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 SandelMarkets are useful instruments for organizing productive activity. But unless we want to let the market rewrite the norms that govern social institutions, we need a public debate about the moral limits of markets.
Michael SandelIn natural pregnancy, more than half of fertilized eggs fail to implant or are otherwise lost. Should we regard that as an instance of infant mortality? And if so, why are we not mounting ambitious public health campaigns to try to save and rescue all of the fertilized eggs that are lost in natural pregnancy? We would need a public health campaign of massive proportions if there really were over a fifty percent rate of infant mortality.
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 SandelIn most of our lives, we are accustomed to aiming at mastery and control and dominion- - over nature, over our lives, over our jobs, over our careers, over the goods that we buy.
Michael SandelI think the reason we might hesitate to pay cash to students for doing well on tests or getting good grades or reading books is that we sense that the monetary payment is an extrinsic reward.
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