Democracy's Discontent: America in Search of a Public Philosophy - Hardcover

Sandel, Michael J.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0674197445 ISBN 13: 9780674197442

Publisher: Belknap Press, 1996

Synopsis

The defect, Sandel maintains, lies in the impoverished vision of citizenship and community shared by Democrats and Republicans alike. American politics has lost its civic voice, leaving both liberals and conservatives unable to inspire the sense of community and civic engagement that self-government requires.

In search of a public philosophy adequate to our time, Sandel ranges across the American political experience, recalling the arguments of Jefferson and Hamilton, Lincoln and Douglas, Holmes and Brandeis, FDR and Reagan. He relates epic debates over slavery and industrial capitalism to contemporary controversies over the welfare state, religion, abortion, gay rights, and hate speech. Democracy's Discontent provides a new interpretation of the American political and constitutional tradition that offers hope of rejuvenating our civic life.

About this title

About the Author

Michael J. Sandel is the Anne T. and Robert M. Bass Professor of Government, Harvard University, and the author most recently of Public Philosophy (Harvard).

Reviews

American political discourse has become thin gruel because of a deliberate deflation of American ideals. So says Michael Sandel in a wonderful new book, Democracy's Discontent Sandel's book will help produce what he desires-a quickened sense of the moral consequences of political practices and economic arrangements Sandel is right to regret the missing moral dimension of public discourse. Or he was until recently. Suddenly politics has reacquired a decidedly Sandelean dimension. Political debate is reconnecting with the concerns Sandel so lucidly examines Statecraft is again soulcraft, and the citizens who will participate best, and with most zest, will be the fortunate readers of Sandel's splendid expansion of our rich political tradition.

A wide-ranging critique of American liberalism that, unlike many other current books on the matter, seeks its restoration as a guiding political ethic. ``Despite the achievements of American life in the last half-century,'' political theorist Sandel (Harvard) writes, ``our politics is beset with anxiety and frustration.'' He suggests that the growing public mistrust in the federal government, whose manifestations range from the conservative sweep of Congress in the last election to the Oklahoma City bombing, can be addressed only by reevaluating the liberal assumption that ``government should be neutral on the question of the good life,'' and by putting in its place a social-democratic concern for the spiritual well-being of the citizenry. The ``utilitarian calculus'' of the past has helped preserve individual liberties, Sandel observes, but it finds little room for weighing the finer questions of morality in recommending action. (For instance, Sandel remarks, minimalist liberalism of the sort that is practiced today could scarcely find room for the antislavery arguments of the abolitionists a century and a half ago, relying as those arguments did on ``appeals to comprehensive moral ideals.'') This indifference to the character of the citizenry, Sandel adds, is not the province of liberalism alone; where liberals have defended abortion rights on the grounds that government has no place in moral issues, conservatives have likewise argued for laissez-faire economic policies, claiming ``government should be neutral toward the outcomes'' of a market economy. Sandel is strong on tracking the history of this value-neutralization of government; he is less successful in identifying the particulars of a practical yet value-laden ethic that can ``repair the civic life on which democracy depends'' while not trampling on anyone's liberties--one of the thorny dilemmas of current reformist politics. A book rich in ideas, if not in blueprints for action. -- Copyright ©1996, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Edition details

• Publisher: Belknap Press
• Publication date: 1996
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0674197445
• ISBN 13: 9780674197442
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 432