• Politics
• United States
• Cameron Abadi

This week, this year’s prize was awarded to Michael Sandel, who is among Harvard University’s most popular professors of political philosophy—as well as a veritable star on YouTube, where his lecture series on justice has been viewed tens of millions of times. Sandel’s work has focused on questions at the intersection of moral and political theory, which have gained newfound relevance as U.S. President Donald Trump pushes the boundaries of both.

Sandel spoke with Foreign Policy about the relationship between his own critiques of liberalism and the arguments advanced by so-called postliberal supporters of the Trump administration.

Cameron Abadi: You’re known as one of the leading figures in the movement known as communitarianism, which included a critique of liberalism as a system of politics. That seems to share an overlap with the contemporary intellectual movement known as postliberalism, which has growing political momentum. What did your own communitarian critique of liberalism consist of?

Michael Sandel: You’re right. I began with a critique of liberalism, or a certain version of it, as moral and political philosophy. My first book, Liberalism and the Limits of Justice, grew out of my dissertation back in the early 1980s. I was critical of the version of liberalism that found its fullest contemporary expression in the work of John Rawls, which said we should try to be neutral in defining justice and rights, toward competing conceptions of the good life, toward the particular moral and spiritual convictions that citizens care about.

Liberalism and the Limits of Justice, Michael J. Sandel, Cambridge University Press, 252 pp., $74, second edition March 1998.

What motivated that version of liberalism, which goes back to Immanuel Kant, is the idea that in pluralist societies, we disagree about virtue and the good life. So, what we need in thinking about constitutions and principles of justice is a basic framework of rights that doesn’t take sides in the disparate views that citizens bring to public life—and that people should pursue those conceptions in their private lives.

I took issue with the liberalism of neutrality. I argued that it’s not possible to arrive at principles of justice and rights that are truly neutral with respect to conceptions of the good life. I also argued that it was undesirable to try, because I would worry that a politics that claimed a neutrality on moral questions that could never really be achieved would generate anger and resentment among those who felt that their views were being excluded from public life; that this would hollow out our public discourse, and that this could lead to dark places as people sought to reassert with a vengeance their moral convictions.

So, my argument against the liberalism of neutrality was philosophical, but also political. I thought it was philosophically an impossible project and politically a dangerous one.

CA: What was the alternative you had in mind? If pretending to be neutral was not possible or contradictory, what sort of arguments did you imagine being necessary in public life, and on what basis?

MS: Well, I thought that we should not insist on what philosophers sometimes call liberal public reason, the idea that we should ask citizens to leave their moral and spiritual convictions outside when they enter the public square. My main argument was for a more capacious notion of public reason that welcomes all views—all moral and even spiritual arguments and traditions—into public debates about justice and rights and the common good. Not because I think that would lead to our agreeing on a particular conception of the good life, but because it leads to a healthier pluralism.

We might distinguish between a pluralism of avoidance and a pluralism of engagement. My argument is for a pluralism of engagement, where the work of citizenship consists in reasoning together, deliberating together about sometimes very difficult and contentious moral questions, and learning the art of listening, which is a civic virtue in very short supply these days. By listening, I don’t just mean hearing the words of one’s interlocutor, but listening for the moral convictions and principles lying behind our differing opinions. Because I think this creates a kind of moral and civic education.

Even where it doesn’t lead to agreement, it leads to a healthier, more substantive respect for the different views that people care about on moral and ethical questions.

I can give a couple of examples. The appeal of the liberalism of neutrality we often hear invoked in debates about abortion or same-sex marriage. But in the case of abortion, is it really possible to be neutral on the underlying theological question of what is the moral status of the developing fetus, of developing human life? Or does any defense of the right to abortion presuppose some answer to that question?

People covered with the rainbow flag embrace as they take part in the Kyiv Pride 2025 festival outside in Kyiv on June 7. Sergei Supinsky/AFP via Getty Images

In the case of same-sex marriage, is it really possible and desirable to say: You don’t have to accept the moral worth of same-sex unions, all you have to do is to accept the right for same-sex partners to marry, just as those heterosexual partners can marry? Or does the case for same-sex marriage depend on cultivating in the society an appreciation of the moral worth and legitimacy of same-sex unions and love?

