Liberalism and the Limits of Justice
Liberalism and the Limits of Justice is a book by the American political philosopher Michael J. Sandel. The book presents a critique of John Rawls' theory of justice as fairness, as articulated in A Theory of Justice (1971). Sandel challenges Rawls' conception of the self and argues that liberal political philosophy inadequately accounts for the embeddedness of individuals in social and historical contexts. The book is considered a significant contribution to communitarian critiques of liberalism, although Sandel does not fully embrace the communitarian label.
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What Hacker News says
- Solid base for American political thought and law: Democracy's Discontent It will give you valuable insight into the current political process, how it was formed, why some laws are the way they are, and it has chapters discussing privacy law, free speech, religion, and a multitude of others. The chapter over the 14th Amendment offers such a great framework to view the Constitution that reading this book alone before college allowed me to ace any government type class I ever took.
More dense and more theory: Liberalism and the Limits of Justice. I have read it 3 or 4 times and I still haven't digested all of it. It starts with an excellent argument for the primacy of justice and then destroys it. My favorite section of his book was about morality/enforceability of contracts in a philosophical sense. Worth several reads.
- If you enjoy debating philosophy (especially value based/govt philosophy), Liberalism and the Limits of Justice by Michael Sandel builds up and absolutely destroys around 10 of the most common premises for these types of debates. A hundred other issues are dealt with along the way and this will change the way you think about this type of philosophy.
- An incomplete but useful list of classics might be the list following. You may wish to start with wikipedia entries on them, or other sources, but reading the texts themselves is useful!
Plato: The Republic
Aristotle: Nichomachean Ethics; and Politics
Thomas Hobbes: Leviathan John Locke: Two Treatises of Government
Rousseau: The Social Contract
Montesquieu: The Spirit of the Laws De Toqueville: Democracy in America
Karl Marx: The Communist Manifesto; and Das Kapital.
JS Mill: On Liberty (the classic Utilitarian Enlightenment work)
John Rawls: A Theory of Justice (A hugely important work on rights and principles of political decisionmaking)
Robert Nozick: Anarchy, State and Utopia (a right-wing / libertarian oriented response to Rawls)
Michael Sandel: Liberalism and the Limits of Justice (critique of liberalism and introducing communitarianism)
