Politics of the common good

On Tuesday 13th October, the American political philosopher, Michael Sandel, is delivering a speech here at the RSA on what he calls the ‘politics of the common good’. This follows the publication of his latest book, Justice: What’s Right To Do based on his famous course, Justice, he delivers at Harvard each year, and his recent Reith lectures.

On Tuesday 13^th October, the American political philosopher, Michael Sandel, is delivering a speech here at the RSA on what he calls the ‘politics of the common good’. This follows the publication of his latest book, Justice: What’s Right To Do based on his famous course, Justice, he delivers at Harvard each year, and his recent Reith lectures.

Those who have read his work - in particular, his critique of Rawlsian liberalism in Liberalism and the Limits of Justice – will know that Sandel is one of the major political philosophers writing today. Commonly (and wrongly) considered a communitarian, I tended to always think of Sandel within a tradition of thinkers - in this I would include Charles Taylor and Michael Walzer – who emphasise the importance of collective action and identity as integral to the substance of the ‘good life’ without entirely negating the Kantian insistence on the individual right to self-determination.

But his new book, Justice (2009), which I read last night, struck me as a shift to a more clearly defined neo-Aristotelianism more akin to Alasdair MacIntrye's brilliantly original position outlined in After Virtue. An interesting and easy read which concludes with a powerful (but certainly contentious) set of arguments in defence of what he calls the ‘politics of the common good’. He positions it as an alternative to the ‘moral neutrality’ of rights-based liberalism of Rawls (see Theory of Justice and Political Liberalism) inspired by Kant (see his Groundwork for the Metaphysic of Morals) and the utilitarian conception of justice as the ‘maximisation of utility and/or welfare’ inspired in different ways by Bentham and Mill.

What this ‘politics of the common good’ actually consist of is not fully developed in any coherent or systematic way. But Sandel does offer four ‘key themes’:

1. It requires ‘citizenship, sacrifice and service’. A politics of the common good aims to cultivate a ‘dedication to the common good’ and ‘civic virtue’ in opposition to what he calls ‘purely privatised notions of the good life’. For Sandel this requires the establishing of social practices and institutions that embody these principles, for example, citizenship education and some form of national service.

2. It requires recognising the ‘moral limits of markets’. It asks profound questions regarding the ‘rightness’ of applying the logic of the market (e.g. financially incentivising pro-social behaviour) to the public sphere on the basis that it contaminates the moral fabric of collective action embedded in public life.

3. It requires a focus on ‘equality, solidarity and civic virtue’. The politics of the common good advocates ‘redistributive justice’ on the basis that increasing levels of income inequality leads to an erosion of the public sphere and the interaction between citizens because those who can afford it ‘opt out’, which severely weakens social solidarity. On this basis, Sandel advocates a shared commitment to developing ‘shared public spaces’ (e.g. schools attractive to those from different socio-economic backgrounds, public health clinics etc).

4. It requires a ‘politics of moral engagement’. Rather than ignoring and/or avoiding the deliberation of conflicting substantive moral and ethical issues, Sandel calls for the generation of a more ‘robust public dialogue’ in which differences and similarities are openly explored. The objective is not agreement but openness and engagement.

But what does this all mean in practice and what public policy strategy is needed to cultivate the 'politics of the common good' Sandel is starting to develop? Let's hope he gives us more detail when he visits the RSA in a couple of weeks time.