Towards a New Economy: Justice, Culture, and the Social Market - Michael Sandel

[Music] good morning everyone it's wonderful to have you here in Riggs library a place that represents the deepest mission of our institution and the communal aspect of our lifelong commitment to one another of coming together across disciplines just as we do today and I wish to thank all of you who have joined us from other universities and from communities across the globe for this conference it's a privilege to gather with you this morning to hear remarks from our distinguished guest professor Michael Sandel I look forward to saying a few words about professor sandal in just a few moments but first I wish to express my appreciation to all those who helped to enable us to come together today to provide this context for us to explore how we may foster a culture and an economy that promote human dignity and flourishing our gathering has been made possible through the extraordinary support of our partner in this effort the Pontifical Council for culture since its founding more than three decades ago the Pontifical Council for culture has been rooted in the Second Vatican councils recognition of the unifying force of culture this is the second event in which we have collaborated with the council the first our courtyard of the Gentiles symposium held in 2014 was the first such gathering to be held in the United States and was convened around the topic of faith culture and the common good we're deeply grateful for this partnership and especially like to express our appreciation to Bishop Paul ty the Secretary of the Pontifical Council for culture who joins us here today your excellency thank you for your support of this very important conversation I also wish to extend my gratitude to dr. John Borelli and dr. Tom van Hoff our colleagues at the Berkeley Center for religion peace and world affairs for all that they did to help make this gathering possible as we come together today just over four years since the historic election of Pope Francis it's remarkable to reflect on the extraordinary impact of his leadership as he has engaged some of the most pressing challenges of our time for migration to climate change to wort and to religious strife and inequality an event in an event our campus on our campus hosted by our initiative on Catholic social thought in public life four years ago Cardinal Theodore McCarrick described the depth of Pope Francis's commitment to the issue of inequality when he said quote from the moment of his election in his choice of the name Francis and what he says and what he does our Holy Father is placing solidarity with the poor and vulnerable at the heart of his leadership close quote over the past four years Pope Francis has returned to this central challenge of inequality again and again in his apostolic exhortation evangelii gaudium and his insight and in his encyclical about dosey and his messages and speeches to communities around the world last May when receiving the prestigious Charlemagne prize and recognition of his work to promote European unity and cooperation between states Pope Francis shared some reflections on the implications of our current market economy quote the just distribution of the fruits of the earth and human labor is not mere philanthropy it is a moral obligation if we want to rethink our society we need to create dignified and well paying jobs especially for our young people and he goes on to do so requires coming up with new more inclusive and equitable economic models aimed not at serving the few but at benefiting ordinary people in society as a whole close quote this challenge to respond to Pope Francis's repeated calls for a culture of encounter of inclusion to come up with new more inclusive and equitable models aimed at benefiting society as a whole is the shared interest that brings us together today your work across sectors and disciplines animates and deepens commitment to human flourishing to human dignity and we can see its impact in the diverse efforts across the globe to promote the conditions that enable each of us to fulfill our promise and potential in the context of this shared commitment this shared vision I wish to once again express our sincere appreciation to all of you for your contributions to this critical work and to your presence here today now I wish to share a few words about our keynote speaker this morning professor Michael Sandel professor Sandell currently serves as the aunty and Robert M Robert M bass professor of government at Harvard University he is distinguished as a distinguished scholar author and lecturer his writings have been translated into 27 languages and are shared around the world a strong advocate of global public discourse he has utilized new technology to engage worldwide audiences to grapple with the great ethical questions of our time his immensely popular lectures have been described as a quote a kind of Socratic dialogue with his audiences and his online course entitled justice has been viewed by tens of millions of people around the world he is also the best-selling author in his most recent book what money can't buy the moral limits of markets is especially pertinent for our discussion today in this book he discusses the idea quote the great missing debate in contemporary politics is about the role and reach of markets do we want a market economy or a market society what role should markets play in public life and personal relations how can we decide which Goods should be bought and sold and which should be governed by non market values where should monies rent cannot run close quote we could not have a conference focused on the questions that we are focused on today without the presence of Professor Michael Ince Michael Sandel and we are deeply grateful for his presence here today and we look forward to his reflections and the conversation that will follow in which he will be joined after his remarks by distinguished author editor Paul Eli senior fellow with our Berklee Center for religion