Justice – What's the Right Thing to Do?

Is torture ever justified? Will you ever steal a drug that your child needs to survive? Is it sometimes wrong to tell the truth? How much is one human life worth? What do you think and why?

See Michael Sandel’s riveting talk on the need to rediscover the lost art of democratic debate.

Take a front row seat at the first course Harvard has ever made available to everyone, online and on the air! Click here!

Justice is one of the most popular courses in Harvard’s history. Now it’s your turn to take the same journey in moral reflection that has captivated more than 14,000 students, as Harvard opens its classroom to the world.

In this twelve part series, Sandel challenges us with difficult moral dilemmas and asks our opinion about the right thing to do. He then asks us to examine our answers in the light of new scenarios. The results are often surprising, revealing that important moral questions are never black and white.

This course also addresses the hot topics of our day—affirmative action, same-sex marriage, patriotism and rights—and Sandel shows us that we can revisit familiar controversies with a fresh perspective.

As of fall 2009, some 14,000 Harvard students have taken Michael Sandel’s legendary course, “Justice.” His lectures draw a thousand-plus students eager to discuss big questions of modern political life: bioethics, torture, rights versus responsibilities. Sandel’s class is a primer on thinking through the hard choices we face as citizens. The course has been turned into a public TV series with companion website and, this past fall, a best-selling book: Justice: What’s the Right Thing to Do?

“Michael Sandel is one of the world’s most interesting political philosophers,” the Guardian writes. “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?”

Calling Sandel “one of the most popular teachers in the world,” the London Observer explains what makes his voice distinctive: “He sets himself at odds with one of the reigning assumptions of modern public life — that moral and religious notions are private matters that should be kept out of public political debate.”

“The responsibility of political philosophy that tries to engage with practice is to be clear, or at least accessible.” – Michael Sandel.

~ by revolutionwithin on June 28, 2010.