Join the HCSF Reading Group to discuss Justice: What’s the Right Thing to Do? By Michael J. Sandel Professor of Government at Harvard


In-Person Meeting

Sunday, January 19, 2025
4:30-6:00 pm PST

Dolores Heights, San Francisco
Location sent to registrants the week of the meeting




HCSF Members: Free, but RSVP required
Non-Members: $10   Not a member? Register here for membership!
 

Click here to register

Registration ends Friday, January 17
 

Justice: What’s the Right Thing to Do?
Michael J. Sandel
308 pages   
2009
 

Based on his legendary Harvard course, Sandel’s book helps us think our way through immigration, physician-assisted suicide, stem cell research, abortion, religion’s place in politics, affirmative action, the role of markets and other hot issues, using big questions of political philosophy. Sandel explains theories of justice based on utilitarianism (minimize social harm), libertarianism (maximize personal freedom) and communitarianism (cultivate civic virtue), and makes Aristotle, Immanuel Kant, John Stuart Mill, Robert Nozick and John Rawls accessible.
 
“In terms we can all understand,” Justice “confronts us with the concepts that lurk, so often unacknowledged, beneath our conflicts” (NY Times)
 
“Politicians and commentators tend to ask two questions of policy: will it make voters better off, and will it affect their liberty? Sandel rightly points out the shallowness of that debate and adds a third criterion: How will it affect the common good?” (The Guardian)
 
Justice is “. . . a timely plea for us to desist from political bickering and see if we can have a sensible discussion about what sort of society we really want to live in.” (The Observer of London)

 

Meeting organizer:
Kirsten Miclau
readinggroup@harvardclubsf.org


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