My argument would be to go for the substantive case and to engage in open public deliberation, even about these fraught questions. Because ultimately, I think a pluralism of engagement leads to a sturdier kind of mutual respect than the toleration of avoidance.

CA: It also sounds like you’re suggesting there won’t be a consensus necessarily, that the state will take a moral standpoint that will be reflected in laws, but not everyone will ultimately necessarily agree.

MS: That’s right, but provided the system is open so that these questions and any given settlement can be reopened and reconsidered and argued about as the public opinion changes. I think that’s the best way of contending with moral disagreement in a pluralist society, to acknowledge that any definition of rights and duties and obligations will reflect substantive moral judgments on controversial questions, but it’s not fixed once and for all. In a democracy, the deliberation can continue.

CA: But if we were to take the Trump administration as an example of postliberalism, what we’re seeing is not simply an abdication of neutrality, but also a seemingly coercive application of specific moral viewpoints. Is that a necessary aspect of the critique of liberalism that you’re describing? If neutrality by the state is not possible, is coercion a necessary corollary—and by that token, a legitimate one?

MS: Well, the harsh coercive face that the backlash against elites and against neoliberalism has taken—I think that’s terribly damaging and destructive and threatening to democracy. So that is far from something that I would affirm or endorse. But in a way, that the backlash has taken this harsh and coercive form has been my point all along. I think part of the political crisis that we find ourselves in today is that there is a growing sense of disempowerment. People feel that the project of self-government no longer speaks to them, that they don’t have a meaningful say in shaping the forces that govern their lives.

Democracy’s Discontent: America in Search of a Public Philosophy, Michael J. Sandel, The Belknap Press, 432 pp., $26.26, February 1998, and a new edition of Democracy’s Discontent, The Belknap Press: An Imprint of Harvard University Press, 448 pp., $24.95, October 2022.

What I’ve worried about and warned about throughout my work, going back to my book Democracy’s Discontent, which first came out in the 1990s, is that an empty kind of public discourse will not be satisfying. Sooner or later, the moral void in the public square will be filled by narrow, intolerant moralisms. Typically, this takes two forms: religious fundamentalism or hyper-nationalism.

Because a morally empty public square is unsatisfying. People want politics and public life to be about big questions of meaning and purpose. So my argument all along has been to try to create a morally more robust kind of public discourse that does not insist on a single right answer—to the contrary, it gives people a sense that they are engaged in deliberating about fundamental questions of justice and the common good and what we owe one another as citizens that engage their moral energies rather than sideline them.

CA: The contemporary postliberal theorists who are diagnosing the same issues also seem to be going further. The title of the latest book by postliberal philosopher Patrick Deneen is Regime Change, which suggests an upending of the liberal model in politics and economics, a wholesale change in how we’ve approached politics that you seem to shy away from. I could imagine the contemporary postliberal conservatives saying to you, “You lack the courage of your convictions; you’re diagnosing a huge fundamental problem but then avoiding a fundamental approach to solving it.”

MS: Well, if by fundamental, you mean fundamentalist—no, to the contrary. I’m arguing for a morally more robust pluralism, but I think that would represent a departure from what I’ve called the liberalism of neutrality, both in the domain of moral argument in public discourse and in the domain of the economy.

One of the central themes of my book Democracy’s Discontent is that if moral argument is to be brought directly to bear on public discourse, it should not be limited to what we often think of as the morally fraught questions, such as abortion and same-sex marriage, but moral argument should also be brought to bear on economic arrangements. And I think we do need to challenge a fundamental assumption of neoliberal market faith, which is the idea that markets are somehow value-neutral instruments for defining and achieving the public good.

We also need to challenge—and this may be a difference in view with some advocates of what is called postliberalism, you’d have to ask them—the assumption that the purpose of an economy is mainly to maximize consumer welfare, the utilitarian idea that the purpose of an economy is consumption. I think that that way of thinking about the economy is damaging to democracy for the following reason: Traditionally, an economy has also been understood as being for the sake of citizenship.

Throughout much of American history, we have debated economic arrangements, not only from the standpoint of GDP and economic growth, but also from the standpoint of what economic arrangements are most hospitable to self-government, what economic arrangements will cultivate in citizens the virtues that equip them to deliberate as citizens about big questions: justice, the common good, what we owe one another as citizens.

