Piyush Bhatia's Reviews > Justice: What's the Right Thing to Do?

"We cannot know until we try and that it always seems impossible until it is done."

A book of political philosophy and ethics, this book compares and contrasts several important approaches to justice and provides a study of different political philosophies, and simultaneously applies them to address contemporary legal and political issues. Sandel illustrates the hard moral questions we confront in our everyday lives.
The approaches to justice presented in the book fall into three categories:

1.Welfare:MaximizingWelfare( Utilitarianism)
2. Freedom : Respecting Freedom ( Libertarianism )
3. Virtue : Cultivating and promoting virtue

Chapter by chapter, Sandel has elaborated the above-mentioned approaches while parallelly identifying the primary and eminent political philosophers who held such views. One such philosopher is John Rawls, distinguished as a pre-eminent philosopher of the 20th century and who originally gave birth to the "Justice Theory". The book enables the reader to rethink their understanding of justice and practices in their morally- and religiously charged public spheres. The book also includes assorted arguments for affirmative action and the telos of a social institution.

The fact that Sandel presents his arguments in line with the views of the intellectual giants of all times - Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Bentham, Locke, Kant makes the reader comprehensively engaged to the book. Such profound critique, written in a reader-friendly language enables the reader to develop critical thinking and a balanced approach towards arguments.