked to the use of these talents insofar as such inequalities incentivize activity that benefits everyone, especially the least well-off. For Nozick, to treat individuals’ natural assets as common property quite blatantly instrumentalizes them—it uses them as mere means—and blurs the distinction between persons that Rawls is so keen to uphold. Yet Rawls, Sandel observes, can mobilize his conception of the moral subject to rebuff Nozick’s critique: if the self is prior to its ends, then it is likewise prior to its attributes, and the difference principle only makes use of these attributes as means to others’ welfare. While this defense successfully defeats Nozick’s objection, it nevertheless leads Rawls to posit a radically de-situated moral subject, one that closely resembles the Kantian self of transcendental idealism that justice as fairness takes such pains to avoid. Still, Sandel points to an “alternate defense available” to Rawls that “ties the notion of common assets to the possibility of a common subject of possession” (79). Here, Sandel reintroduces his intersubjective conception of the self with which he contrasted the Rawlsian moral subject earlier: if the difference principle is not to use persons as mere means to others’ ends, “it can only be possible under circumstances where the subject of possession is a ‘we’ rather than an ‘I,’ which circumstances imply in turn the existence of a community in the constitutive sense” (80). In short, the difference principle, so central to Rawls’s theory of justice, can only be justified with recourse to the kind of encumbered self, constitutively linked to a particular community, that Rawls himself rejects.

In a similar move, Sandel demonstrates why the original position can only adequately justify the principles of justice “at considerable cost to certain voluntarist and individualist assumptions” central to Rawls’s theory of the person (105). To demonstrate why, Sandel first observes that, from a Rawlsian perspective, an actual, real-life contract must presuppose an antecedent principle to justify its results: it is not simply that a contract to which both parties voluntarily consent is necessarily justified, for we can always ask the further question, “but is what they have consented to fair?” An actual contract, because it is a case of only imperfect procedural justice, presupposes a moral backdrop in view of which its requirements can be assessed. If this is true, then the obvious question arises as to how the original position, as a modified version of the social contract, does not, like ordinary contracts, similarly presuppose a moral backdrop. For Rawls, the original position, as an exercise in pure (as opposed to imperfect) procedural justice, is meant to produce principles of justice in view of which all subsequent contracts or promises can be assessed. He believes that it can provide the ultimate sanction to the principles of justice comparable to the role pure practical reason plays in Kantian ethics. Yet in order to provide this ultimate sanction, Sandel insists, Rawls implies that the principles to which the parties consent in the original position are just not because they are those reached as a result of a fair procedure, but because they are the right principles. In fact, Rawls describes the contractual situation in such a way that it ensures that the right principles are chosen, and the rightness of their choice, over and above the fact of their choice, is what justifies the principles of justice. As Sandel explains, “the secret to the original position—and the key to its justificatory force—lies not in what they do there but rather in what they apprehend there. What matters is not what they choose but what they see, not what they decide but what they discover” (132). If this is true, then “the voluntarist aspect of the enterprise is not as spacious as would appear” (127): procedure does not seem prior to principle as Rawls maintains, and the self presupposed by the original position is not one prior to and distanced from ends freely chosen, but one already situated in moral space, capable of reflection on pre-contractual principles of justice.

Apart from the fact that the unencumbered subject of possession presupposed by Rawls cannot support his theory of justice as fairness, Sandel finds Rawls’s conception of the person unpersuasive for several other reasons as well. In the penultimate chapter of the book, for example, he explains why such a self is capable of only a thin and ultimately trivial sort of reflection; if who we essentially are is “barren of constituent traits,” detached from our attributes, values, and ends, then there is no real self “for reflection to survey or apprehend” (160-61). In another, related critique, Sandel observes that heteronomous desires entirely determine the unencumbered self’s conception of the good, whatever it may be. “But if my conception of the good is simply the product of my immediate wants and desires,” he writes, “there is no reason to suppose that the critical standpoint it provides is any more worthy or valid than the desires it seeks to assess” (165). Provided that some conception of the good does not violate the principles of justice, any conception will do; indeed, as Rawls himself admits in A Theory of Justice, “that we have one conception of the good rather than another is not relevant from a moral standpoint” (537). Given this impoverished theory of the good, the unencumbered self reasons with respect to its private aims in a way that is instrumental, even utilitarian; it matches means to ends, but does not choose its ends on the basis of any considered evaluation of their respective merits.

Ultimately, these external critiques of the unencumbered self complement Sandel’s internal critiques to form a robust and systematic objection to justice as fairness that has exercised tremendous influence since its publication. Still, Sandel leaves several questions unanswered. Is Liberalism and the Limits of Justice a full-blown rejection of Rawlsian liberalism, or could Rawls incorporate Sandel’s intersubjective conception of the self into his theory without a complete overhaul of justice as fairness? Does Sandel endorse some modified form of political liberalism, or does he think the liberal philosophical project is doomed to internal contradictions and untenable presuppositions? Does Sandel constructively offer some form of common-good liberalism substantively different from, say, the utilitarian liberalism of J. S. Mill? If so, we need more to differentiate his brand of liberalism from the communitarian theories he distances himself from in the preface to the second edition.

