Michael Sandel cytaty

„Jeśli powiemy, że celem edukacji jest po prostu lepsze ustawienie się w życiu i bycie bardziej produktywnym członkiem społeczeństwa, to płacenie dzieciom za czytanie może mieć sens. Jeśli jednak prawdziwym celem nie jest tylko umożliwienie zdobycia dobrej pracy, lecz także rozwinięcie właściwych istocie ludzkiej zdolności do refleksji, myślenia krytycznego, kontemplacji sztuki, to czytanie staje się celem samym w sobie, którego nie powinno się wypaczać gratyfikacją pieniężną.”

Źródło: rozmowa Piotra Burasa i Magdy Tilszer, Nie daj się urynkowić, „Gazeta Wyborcza”, 5–6 lipca 2014.

„Tendencja do przekształcania demokratycznego społeczeństwa w rynkowe jest w gospodarce rynkowej niemal nie do zatrzymania. Zaczynamy bowiem zakładać, że nasza wolność jako konsumentów to esencja wolności, i przenosimy ten transakcyjny model relacji dotyczących wymiany dóbr materialnych na inne sfery życia społecznego – stosunki między ludźmi, życie publiczne, sposoby organizowania systemu świadczeń społecznych. Mechanizmy rynkowe zaczynają rządzić funkcjonowaniem naszych społeczeństw.”

Źródło: rozmowa Piotra Burasa i Magdy Tilszer, Nie daj się urynkowić, „Gazeta Wyborcza”, 5–6 lipca 2014.

„Moją obawę budzi to, że jedno i drugie [rynek i inżynieria genetyczna] twierdzi, że jest w stanie zastąpić refleksję na temat moralności. W pierwszym przypadku mamy do czynienia z ekonomią, która udaje, że jest nauką ścisłą i neutralną pod względem etycznym. To nieprawda. W drugim – inżynierii genetycznej – chodzi o niebezpieczne założenie, że technologia może definiować swoje cele w oderwaniu od jakiejkolwiek refleksji moralnej na zasadzie „co jest możliwe, jest dobre”. W tym sensie ekonomia i inżynieria genetyczna są do sobie podobne, usuwają pytania moralne ze sfer kluczowych dla funkcjonowania naszych społeczeństw.”

Źródło: rozmowa Piotra Burasa i Magdy Tilszer, Nie daj się urynkowić, „Gazeta Wyborcza”, 5–6 lipca 2014.

„Interpretowanie wszystkich relacji międzyludzkich za pomocą kryteriów rynkowych prowadzi do wynaturzenia wyższych wartości i norm, które powinny definiować inne sfery życia – rodzinne, obywatelskie, edukację. Skutkiem jest erozja solidarności społecznej, czyli poczucia, że jako obywatele jesteśmy sobie wzajemnie coś winni. Ale podporządkowując się logice rynku, tracimy także innego rodzaju wartości.”

Źródło: rozmowa Piotra Burasa i Magdy Tilszer, Nie daj się urynkowić, „Gazeta Wyborcza”, 5–6 lipca 2014.

„Dla mnie najważniejsze jest jednak to, że moralność w polityce nie kończy się w żadnym razie, jak się często przyjmuje, na kwestiach takich jak aborcja czy eutanazja. W istocie sprawy związane z funkcjonowaniem systemu podatkowego, gospodarki, systemu zdrowia czy edukacji – a więc te, w których chodzi o wzajemne zobowiązania między obywatelami – są także kwestiami stricte moralnymi.”

Źródło: rozmowa Piotra Burasa i Magdy Tilszer, Nie daj się urynkowić, „Gazeta Wyborcza”, 5–6 lipca 2014.

“Markets are useful instruments for organizing productive activity. But unless we want to let the market rewrite the norms that govern social institutions, we need a public debate about the moral limits of markets.”

Źródło: rozmowa Piotra Burasa i Magdy Tilszer, Nie daj się urynkowić, „Gazeta Wyborcza”, 5–6 lipca 2014.

