Michael Joseph Sandel is an American political philosopher and the Anne T and Robert M Bass Professor of Government Theory at Harvard Law School, where his course Justice was the university's first course to be made freely available online and on television.
16 Facts About Michael Sandel
2.
Michael Sandel is known for his critique of John Rawls' A Theory of Justice in his first book, Liberalism and the Limits of Justice.
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Michael Sandel was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2002.
4.
Michael Sandel was born in 1953 into a Jewish family, which moved to Los Angeles when he was thirteen.
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Michael Sandel was president of his senior class at Palisades High School and graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Brandeis University with a bachelor's degree in politics in 1975.
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Michael Sandel received his doctorate from Balliol College, Oxford, in 1985, as a Rhodes Scholar, where he studied under philosopher Charles Taylor.
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Michael Sandel subscribes to a certain version of communitarianism, and in this vein he is perhaps best known for his critique of John Rawls's A Theory of Justice.
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Rawls's argument depends on the assumption of the veil of ignorance, which Michael Sandel argues commits Rawls to a view of people as "unencumbered selves".
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Michael Sandel's view is that we are by nature encumbered to an extent that makes it impossible even hypothetically to have such a veil.
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Michael Sandel believes that only a less-restrictive, looser version of the veil of ignorance should be postulated.
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Criticism such as Michael Sandel's inspired Rawls to subsequently argue that his theory of justice was not a "metaphysical" theory but a "political" one, a basis on which an overriding consensus could be formed among individuals and groups with many different moral and political views.
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Michael Sandel joined the Faculty of Arts and Sciences at Harvard University in 1981.
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Michael Sandel has taught the Justice course at Harvard University for two decades.
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Michael Sandel is the author of several publications, including Democracy's Discontent and Public Philosophy.
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Michael Sandel gave the 2009 Reith Lectures on "A New Citizenship" on BBC Radio, addressing the "prospect for a new politics of the common good".
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The latter, according to Michael Sandel, is the main culprit of the anger and frustration which brought some Western countries towards populism.