Here’s a concrete example. Back in the late 1800s, the most influential labor movement union was the Knights of Labor. Among their demands were better working conditions and improved wages and reduced hours, but they also demanded reading rooms in factories so that workers on their breaks could read and inform themselves about public life and become knowledgeable about public affairs, so they could be more effective citizens and make their voices heard.

This is what I call the political economy of citizenship. When we had the debates around the turn of the century about monopolies and trusts, the problem with monopolies that led to the antitrust laws was not only or even mainly that they would lead to higher consumer prices. The problem with monopolies was the concentration of economic power in unaccountable corporations that eclipsed the power of self-government, that undermined democracy. So, the debate about the scale of economic life was a debate about creating an economy hospitable to democracy and the conditions of self-government.

We find this—some would call it a more radical—impulse in political rhetoric even up through President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Remember he attacked the economic royalists, then he was talking about banks and concentrated economic power and big corporations who were undermining liberty.

So, this is the political economy of citizenship. I think any serious effort to bring moral arguments to bear in public life should not be limited to questions about personal behavior and those that border on theology, though I think those are important, but should also address the moral and civic dimensions of economic policy. Arranging conditions of work and economic reward in a way that affirms the dignity of everyone’s labor I think is a part of this.

People leave after a Sandel dialogue at Harvard in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on Jan. 25.Josh Reynolds for for The Washington Post via Getty Images

CA: I’d like to ask about how this applies to specific sectors of politics, like questions of freedom of speech. On the one hand, the Trump administration talks a lot about freedom of speech. On the other hand, it seems to suggest there are some necessary limits on freedom of speech, partly by citing some conception of the common good. Maybe that’s necessary, given the critique of liberalism you’ve been describing—but isn’t there an obvious danger as well?

MS: Well, one way of testing this question is to look at the ongoing debates about free speech and hate speech. In the United States, we have traditionally not allowed legislation against hate speech precisely because of the concern—and it’s an important concern—that what counts as hate speech is subject to controversy on what kind of speech different people affirm and approve, and that it is therefore safer to avoid any restrictions on hate speech. European democracies have taken a different view. A number of them have restrictions on hate speech, including countries that we would recognize as liberal democracies—for example, Britain and Germany.

An example of this debate was when neo-Nazis wanted to march in Skokie, Illinois, some years ago, because they wanted to target this community with a large population of Jewish Holocaust survivors. The town tried to ban them on the ground that this was a form of targeted hate that should not enjoy the protection of the First Amendment. The courts permitted the march, and the people sought other ways of blunting its impact.

But I don’t think it’s possible to resolve the Skokie question without engaging in substantive moral argument about the purpose the speech would advance or pursue. I don’t think it’s possible to be neutral, even on questions of drawing the line between free speech and hate speech.

Neo-Nazi protesters take part in a demonstration near the Illinois Holocaust Museum and Education Center in Skokie, Illinois, on April 19, 2009. Scott Olson/Getty Images

Another complexity arises when we consider freedom of speech in a university setting, which has been the subject of much of the current controversy. In a university setting, there is a very powerful case for almost unfettered freedom of speech. Yet a university college campus also has an educational interest in promoting conditions of mutual respect so that people can learn from one another. There may be certain forms of hate speech that even if permitted in the wider society—not against the law—should be discouraged or prohibited in an educational setting that has this important goal of promoting mutual respect.

But this is another illustration of the broader point. In the university setting, we find ourselves discussing the purpose of the university in relation to speech and expression. And there are competing interpretations of what the purpose of a university or a college is. It may differ if it’s a religiously based university [versus] if it’s a public university. But these all involve competing conceptions of the purposes and ends that universities promote, which is why it’s very difficult to be morally neutral in working through that kind of case.

CA: The question this raises for me is what to do when there is a disagreement on the very value of pluralism. If we were to ask how this applies to the question of national belonging, it seems like one of the ideas being put forth by the Trump administration is explicitly exclusionary. It implies a definition of the common good that is narrow, that sees other ideas of what national identity would be as not just incompatible, but a threat. So, how should one approach these ideas that are not themselves pluralistic at all? Do those need to be opposed per se, or are those exclusionary ideas just part of legitimate democratic debate?