Michael Sandel: Cytaty po angielsku

“The Second World War supplied the occasion for the spending, and Keynesian economics supplied the rationale. But Keynesian fiscal policy had political appeal even before the war demonstrated its economic success. For unlike the various proposals for structural reform, such as vigorous antitrust action or national economic planning, Keynesian economics offered a way for the government to control the economy without having to choose among controversial views of the good society. Where earlier reformers had sought economic arrangements that would cultivate, citizens of a certain kind, Keynesians undertook no formative mission; they proposed simply to accept existing consumer preferences and to regulate the economy by manipulating aggregate demand.”

Michael J. Sandel książka Justice: What's the Right Thing to Do?

Źródło: Justice: What's the Right Thing to Do?

“Unlike the liberty of the early republic, the modern version permits — in fact even requires — concentrated power.”

1. America's Search for a Public Philosophy
Public Philosophy (2005)

“Political philosophy seems often to reside at a distance from the world. Principles are one thing, politics another, and even our best efforts to live up to our ideals seldom fully succeed.”

The Procedural Republic and the Unencumbered Self, 1984

“Political philosophy seems often to reside at a distance from the world. Principles are one thing, politics another, and even our best efforts to ‘live up’ to our ideals typically founder on the gap between theory and practice.But if political philosophy is unrealizable in one sense, it is unavoidable in another. This is the sense in which philosophy inhabits the world from the start; our practices and institutions are embodiments of theory.... for all our uncertainties about ultimate questions of political philosophy — of justice and value and the nature of the good life — the one thing we know is that we live some answer all the time.”

Preface
Democracy's Discontent, 1998

“Not egoists but strangers, sometimes benevolent, make for citizens of the deontological republic; justice finds its occasion because we cannot know each other, or our ends, well enough to govern by the common good alone. This condition is not likely to fade altogether, and so long as it does not, justice will be necessary. But neither is it guaranteed always to predominate, and in so far as it does not, community will be possible, and an unsettling presence for justice.”

The Procedural Republic and the Unencumbered Self, 1984

“A public philosophy is an elusive thing, for it is constantly before our eyes.”

Michael J. Sandel książka Liberalism and the Limits of Justice

Conclusion: Liberalism and the Limits of Justice
Liberalism and the Limits of Justice, 1998

“But if political philosophy is unrealizable in one sense, it is unavoidable in another.”

Źródło: Democracy's Discontent, 1998, Chapter 1.

“This liberalism says, in other words, that what makes the just society just is not the telos or purpose or end at which it aims, but precisely its refusal to choose in advance among competing purposes and ends. In its constitution and its laws, the just society seeks to provide a framework within which its citizens can pursue their own values and ends, consistent with a similar liberty for others”

Preface
Democracy's Discontent, 1998

“We have seen that Rawls’ theory of justice requires for its coherence a conception of community in the constitutive sense, which requires in turn a notion of agency in the cognitive sense, and we have hound that Rawls’ theory of the good can allow for neither. This calls into question the theory of justice, or the thoery of the good, or both.”

The Procedural Republic and the Unencumbered Self, 1984

“The advent of the new political economy marked a decisive moment in the demise of the republican strand of American politics and the rise of contemporary liberalism. According to this liberalism, government should be neutral as to conceptions of the good life, in order to respect persons as free and independent selves, capable of choosing their own ends. Keynesian fiscal policy both reflected this liberalism and deepened its hold on American public life. Although those who practiced Keynesian economics did not defend it in precisely these terms, the new political economy displayed two features of the liberalism that defines the procedural republic.”

Michael J. Sandel książka Liberalism and the Limits of Justice

Ch 4. Justice and the Good
Liberalism and the Limits of Justice, 1998

“Admittedly, the tendency to bracket substantive moral questions makes it difficult to argue for toleration in the language of the good. Defining privacy rights by defending the practices privacy protects seems either reckless or quaint; reckless because it rests so much on moral argument, quaint because it recalls the traditional view that ties the case for privacy to the merits of the conduct privacy protects. But as the abortion and sodomy cases illustrate, the attempt to bracket moral questions faces difficulties of its own. They suggest the truth in the "naive" view, that the justice or injustice of laws against abortion and homosexual sodomy may have something to do with the morality or immorality of these practices after all.”

