Book Review of Justice and What Money Can’t Buy

Victoria Liu
Aug 25, 2017 · 3 min read
Justice and What Money Can’t Buy by Michael J. Sandel

I just finished reading Harvard Professor Michael Sandel’s books Justice: What’s The Right Thing To Do? and What Money Can’t Buy: The Moral Limits Of Markets. Needless to say, I enjoyed reading these two books very much, and the inspirations I took from these books are profound.

But, despite the pleasure I took from reading these books, I took some issues with Professor Sandel’s theory of justice. What he advocates is a society where every individual recognizes his/her obligation to the community and where the state strives to promote the right virtues, including parental love, the intrinsic value of learning, and human being’s attitude with nature. The way to promote these virtues is to rein in the market, in particular, limit the corrosive power of the market as it erodes the meaning of human lives, women’s reproductive ability, biological parent’s connections with their children, and many others.

I have certain objections. I recognize the necessity and importance to promote these important virtues, but to encourage them, as he advocates, will implicitly suggest an extremely powerful state or government capable of infiltrating its influence on all aspects of the society. What gets ignored is that government and market intrinsically bear many differences: a market can influence human beings’ behavior and thus impact all aspects of the society whereas a government cannot and should not interfere with human’s behavior, given the fact that individual liberty freed from governmental regulations is a fundamental desire.

What’s more, in a pluralist society, there is no strict definition of who is to define what is the right virtue, or the wrong virtue. Some people might view nature as an instrument for human beings to exploit and willfully assert human beings’ superiorities over nature. Though these views contradict with the mainstream attitude arguing for human beings’ obligation to protect nature, it does not make these views less correct, or even, less virtuous. The lack of certainty of how to define what virtues are good makes Professor Sandel’s argument less persuasive to me. I had a hard time understanding how he tries to reconcile the inevitable pluralism in the society with the necessity to promote moral virtues.

Furthermore, if we assume that we know the right virtues and the majority of the society agrees to promote these good virtues by reining in the market, it will ultimately lead us to a slippery slope where we cannot define the boundary between a virtue and a perception of “good.” For example, some people in Latin America views bullfight as cruel because it hurts harmonious relations between human beings and animals. But, if we buy in this logic, should we also regulate human being’s behavior of consuming animals because our consumption is based on our superiority to animals, which is contradictory to the virtue we strive to promote? Personally, the idea that human beings should respect nature is only our subjective perception of good, which is entirely different from virtues that require complete universality to be fair to all members of a pluralist society.

Besides, I had a hard time trying to make sense of a situation in which a woman bought two subway tickets for her personal comfort. Suppose the case is set in a crowded subway and an elderly suddenly board on the subway desperately in need of a seat because of the elderly’s leg problems. Should the women have an obligation to give up one of her seats to the elderly? I feel the situation here bears more complications than simply the need of the elderly and personal comfort of the woman, given the fact that the woman is entitled to two seats and the society promotes the virtue of helping the elderly desperate in need. I would like to see Professor Sandel’s response to a situation in which good virtues run contradictory to legitimate individual entitlements.

I am very inspired by Professor Sandel’s idea of viewing the market as a force with limits on morality. But, the near impossibility to promote all good virtues, and lack of certainty of the definition of virtue, and the blurred boundaries between virtues and perception of good makes me skeptical of any approach to limit the market.

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VWS’18 | Editor of Politics & Opinion at WCC | www.thevictoriablog.com

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