Review of Michael Sandel ’ s What money can ’ t buy : the moral limits of markets

Content Provider	Semantic Scholar
Author	Homas Ells
Copyright Year	2012
Abstract	Michael Sandel’s latest book is not a scholarly work but is clearly intended as a work of public philosophy—a contribution to public rather than academic discourse. The book makes two moves. The first, which takes up most of it, is to demonstrate by means of a great many examples, mostly culled from newspaper stories, that markets and money corrupt—degrade—the goods they are used to allocate. The second follows from the first as Sandel’s proposed solution: we as a society should deliberate together about the proper meaning and purpose of various goods, relationships, and activities (such as baseball and education) and how they should be valued. Public philosophy is a different genre from academic philosophy, but that does not mean that it cannot be held to high standards. In my view, while this book does provide food for thought and food for conversation, it nevertheless has significant failings as a work of public philosophy rather than journalistic social activism on the model of Naomi Klein’s No logo (1999).
File Format	PDF HTM / HTML
DOI	10.1017/s0031819113000284
Alternate Webpage(s)	http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/45510/1/blogs%20lse%20ac%20uk-What_Money_Cant_Buy_The_Moral_Limits_of_Markets.pdf
Alternate Webpage(s)	http://ejpe.org/pdf/7-1-br-4.pdf
Alternate Webpage(s)	http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/46238/1/blogs.lse.ac.uk-Book_Review_What_Money_Cant_Buy_The_Moral_Limits_of_Markets.pdf
Alternate Webpage(s)	https://doi.org/10.1017/s0031819113000284
Language	English
Access Restriction	Open
Content Type	Text
Resource Type	Article