MS: I think we are embroiled in a debate about what national belonging means and how it should find expression, and I think our failure to do that deliberately in recent decades has contributed fuel to the fire of xenophobic, narrow, exclusionary conceptions of what national belonging means. Here’s how it’s played out politically. For those who are appalled by the exclusionary xenophobic accounts of patriotism that have accompanied this backlash against liberalism, the question is: What is the alternative? What is the response morally and politically?

One response would be to say, national borders and national community ideally should be transcended because they are bases of exclusion. But I think that would be a mistaken response. I think those who would oppose the exclusionary xenophobic conception of national belonging and patriotism need to articulate an alternative conception of patriotism. The center-left in recent decades has shied away from talk of patriotism precisely for the reason that you bring up, because it’s too often associated with exclusionary practices and even forms of coercion. But I think that to oppose morally—but also practically, politically—the exclusionary interpretation of patriotism, it’s necessary to offer a pluralistic alternative.

This is parallel to the discussion we’ve been having about moral disagreement and pluralism. I think that the center-left makes a mistake by ceding patriotism to the right. I think instead the center-left or pluralists more broadly need to articulate their own conception of pluralism, of what it means to be a member of a national community bound by certain ties of history and memory and mutual obligation. Traditionally, center-left parties and social democratic parties have placed great emphasis on solidarity, because solidarity is a way of articulating what we owe one another—not in the abstract, but as fellow members of a particular community.

A generous welfare state or even a safety net or public provision of certain goods or the redistribution of income and wealth—I don’t think any of those things is possible without articulating a powerful sense of what it is we share as members of a national community. And another name for that is patriotism.

I think that these aspirations to feel a sense of belonging, a sense of community, a sense of mutual obligation—as well as the aspiration to have a say that draws on our full moral convictions and personalities—are too potent to relegate to those who would give them the most narrow, intolerant interpretation. But that’s what’s happened, that’s why we have the dangerous mix of fundamentalism and hyper-nationalism today.

We need a morally more engaged way of contending with our disagreements and a morally more explicit way of deliberating as citizens about what it is we share and what the implications are for the economic arrangements we design and for the way we live together.

CA: What would you say to someone who asks whether it’s too late, in the sense that the moral conversation being had is not the healthy one that you’ve advocated for? We now have those in power treating the common good in a way that defines the other side as a threat, as illegitimate. Even being a Democrat is defined as outside the common good. How should one approach an outright kind of culture war of that kind? Should one try to de-escalate a situation even when one’s counterparts are so clearly approaching these moral questions in a vindictive way?

MS: I think it’s not a matter of de-escalating. It’s a matter of reenergizing progressive politics with moral and civic purpose and imagination that engages rather than avoids the big ethical questions that democratic citizens rightly want to be addressed in politics. What makes for a just society? What should we do about inequalities of income and wealth, of social esteem and recognition? What do we owe one another as fellow citizens? What should be the role of money and markets in a good society?

There’s a great hunger among citizens across the political spectrum to engage with big questions like these. If the Democratic Party or if progressive parties don’t summon the energy and the imagination to offer compelling possibilities and answers to those questions, then, to your question, it will be too late.

Whether it’s too late is up to our moral and political imagination. It’s up to democratic citizens who care about a politics of the common good. But I do think—and this is the thrust of much of what I’ve written for the past decades—that energy and purpose will not come to progressive politics and democratic citizens by insisting on a market triumphalist faith that says markets can spare us the need to deliberate about how to allocate goods and how to value contributions. This renewed energy will not come by insisting that citizens leave their moral aspirations outside when they enter the public square. It won’t come by banishing or avoiding talk of patriotism and national belonging.

The renewed energy for progressive pluralist politics will come by engaging rather than avoiding the moral convictions that all of us care about, welcoming them into a more capacious public discourse: less technocratic, less intolerant, and more susceptible to reasoning together across our differences, even if we may find ourselves still disagreeing at the end. The quality and tone of the disagreements may be elevated and improved—and, who knows, we may learn something from one another in the process.