[Renato Garín · Rating 4 out of 5]

En este libro, Sandel realiza una crítica profunda a la teoría de la justicia propuesta por John Rawls en "Una Teoría de la Justicia". Su análisis se centra en los fundamentos filosóficos del liberalismo y plantea serios interrogantes sobre su capacidad para abordar cuestiones morales y comunitarias.

El individualismo posesivo: Sandel identifica en el liberalismo, y en particular en la obra de Rawls, una concepción del individuo como un ser fundamentalmente desvinculado, al que denomina "individualismo posesivo". Según esta visión, los individuos son entendidos como entidades autónomas que poseen derechos y deseos, pero que están fundamentalmente separados de la comunidad y la tradición.

Crítica al velo de ignorancia: Rawls propone el "velo de ignorancia" como un método para determinar los principios de justicia. Sandel, sin embargo, critica esta noción argumentando que es imposible que los individuos tomen decisiones éticas sin tener en cuenta su historia, valores y compromisos comunitarios. Para Sandel, el velo de ignorancia elimina aspectos esenciales de nuestra identidad.

El yo encarnado: Frente al "yo desvinculado" del liberalismo, Sandel propone la noción del "yo encarnado". Según esta visión, nuestra identidad está inextricablemente ligada a nuestra historia, tradiciones y comunidad. No somos simples individuos aislados, sino seres profundamente arraigados en contextos sociales y culturales.

La justicia y el bien: Mientras que Rawls argumenta que la justicia debe ser priorizada antes de cualquier concepción del bien, Sandel sostiene que es imposible separar ambos conceptos. Para él, cualquier discusión sobre justicia debe estar necesariamente enraizada en una comprensión particular del bien común.

El papel de la comunidad: Una de las críticas más contundentes de Sandel al liberalismo es su supuesta incapacidad para abordar el papel crucial de la comunidad en la vida moral. Sandel argumenta que nuestras obligaciones morales no provienen simplemente de derechos abstractos, sino de nuestros compromisos y lealtades concretos hacia nuestras comunidades.

Desafíos al neutralismo liberal: Sandel cuestiona la capacidad del liberalismo para mantenerse neutral en cuestiones de bien y moral. Argumenta que cualquier intento de ser neutral en realidad oculta un conjunto particular de valores y compromisos.

[ahmad · Rating 5 out of 5]

شاید بتوان گفت نظریه عدالت جان رالز یکی از مهم‌ترین نظریات متاخر از لیبرالیسم هست و البته کتاب لیبرالیسم و منتقدان آن (که در ویرایش دوم به لیبرالیسم و محدودیت‌های عدالت تغییر نام داد) یکی از مهم‌ترین نقدها بر نظریه عدالت رالز است. در واقع اگرچه رالز قصد داشت لیبرالیسم را دوباره نجات دهد اما به نظر می‌رسد در این مسیر چندان موفق نبوده است.
یکی از ایده‌های خلاقانه‌ای که رالز مطرح می‌کند ایده حجاب نادانی است. این ایده می‌گوید که قانونگذار پیش از آنکه قانون بگذارد باید در حجابی از جهل به سر ببرد و هیچ اطلاعی از وضعیت زندگی، وضعیت مالی، جنسیت و... نداشته باشد. در این صورت قانونی که وی تصویب می‌کند قطعا عادلانه است. سندل این ایده را به چالش می‌کشد و می‌کوید چنین تعریفی تنها با انکار این امر مشترک قابل استفاده است که مفاهیم و ارزش ها از هویت ما جدایی ناپذیر هستند.
همچنین رالز معتقد است نقش دولت عدالت اجتماعی است. وی می‌گوید اگرچه نابرابری اجتماعی عضو جدایی ناپذیر هر سیستم اجتماعی است اما چالش ثابت تمام دولت‌ها این است که مزیت‌هایی به فقیر‌ترین و کم برخوردارترین اقشار جامعه کمک کند.
سندل این موضع را نیز به چالش می‌کشد. وی می‌گوید نظریه عدالت رالز دید بسیار محدودی به طبیعت انسان و خود انسان دارد. سندل می‌گوید که نظریه رالز افراد را از جوامعی که در آن رشد کرده‌اند جدا می‌داند. وی می‌گوید دولت باید علاوه‌بر اینکه به نیازها جهان شمول افراد دقت کند، باید بر هدف آنها در زندگی باتوجه به محیط اجتماعی آنها نیز دقت کند.
در پایان کتاب نیز سندل نوع جدیدی از ساختار اجتماعی را مطرح می‌کند. به نظر سندل هم سیستم نیمه متمرکز لیبرالیسم و هم سیستم شورایی شوروی ساختارهای ناقصی از عدالت و آزادی را مطرح می‌کنند. تمرکز وی عمدتا بر سیستم شورایی هست که در زمان لنین برچیده شد. این سیستم مطمئنا نمی‌توانست برای مدت زیادی ادامه پیدا کند چرا که نظام برنامه ریزی متمرکز حزب بلشویک برای کارایی بیشتر الزاما مجبور بود هرگونه آزادی را از افراد بگیرد. از نظر سندل بهترین سیستم اجتماعی آن است که کشور مانند هرم هایی اداره شود که هرکدام نه به وسیله نوک هرم که به وسیله قاعده هرم مدیریت شوند.
میخواستم مطلب مفصلتری بنویسم اما این کار مستلزم آن هست که کتاب‌های رالز را خوانده باشم از این رو بحث اساسی‌تر را به زمانی دیگر موکول می‌کنم.

