当我们遇到生死抉择的时候，为什么我们常常违背利益最大化的原则而尊重人的基本权利？可是，当我们口口声声说生命至上时，为什么像福特汽车这样的企业却会给生命贴上价格标签？如果我们尊重个体的权利，但为什么大多数人又会反对同性恋婚姻？我们认为法律必须保护合同的有效性，但为什么一些双方自愿签订的合同却被法院推翻？
我们的社会、我们的思潮、我们的正义观，正陷入尴尬的两难选择当中。我们甚至怀疑法律是否是公正的，因为法律无法回避个人的道德判断，无法做到中立性。我们能否找到另外一条道路，让我们的社会规范即体现人性，又体现客观性？“世界最受欢迎的老师之一”的迈克尔•桑德尔教授寻找的，正是我们期待的有关公正的第三条路径：培养我们每个人的德性，做出有道德的选择。

Harvard government professor Sandel (Public Philosophy) dazzles in this sweeping survey of hot topics—the recent government bailouts, the draft, surrogate pregnancies, same-sex marriage, immigration reform and reparations for slavery—that situates various sides in the debates in the context of timeless philosophical questions and movements. Sandel takes utilitarianism, Kant's categorical imperative and Rawls's theory of justice out of the classroom, dusts them off and reveals how crucial these theories have been in the construction of Western societies—and how they inform almost every issue at the center of our modern-day polis. The content is dense but elegantly presented, and Sandel has a rare gift for making complex issues comprehensible, even entertaining (see his sections entitled Shakespeare versus the Simpsons and What Ethics Can Learn from Jack Benny and Miss Manners), without compromising their gravity. With exegeses of Winnie the Pooh, transcripts of Bill Clinton's impeachment hearing and the works of almost every major political philosopher, Sandel reveals how even our most knee-jerk responses bespeak our personal conceptions of the rights and obligations of the individual and society at large. Erudite, conversational and deeply humane, this is truly transformative reading.

本书是一部关于自由的意义的重要著作，它追溯了本世纪后半叶美国民主的再造过程。针对公共哲学的概念，《民主的不满——美国在寻求一种公共哲学》提出了一种哲学的论证和一种历史的论证。其哲学主张认为，程序自由主义——一种声称政府应该对关于良善生活的各种竞争性见解保持中立的政治理论——是不充分的；其历史的观点则认为，在过去的半个世纪里，程序自由主义在不断地为美国的政治话语创造词汇，它已经排挤了共和主义对公民身份和自由的理解，并开始作为一种支配性的公共哲学大行其道。在桑德尔看来，程序自由主义已经逐步取代了公民共和主义，并给美国的民主带来了灾难性后果。只有通过恢复共和主义传统，致力于共同体认同和自治所需要的公民美德，才能消除美国民主的不满。

《自由主义与正义的局限》是一部现代西方政治学的名著。它从道德主体、分配原则、社会契约等角度展开论述，指证了以罗尔斯为代表的“政治自由主义”学说的偏颇，并据此提出了“正义内在于善”的思想。本书结构严谨，论述精妙，为西方学界视为少数几部有影响的挑战罗氏理论的著作之一，与诺齐克的《无政府、国家和乌托邦》、麦金太尔的《追寻美德》等并称于世。

A renowned political philosopher rethinks the role that markets and money should play in our society
Should we pay children to read books or to get good grades? Should we put a price on human life to decide how much pollution to allow? Is it ethical to pay people to test risky new drugs or to donate their organs? What about hiring mercenaries to fight our wars, outsourcing inmates to for-profit prisons, auctioning admission to elite universities, or selling citizenship to immigrants willing to pay?
In his New York Times bestseller What Money Can’t Buy, Michael J. Sandel takes up one of the biggest ethical questions of our time: Isn’t there something wrong with a world in which everything is for sale? If so, how can we prevent market values from reaching into spheres of life where they don’t belong? What are the moral limits of markets?
In recent decades, market values have crowded out nonmarket norms in almost every aspect of life. Without quite realizing it, Sandel argues, we have drifted from having a market economy to being a market society.
In Justice, an international bestseller, Sandel showed himself to be a master at illuminating, with clarity and verve, the hard moral questions we confront in our everyday lives. Now, in What Money Can’t Buy, he provokes a debate that’s been missing in our market-driven age: What is the proper role of markets in a democratic society, and how can we protect the moral and civic goods that markets do not honor and money cannot buy?