philososnore

 I brought Michael Sandel's Justice: What's the Right Thing to Do? some time back, because his Harvard lecture series is super-popular on the Chinese internet.  And it was ... dull.  Not bad, or objectionable, just dull, like listening to a Unitarian sermon.  Anyway, I quit about a third of the way in, and had no great plans to go back.

And we've got an interview with him today which is, again, almost mind-numbingly dull. (Apparently people in material societies discover that material things aren't enough for happiness, and then begin to ask the reason why, shockingly.)   So what is it about this guy?  Is he a really good lecturer, or something?  Or do the lectures appeal to the Chinese audience exactly because they deal with very basic issues, of a type that Chinese schools don't touch.

Comments

[dsquared]

Also dull: Amartya Sen. Half way through Identity and Violence (Oh all right; three chapters in. I did not reach the half way point in "Identity and Violence". Are you happy now?) was when I first formulated the theory that boredom was a form of pain.

[JamesP]

Actual paragraph from today's interview -

"Some of the biggest debates we have are to do with people's disagreement about whether one particular law is just or unjust. Some laws are just and some are unjust. It is important to have discussion, deliberation, and reflection about the justice of law."

[Phil]

He's actually thinking in Chinese! All he needs is to add "These are the Three Importants" and he's there.

[Cian]

Also dull: John Rawls. I think I've got a list somewhere.

[Charlie]

I think it's just that some people are keen to think that there's a respectable alternative to liberalism of the Rawls / Dworkin sort, which they don't like. Sandel is supposed to argue that the self is dependent on pre-existing communal (cynically: tribal) attachments; it would be literally self-undermining to adopt an individualistic liberalism where everyone has the rights that would be agreed to on the basis of absolute neutrality with respect to culture, history and natural endowments. Apologies if this is known to you all, and my hack summary tedious and unbearable.

Also, it's probably the case that the current crop of PPE graduates in our political class were exposed to the communitarian responses to social liberalism at exactly the time when the responses were brand new and hence talked about quite a bit.

[Barry Freed]

They used to show those lectures on public broadcasting in the early afternoon on Saturdays. I watched regularly. I don’t think I ever made it through a single one without falling asleep 20 minutes in and waking up somewhere in the middle of the Doha Debates.