[Mojtaba Nazari · Rating 4 out of 5]

کتاب با بررسی طیف وسیعی از متفکران لیبرالیسم مبتنی بر حق -از هایک و نوزیک گرفته تا رالز- نهایتاً نقدهای وارد بر این مجموعه‌ی فکری که تا حدی بر نظامات اجتماعی و سیاسی امروز دنیا غلبه دارند، برمی‌شمارد. این کار از طریق گردآوری مقالات صاحبان دیدگاه‌های گوناگون انجام شده که اتفاقاً باعث می‌شود مخاطب خودش راحت‌تر بین دیدگاه‌ها به قضاوت بنشیند.
برای من ادراک‌های جدید و جالبی به همراه داشت، فراتر از نقد صرف لیبرالیسم. اما ترجمه‌ی فارسی متأسفانه چنگی به دل نمی‌زند.

[Zoltan Pogatsa · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very few challenges to Rawls are interesting. This one is, althouhgh I fell it is not really a challenge, but more a situational extension. Rawls helps us set the etalon, Sandel helps us think it through how we can get there.

[Nektarios kouloumpos · Rating 4 out of 5]

Η κριτική του Sandel κρίνεται πετυχημένη μόνο κατά το ήμισυ. Όσον αφορά τον δεοντοκρατικό προσανατολισμό της Ρωλσιανής θεωρίας. Τώρα, οι υπόλοιπες ενστάσεις του πνίγονται μέσα σε μισοακατανοητες προτάσεις που δεν αποδεικνύουν τίποτα!
Καλή ανάγνωση!

[Emre vs. · Rating 4 out of 5]

Rawls hatmine mukabil okunmasına...

[CORONEL CHANDLIER]

The author is very good at expressing his ideas when writing

[Lucy Faria]

Two years ago i took an undergraduate course on political theory that dedicated 5 lectures only to liberalism and reading john rawls. After Sandel i may never read Rawls again.

[Aحmed Hatem · Rating 5 out of 5]

مايكل ج ساندل هو احد اهم علماء فلسفة القانون في العالم، يقدم فهم مختلف عن الليبرالية وقواعد العدالة والجانب الاخلاقي للجريمة..

[Tristan Williams · Rating 2 out of 5]

I want to make clear from the beginning that I have only read about half this book, handpicked by a professor who has read through multiple times, but I think I can still adequately review it and don't plan on reading the rest, let me explain why.

I am quite interested in political philosophy, and having read Sandel's "Justice," knew that this author could write a very thought provoking and compelling text. So as a philosophy major who was ready to dive deeper into his thought, I was quite excited for this read going in. And don't get me wrong, there is a reason that I am giving it 3 stars instead of 2 or 1, there were many insightful bits in here that compelled communitarianism while also powerfully critiquing Rawls.

The problem is not so much the quality of the content, but rather the repetitiveness. It felt as if I read the same idea at least 5x before I finished the book, and it was like he was scaffolding every chapter as if it could be read on its own. If you read it in very quick succession (as I did) you get quite bored and it becomes tiring to sift through the repetition. It is because of this repition too that I thought I could avoid the rest of the book, as reading the conclusion seemed to indicate that I was not missing much separate thought in the chapters I was not able to read. This is a rough guess, but I'd say the book (or at least the half I read) could be reduced by as much as 50%, maybe even so far as 75%. I will note that I read this coming off of Rawls, so perhaps some of his scaffolding that seemed redundant to me will not for the average reader who has less Rawls on their mind.

TLDR: Great ideas, too much repetition. Read the conclusion and look towards his other (or other communitarian's) works.

[Matti Meikäläinen · Rating 5 out of 5]

This work is a watershed in political theory. It was written in 1982. Oddly, I still hear scholars praising John Rawls “Theory of Justice” as if this critique by Sandel in this well argued book did not plainly gut the core of Rawls argument. Even Rawls himself understood how devastating Sandel’s criticism was and spent twenty years revising his thinking to produce a replacement to TOJ, “Political Liberalism.” Rawls’ replacement attempts to replace his original conception of the Good with the new concepts of “overlapping consensus” and “public reason.” It is Rawls’ best attempt to make lemonade out of a lemon. In my opinion I think his result was weak. I think anyone who reads “Theory of Justice” must read Sandel’s “Liberalism And The Limits of Justice” and then (perhaps) Rawls’ “Political Liberalism.” I think in time this work by Sandel will be universally hailed as the work of genius and become required reading for most undergraduates in political theory. Of course, that also means that communitarianism will become more mainstream in political theory, I hope.