peace and world affairs the director of the American pilgrimage project here at Georgetown but ladies and gentlemen is a great honor and privilege for me to introduce to all of you professor Michael Sandel Thank You president degioia for those generous words of welcome it's a great privilege to be here I don't have the opportunity to engage in this kind of discussion every day so I consider it a real privilege I would like to connect to tendencies in contemporary life one of them is the rampant the rampant marketization of social life the other is the hollowness the moral and spiritual emptiness of public discourse - I'd like to suggest that these two tendencies are not unrelated and to do so I'd like to begin by posing a question what should be the role of markets and money in a good society the answer considerably less than today in recent decades we've drifted from having market economies to becoming market societies the difference is this a market economy is a tool a valuable and effective tool for organizing productive activity but a market society is a place where almost everything is up for sale it's a way of life in which market thinking and market values increasingly reach in to most every fear of life from family life and personal relations to health education law politics civic life should we worry about this and if so why I think there are two reasons to worry two different reasons to worry about becoming market societies one reason has to do with fairness and consent the other has to do with the corruption or degradation of goods and social practices of the two reasons to worry about the tendency of market thinking and market values to reach into every aspect of life of the two reasons the first the one about fairness is the more familiar but I'd like to suggest that the second about the corruption of goods is the more fundamental and far-reaching and this is because the second objection the one about the corruption or degradation of goods touches on intrinsic goods on conceptions of the sacred let me illustrate how these two objections to markets in various settings differ take the debate about whether there should be a free market in kidneys for transplantation human organs for those who desperately need them some people favor in the name of efficiency and increasing the supply of organs such a market others object typically on one of two grounds one objection would be that if we had a market for kidneys let's say who would be selling them most likely people who are desperately poor but that calls into question how voluntary the transaction the decision to sell really is or we might object it would be unfair if those who desperately need kidneys but are poor are priced out of the market only the affluent can afford them these objections are of the first kind the argument from fairness and consent but there is a second reason one might object to a market in human organs having to do with well intrinsic Goods the idea that that allowing such a market would be degrading at odds with human dignity that it would promote and express an objectifying view of the human person as a collection of spare parts this is an instance of the argument from corruption or degradation or consider another example some years ago a well-known figure a law professor Federal Judge Richard Posner the founder of one of the founders of the law and economics movement argued that we should consider allowing a free market in babies up for adoption it would be a more efficient way of allocating children now you might object to such a market on one of two grounds you might object that putting children up for sale would be unfair because it would price less affluent parents out of the market or leave them with the cheapest least desirable children according to the market valuation that would be the fairness argument or you might object that putting a price tag on children would corrupt the norm of unconditional parental love it would value children in the wrong way and the inevitable price differences would reinforce the notion that the value of a child depends on his or her qualities race sex intellectual promise physical abilities or disabilities and other traits this second line of objection is an illustration of the argument from corruption or degradation it's worth taking a moment to notice the difference between these two arguments the fairness objection points to injustice that can arise when people buy and sell things under conditions of inequality or dire economic necessity but the corruption argument points to the degrading effect of market valuation and exchange on certain goods and practices according to this objection to buy and sell certain Goods is to to value them in the wrong way and this argument the second argument can't be met by establishing fair bargaining conditions or by leveling the playing field which is true of the first argument each objection draws on a different moral ideal the fairness argument draws on the ideal of consent or consent against fair background conditions the corruption argument appeals not to consent but to the moral importance or to the intrinsic good or to the sacred character of the things being exchanged so to decide on the second objection to decide whether to establish a market in babies up for adoption or a market in human body body parts we have to ask not only about whether it would be unfair to those who can't afford them or to those who'd be under pressure in deciding whether to sell we also have to reflect and to reason about the character of the goods that are at stake in the case of the human body in the human body in the case of kidneys or in our regard for children in the case of the proposed baby market now I mentioned that the second argument the more fundamental in my view is less familiar why is that it's less familiar I think because the first the argument about fairness and consent fits more comfortably into the public philosophy that informs contemporary life it fits more comfortably into a certain into a public philosophy