Philosophy is unpopular amongst the general public. Even
though most people engage in philosophical discussions, debates, and thoughts
on a daily basis, they often mistakenly disregard philosophy as a dull, esoteric
subject that only an arcane group of scholars mull over in their dimly lit
offices filled with dusty tomes. This contempt for philosophy even exists among
an educated group of people, such as college students. Some STEM majors will,
especially in an anonymous setting like the Internet, invariably denounce the
lack of job opportunities or practical skills that studying philosophy offers.
However, this is simply incorrect. Granted, there might be fewer job
opportunities directly available for philosophy majors, but studying philosophy
or thinking philosophically helps one build various tangible and practical skills,
abilities, and benefits. No one denies the necessity and importance of logic in
life, but they simultaneously overlook the fact that philosophy and logic are
closely intertwined. Logic is not only an integral part of the philosophy
curriculum at the university level, but the process of pondering about a
philosophical problem undoubtedly improves one’s logic. Moreover, different
schools of philosophy attempt to explain people’s both conscious and
subconscious reasons for carrying out various activities –– the ones that they
do not consider boring or abstruse. It, therefore, becomes quite clear that
people harbor misguided judgments about philosophy. Fortunately, a public
intellectual strives to shatter this unwarranted stigma by publishing
easy-to-digest books and holding entertaining as well as enlightening lectures.
Michael J. Sandel, a philosopher and a professor at Harvard University, attempts
to paint a new image of philosophy as an accessible, interesting, relevant discipline
by tackling profound philosophical challenges in an approachable manner, and by
doing so, Sandel, as a public intellectual in a democracy, successfully
fulfills his role of invoking an insightful dialogue among its citizens.
Before delving into Sandel’s accomplishments as a public
intellectual, it is important to prove that he indeed is one. In order to do
so, defining the term public intellectual becomes necessary. As the word itself
self-evidently suggests, a public intellectual needs to fulfill two
requirements: the person must be a public figure with a wide sphere of
influence and possess a gifted intellectual capacity. Sandel clearly passes
both criteria with flying colors, as this intellectual profile of Sandel will
demonstrate and solidify his status as a public intellectual.
Although
Sandel has published seven works in total, his most famous and influential book
would be Justice: What’s the Right Thing
to Do?. The New York Times best seller was written to accompany his famous
“Justice” course, which has influenced more than 15,000 students and has been
made freely available online and on television.[1] As stated previously, a
public intellectual must be a public figure with a wide sphere of influence. In
other words, he or she must be able to reach and affect a diverse crowd. If
Sandel had restricted his lectures to exclude everyone but Harvard students, he
would not have earned the title of public intellectual. He would still qualify
as an intellectual, as his course material would all the same enlighten his
students about intricate philosophical concepts in a captivating manner, but
Harvard matriculates are already a relatively closed, homogenous group. There
will be many unique individuals, but as a whole, they are under a very similar category.
They are all educated, highly intelligent, and ambitious, as evidenced by their
acceptance into one of the most prestigious, if not the most, universities in
the world. By contrast, the audience that his book and free lecture series are
able to influence is very diverse. The book has been translated into eleven different
languages, extending its reach worldwide, and with the Internet’s volatile and
accessible nature, no one could accurately predict how far-reaching his
messages are and how diverse the crowd might be. This ease of access created by
his desire to spread his knowledge to the world not only by writing the book
but also making his lectures freely available through two different mediums demonstrates
that he rightfully earned the “public” portion of the title.
If his
occupation as a Harvard professor were not a sufficient indicator of his
intellectual status, his published works and other accomplishments would
certainly suffice. His books include Liberalism and the Limits of Justice,
Democracy's Discontent, Public Philosophy: Essays on Morality in
Politics, The Case against Perfection: Ethics in the Age of Genetic
Engineering, Justice: What's the Right Thing to Do?, and What Money Can’t Buy: The Moral
Limits of Markets.[2]
Merely looking at the titles of his works, it becomes evident that he attempts
to tackle complex, profound questions and issues, including politics, ethics,
genetic engineering, economics, and so on. Without analyzing each book in depth
due to temporal and spatial constraints, I will defer the initial judgment of whether
he is an intellectual to the qualified peers at Harvard, in China, and in the
United States government. Sandel has received the Harvard-Radcliffe Phi Beta
Kappa Teaching Prize, was named the “most influential foreign figure of the
year” in China by China Newsweek in 2010, and served on the President’s Council
on Bioethics from 2002 to 2005.[3]
Evidently, even without an actual assessment of his work, his esteemed
credentials establish his status as an intellectual.
