Other animals can make sounds, and sounds can indicate pleasure and pain. But language, a distinctly human capacity, isnยดt just for registering pleasure and pain. Itยดs about declaring what is just and what is unjust, and distinguishing right from wrong. We donยดt grasp these things silently, and then put words to them; language is the medium through which we discern and deliberate about the good.
Michael SandelHuman beings are empowered to exercise dominion over nature and even to be participants in creation; and yet, at the same time, there are strictures against idolatry, which is a kind of overreaching and confusing human beings' role with God's.
Michael SandelThe other effect that I worry about is the effect on the parent, that the moral teaching of humility and of the limits to our control that parenthood teaches- - that that will be lost and that we will begin to think of children more as consumer goods than as gifts that we can't fully control and for which we aren't fully responsible.
Michael SandelThey say the state should not impose on its citizens a preferred way of life, but should leave them as free as possible to choose their own values and ends, consistent with a similar liberty for others.
Michael SandelOver the past three decades, markets and market thinking have been reaching into spheres of life traditionally governed by non-market norms. As a result, we've drifted from having a market economy to becoming a market society.
Michael SandelParental love is not contingent on the talents and attributes the child happens to have. We choose our friends and spouses at least partly on the basis of qualities we find attractive. But we do not choose our children. Their qualities are unpredictable, and even the most conscientious parents cannot be held wholly responsible for the kind of child they have. That is why parenthood, more than other human relationships, teaches what the theologian William F. May calls an โopenness to the unbidden.
Michael Sandel