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Books

Discontented Democrat

Michael Gough reviews Democracy’s Discontent: America in Search of a Public Philosophy by Michael J. Sandel.

Michael Sandel, Professor of Government at Harvard, has made his reputation as a vehement critic of the school of Anglo-American liberal thought emanating from John Rawls’s seminal work A Theory of Justice (1971). Sandel’s Liberalism and the Limits of Justice (1983), along with two critical articles the following year – The Procedural Republic and the Unencumbered Self and Morality and the Liberal Ideal – led commentators to incorporate him into the so-called ‘communitarian’ tradition. The tradition is unusual not least in that none of its prominent spokesmen – others are Charles Taylor, Alasdair MacIntyre and Roberto Unger – either call themselves communitarian or appear to take much pleasure in having the term attributed to them. Nevertheless, those who find such labels useful will be pleased to note that Sandel’s convictions remain unchanged in spite of the voluminous critical literature which has grown up in the aftermath of his previous writings.

Democracy’s Discontent is, however, certainly more than a restatement of Sandel’s position.

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