Although
his credentials and published works are quite impressive, they still fail to
answer the following question: “Who really is Michael Sandel?” In Encyclopedia of Criminal Justice Ethics,
Terry Beitzel characterizes Sandel as a civic republican, meaning Sandel
“argues that the limits of liberalism and communitarianism are that neither can
properly ensure and sustain liberty.”[4] Moreover, “rather than
ask[ing] which has priority, the individual or the collective,” he questions
“how citizens can better or best govern themselves.”[5] The philosophical school
of thought he subscribes to is evidently reflected in many of his works. In his
newest book, What Money Can’t Buy, he
raises such questions as what should be the role of money and markets in our
society. He provides a list of things that are possible to purchase in America,
ranging from medical care, to upgrades on one’s prison cell, and to the right
to kill an endangered animal.[6] By creating this list, he
tries to illustrate that in a world where everything can presumably be
purchased, people fail to recognize why some things should not be bought.[7] He ends the book with the
following rhetorical question: “Do we want a society where everything is up for
sale? Or are there certain moral and civic goods that markets do not honor and
money cannot buy?”[8]
Even though he shapes his conclusion in the form of a question, he clearly
asserts that he is against the moral and economic corruption that debases
everything –– both the tangible and intangible. Thus, his examples prompt the
readers to open their eyes and think critically about how they can better or
best govern themselves, preserve the common good, and build strong communities
that benefit everyone, adhering to the ideals of civic republicanism.
Besides
being a civic republican, Sandel is the quintessential public intellectual
because he creates widely circulated contents that are easily accessible and digestible
yet provides a meaningful cerebral challenge as well as sparks intelligent public
discourse. First method Sandel employs in order to achieve his objective is making
philosophy fun. One of the most famous examples in Justice: What’s the Right Thing to Do is “The Runway Trolley,”
which perfectly demonstrates his status as the model public intellectual. In
this hypothetical framework, you are the driver of a broken trolley car that is
soon to run over and kill five workers standing on the track.[9] You are given the choice
of driving straight into the five workers or steer the trolley car onto a side
track, where only one person will be killed.[10] He notes that most people
choose to steer the car onto the side track, making the active choice of
killing one person instead of five.[11] He then alters the
scenario. You are now an onlooker who has the choice to push a heavy man off
the bridge on which both of you are standing to stop the trolley car and save
the aforementioned five workers.[12] In this case, most people
choose not to kill the heavy man, even though it produces the same result as
the first instance in terms of the number of people killed.[13] Through these
easy-to-understand and engaging examples, he has illustrated two difficult
moral principles: consequentialist, which locates morality in the consequences
of an act, and categorical moral reasoning, which finds morality in certain
duties and rights.[14] The Runaway Trolley is not
a rigid, dull lecture on complex philosophical concepts; it almost serves as a provocative
but entertaining discussion-based game that one could play with his or her
friends over dinner. However, it still teaches the reader or the listener that
turning the trolley car onto a sidetrack is an example of consequentialist
moral reasoning and choosing not to push the heavy man over the bridge employs
categorical moral reasoning. Evidently, Sandel’s ability to explain complicated
ideas in easily manageable ways demonstrates his prowess as a public
intellectual.
Another
approach he exercises to make philosophy more interesting and accessible is grounding
various philosophical questions on tangible and relevant matters. One of the
issues that resonate very deeply with college students is affirmative action.
Some are beneficiaries of this policy, but others have suffered because of it.
Sandel references the 1996 court case of a white woman named Cheryl Hopwood who
was denied admission to a law school owing to affirmative action, raising such
questions as “should we try to correct for inequality in educational
backgrounds by taking race into consideration,” and “should not a student’s
efforts and achievements carry more weight than factors that are out of his or
her control?”[15]
These are concerns that have emerged, at least once, in every college student’s
mind. By introducing these relevant questions, he attempts to explain
Aristotle’s theory of justice, which states that “justice is about giving
people their due, what they deserve.”[16] Aristotle further
contends, “When considering matters of distribution, one must consider the
goal, the end, the purpose of what is being distributed.”[17] With this newly learned
philosophy in mind, people can then alter their opinion on affirmative action
or strengthen their previously held beliefs. For example, if a university’s
goal is to have a more diverse campus, then affirmative action would be a reasonable
solution, whereas if its goal is to accept students with the highest GPAs and SAT
scores, affirmative action might not be the best answer. Clearly, creating a
philosophical angle on an already pertinent issue is an effective method of
making philosophy more accessible.