1. America's Search for a Public Philosophy
Public Philosophy (2005)

“The liberalism with which I am concerned is a version of liberalism prominent in the moral and legal and political philosophy of the day: a liberalism in which the notions of justice, fairness, and individual rights play a central role, and which is indebted to Kant for much of its philosophical foundation.”

Michael J. Sandel, "Moral Argument and Liberal Toleration: Abortion and Homosexuality" (1989)

“Since human beings are storytelling beings, we are bound to rebel against the drift to storylessness. But there is no guarantee that the rebellions will take salutary form. Some, in their hunger for story, will be drawn to the vacant, vicarious fare of confessional talk shows, celebrity scandals, and sensational trials. Others will seek refuge in fundamentalism. The hope of our time rests instead with those who can summon the conviction and restraint to make sense of our condition and repair the civic life on which democracy depends.”

Michael J. Sandel książka Liberalism and the Limits of Justice

Introduction
Liberalism and the Limits of Justice, 1998

“Where the self is conceived as prior to its ends, independent of the roles it may occupy at any given time, reputation cannot be a matter of honor in the traditional sense. For the unencumbered self, not honor but dignity is the basis of respect―the dignity that consists in the capacity of persons as autonomous agents to choose their ends for themselves. Unlike honor, which ties respect for persons to the roles they inhabit, dignity resides in a self antecedent to social institutions, and so is invulnerable to injury by insult alone. For selves such as these, reputation matters, not intrinsically, as a matter of honor, but only instrumentally, as a business asset for example.”

Conclusion: In Search of a Public Philosophy
Democracy's Discontent (1996)

“The assumption that government must be neutral among conceptions of the good generally appears in cases in which the Court protects speech that government would restrict. But the force of this assumption can also be seen where the Court has upheld restrictions on speech, most notably, in obscenity cases. Although the Court has been reluctant to protect obscenity under the First Amendment, its reasoning in recent obscenity cases displays the powerful influence of neutrality assumptions on constitutional law.”

Chap. 3. Religious Liberty and Freedom of Speech
Democracy's Discontent (1996)

“Freedom of conscience and freedom of choice are not the same; where conscience dictates, choice decides. Where freedom of conscience is at stake, the relevant right is to perform a duty, not to make a choice. This was the issue for Madison and Jefferson. Religious liberty addressed the problem of encumbered selves, claimed by duties they cannot renounce, even in the face of civil obligations that may conflict.”

Chap. 3. Religious Liberty and Freedom of Speech
Democracy's Discontent (1996)

“Unlike utilitarianism, republican theory does not take people's existing preferences, whatever they may be, and try to satisfy them. It seeks instead to cultivate in citizens the qualities of character necessary to the common good of self-government. Insofar as certain dispositions, attachments, and commitments are essential to the realization of self-government, republican politics regards moral character as a public, not merely private, concern. In this sense, it attends to the identity, not just the interests, of its citizens.”

Chap. 3. Religious Liberty and Freedom of Speech
Democracy's Discontent (1996)

“Luck egalitarianism defends inequalities that arise from effort and choice. This highlights a point of convergence with free-market liberalism. Both emphasize personal responsibility and make the community’s obligation to help the needy conditional on showing that their neediness is no fault of their own.”

Chap. 2. Rights and the Neutral States
Democracy's Discontent (1996)

“To put the point another way, the republican sees liberty as internally connected to self-government and the civic virtues that sustain it.”

Chap. 5. Success Ethics
The Tyranny of Merits (2020)

“The idea that freedom consists in our capacity to choose our ends finds prominent expression in our politics and law. Its province is not limited to those known as liberals rather than conservatives in American politics; it can be found across the political spectrum.”

Chap. 2. Rights and the Neutral States
Democracy's Discontent (1996)