Justice: What's the Right Thing to Do?

by Michael J. Sandel

In some cases, attempts to bring about public apologies or reparations may do more harm than good—by inflaming old animosities, hardening historic enmities, entrenching a sense of victimhood, or generating resentment.

The notion that my responsibilities are limited to the ones I take upon myself is a liberating one. It assumes that we are, as moral agents, free and independent selves, unbound by prior moral ties, capable of choosing our ends for ourselves. Not custom or tradition or inherited status, but the free choice of each individual is the source of the only moral obligations that constrain us.

Kant and Rawls do not deny they are advancing certain moral ideals. Their quarrel is with theories of justice that derive rights from some conception of the good. Utilitarianism is one such theory. It takes the good to consist in maximizing pleasure or welfare, and asks what system of rights is likely to achieve it. Aristotle offers a very different theory of the good. It is not about maximizing pleasure but about realizing our nature and developing our distinctly human capacities. Aristotle’s reasoning is teleological in that he reasons from a certain conception of the human good.

It is easy to see how resting rights on utilitarian calculations leaves rights vulnerable. If the only reason to respect my right to religious liberty is to promote the general happiness, what happens if someday a large majority despises my religion and wants to ban it?

Much of the argument over the role of government and markets is a debate about how best to enable individuals to pursue their ends for themselves.

Alasdair MacIntyre offers a powerful answer to this question. In his book After Virtue (1981), he gives an account of the way we, as moral agents, arrive at our purposes and ends. As an alternative to the voluntarist conception of the person, MacIntyre advances a narrative conception. Human beings are storytelling beings. We live our lives as narrative quests. “I can only answer the question ‘What am I to do?’ if I can answer the prior question ‘Of what story or stories do I find myself a part?’ ”36

To live a life is to enact a narrative quest that aspires to a certain unity or coherence. When confronted with competing paths, I try to figure out which path will best make sense of my life as a whole, and of the things I care about. Moral deliberation is more about interpreting my life story than exerting my will. It involves choice, but the choice issues from the interpretation; it is not a sovereign act of will.

One striking implication of this view is that “there is no political obligation, strictly speaking, for citizens generally.” Although those who run for office voluntarily incur a political obligation (that is, to serve their country if elected), the ordinary citizen does not. As Rawls writes, “it is not clear what is the requisite binding action or who has performed it.”44 So if the liberal account of obligation is right, the average citizen has no special obligations to his or her fellow citizens, beyond the universal, natural duty not to commit injustice.

Suppose two children are drowning, and you have time to save only one. One child is your child, and the other is the child of a stranger. Would it be wrong to rescue your own child?

Suppose two aging parents are in need of care; one is my mother, and the other is somebody else’s mother. Most people would agree that, while it might be admirable if I could care for both, I have a special responsibility to look after my mother.

To insist that we are, as individuals, responsible only for the choices we make and the acts we perform makes it difficult to take pride in the history and traditions of one’s country.

a point that liberal philosophers are happy to concede: As long as we don’t violate anyone’s rights, we can fulfill the general duty to help others by helping those who are close at hand—such as family members or fellow citizens. There’s nothing wrong with a parent rescuing his own child rather than another, provided he doesn’t run over a stranger’s child on the way to the rescue.

He accepted the $1 million reward offered by the Justice Department for helping apprehend the Unabomber, but gave most of it to the families of those killed and injured by his brother. And he apologized, on behalf of his family, for his brother’s crimes.

Both major political parties appealed to the idea of neutrality, but in different ways. Generally speaking, Republicans invoked the idea in economic policy, while Democrats applied it to social and cultural issues.

if it’s true that the developing fetus is morally equivalent to a child, then abortion is morally equivalent to infanticide. And few would maintain that government should let parents decide for themselves whether to kill their children. So the “pro-choice” position in the abortion debate is not really neutral on the underlying moral and theological question; it implicitly rests on the assumption that the Catholic Church’s teaching on the moral status of the fetus—that it is a person from the moment of conception—is false.

Let churches and other religious institutions continue to offer marriage ceremonies. Let department stores and casinos get into the act if they want…. Let couples celebrate their union in any way they choose and consider themselves married whenever they want…. And, yes, if three people want to get married, or one person wants to marry herself, and someone else wants to conduct a ceremony and declare them married, let ’em.

Kinsley suggests that domestic partnership laws could deal with the financial, insurance, child support, and inheritance issues that arise when people co-habit and raise children together. He proposes, in effect, to replace all state-sanctioned marriages, gay and straight, with civil unions.

The real issue in the gay marriage debate is not freedom of choice but whether same-sex unions are worthy of honor and recognition by the community—whether they fulfill the purpose of the social institution of marriage. In Aristotle’s terms, the issue is the just distribution of offices and honors. It’s a matter of social recognition.

One says justice means maximizing utility or welfare—the greatest happiness for the greatest number. The second says justice means respecting freedom of choice—either the actual choices people make in a free market (the libertarian view) or the hypothetical choices people would make in an original position of equality (the liberal egalitarian view). The third says justice involves cultivating virtue and reasoning about the common good. As you’ve probably guessed by now, I favor a version of the third approach.

There is no guarantee that public deliberation about hard moral questions will lead in any given situation to agreement—or even to appreciation for the moral and religious views of others. It’s always possible that learning more about a moral or religious doctrine will lead us to like it less. But we cannot know until we try.