Since
Sandel’s status as a public intellectual is firmly established at this point,
it becomes imperative to discuss his role as a public intellectual in a
democratic society. Stephen Mack argues, “Trained to it or not, all
participants in self-government are duty-bound to prod, poke, and pester the
powerful institutions that would shape their lives. And so if public
intellectuals have any role to play in a democracy—and they do—it’s simply to
keep the pot boiling.”[18] Sandel flawlessly carries
out this task. In his lecture, he brings up politically relevant examples such as
the libertarian notion that redistributive taxation is similar to forced labor,
and students are tasked to argue for and against the libertarian belief.[19] This epitomizes the role
of a public intellectual in a democracy since he shapes his philosophical lessons,
which engenders pertinent public discourse, based on issues that voters should
be knowledgeable about, allowing them to make more informed decisions. In
addition, his influential lecture series has fueled a dialogue among a diverse
group of people. On the Harvard’s website dedicated to Sandel’s “Justice”
course, people can comment on seventeen different philosophical questions
related to the lecture.[20] On the thread that poses
the question “Is telling a misleading truth morally equivalent to lying?,”
people reference Thiruvalluvar, an ancient Tamil poet, Mahabharata, a Sanskrit epic of ancient India, and Immanuel Kant to
argue their respective points.[21] Thus, Sandel’s work not
only directly imparts knowledge to its audience but also serves as a platform
in which peer-to-peer teaching and debate regularly occur. Moreover, even
though the book was published seven years ago, the fact that there are still
active discussions today demonstrates Sandel’s wide reach and lasting power. By
encouraging and sustaining public discourse, Sandel clearly fulfills his job as
a public intellectual.
Because
Sandel’s pot of intellectual prodding continues to boil, Mack’s claim that the
prevalence of America’s anti-intellectualism is nothing but a fiction holds
more weight. Mack points out two reasons that the term popularized by Richard
Hofstadter is wrongly attributed. He writes,
One, the fact that academic institutions wield enormous
financial, technological, and cultural power—and the fact that, more generally,
education continues to be the centerpiece of some of our most cherished social
myths (i.e., “the “American Dream”)—are both powerful reasons to doubt that
Americans suffer from some instinctive hostility to intellectuals. Two, what is
sometimes identified as anti-intellectualism is in fact intellectual—that is, a
well articulated family of ideas and arguments that privilege the practical,
active side of life (e.g., work) over the passive and purely reflective
operations of the mind in a vacuum.[22]
Sandel is a living
embodiment of the first reason. Because of powerful academic institutions, in
this case Harvard University, he is able to disseminate his ideas to numerous
people and receive the title of public intellectual. Harvard financially and
technologically hosts the website, and his lectures leave a lasting philosophical,
political, ethical, and cultural impact on the viewers. Many Americans who
watch and comment on his lectures harbor no “instinctive hostility.”[23] Rather, they clearly
demonstrate a yearning for knowledge. Sandel also employs the second reason exceptionally
well, as many of his philosophical arguments are grounded on practical
examples, which is how he has earned the status of an accessible philosopher.
Excluding the previously mentioned example of affirmative action, he utilizes
other tangible issues like surrogacy and family obligations to explain moral
responsibility in contractarian terms.[24] Instead of attempting to
abstractly work out the ideas of mutual agreement, social contract, and moral
norms, it would be both more interesting and straightforward to “privilege the
practical, active side of life.”[25] Evidently, Sandel is a
shining example of the American intellectual vanguard.
The
not-so-declining public intellectual, or rather the flourishing public
intellectual, Michael J. Sandel has successfully turned philosophy into an
interesting, relevant, and accessible discipline by presenting his teachings in digestible and pertinent forms. Consequently, he has accomplished
his mission not only as a citizen but also as a public intellectual in a
democracy. As long as he maintains his identity as a public intellectual,
America’s boiling pot of intellect and reason will refuse to simmer down.
No comments:
Post a Comment