of a certain version of liberalism central to this idea of to this conception of liberalism is the idea that we should not bring into democratic public discourse controversial conceptions of the good life or a virtue or of the sacred and the reason we should keep such conceptions out of public discourse according to the liberal conception I'm describing is that in plural of societies we disagree about conceptions of the sacred we disagree about moral and spiritual questions we disagree about how to value this or that good and so to bring such conceptions into public discourse and into democratic decision-making and lawmaking is to run the risk of controversy but more than that to run the risk of imposing on some the values of the majority and so here I think lies the connection between on the one hand the commodification of social life that's unfolded over the last three to four decades and something we've seen unfolding at the same time the hollowing out of democratic public discourse in this country and in many democracies around the world I think there's a connection between the two for the following reason part of what installs and entrenches the grip of market thinking and market reasoning is not just that we believe markets deliver the goods that they produce rising affluence and prosperity in GDP there is a deeper appeal the deeper appeal is that market reasoning seems to offer a way to decide contested public questions without recourse to controversial conceptions of the good that I think so it's it's the connection between the reigning liberal public philosophy whereby liberal I mean it in this special sense keeping substance of conceptions of the good outside of public discourse it's there's a connection between that liberal public philosophy on the one hand the emptiness of our public discourse with regard to moral and spiritual questions and the market triumphalist faith now I'd like to illustrate this with an example and the example has to do with our regard for and treatment of the environment or the natural world now let's begin with a very small example I want to talk about global warming but before turning to global warming I want to take a more mundane example littering just plain littering there must be laws I assume there are laws against littering in the Grand Canyon and there is a fine associated let's assume I don't I'm not sure this is the case but I assume there's a fine if you toss a beer can into the Grand Canyon now why is there such a fine and how should we regard that act suppose we're tempted to do so well one way of interpreting it would be to say that doing so makes other people worse off because it lights the view and it imposes cleanup costs it's probably quite daunting cleanup cost to go and retrieve the beer can suppose the fine is $200 and suppose a wealthy hiker decides it's worth convenience of not having to carry his beer can with him and so he tosses it into the Grand Canyon perfectly willing to abide by the law and paid the $200 and let's suppose that he immediately pays the $200 to the relevant authorities and they in turn hire a person to go clean clean up the Grand Canyon from fetching the beer can now would we say how would we evaluate that act has he done anything wrong well from a purely economic point of view he hasn't he's imposed some costs the external effects of his action he's paid the full cost of it let's say the $200 really does cover what it costs to hire the person to go and quickly clean fetch the beer can so what has he done wrong he's followed the law he's paid the cost it should be morally a wash but most of us would probably think there's still something wrong here well what is it exactly it seems to be that he's misunderstood the distinction between a fee and a fine I see is a monetary payment for something covering costs whereas the fine registers moral disapproval in this case it that's the fine is an expression of the community's determination that littering is a bad Act it reflects bad character a wanton disregard for the grandeur of the of the Grand Canyon its majesty maybe it reflects our sense that all in wonder rather is the other more appropriate responses to the Grand Canyon not regarding it as an expensive dumpster so and I have quickly dad I encountered another example of this when I was travelling a year ago in Uganda my son is a graduate student and he studies chimpanzees in the wild and he was living for a year in Uganda in the forest studying the chimps and I visited him there and we went while I was there to a natural wildlife park in Uganda and we were being driven through by the local driver with a four-wheel vehicle and looking to try to catch a glimpse of lions and the really interesting things and it's not always so easy and we came a passed a sign they were driving on this dirt road saying off-road driving prohibited fine $250 and the driver of the vehicle looked at that sign and he said oh what that means is that it's not prohibited to drive off the road it only costs it's just that it costs $250 well he too had misunderstood this distinction but he's not the only one because here I'd like to turn to a much to a broader question of policy and that is credible carbon emission credits now you may remember that two decades ago at the Kyoto conference on global warming there was a debate about this the US and other developed countries were prepared to accept mandatory targets for carbon emissions but only on the condition that they be accompanied in the agreement by tradable emission a tradable market in emissions in carbon emissions which would have meant that the US for example could fulfill its obligations either by reducing its own greenhouse gas emissions to its assigned target or by paying to reduce emissions someplace else so rather than say tax gas guzzling Hummers in the US we could pay to restore an Amazon Amazonian rainforest or to modernize a coal burning factory in a developing country and the argument is that this is a more efficient way for the same amount of money to achieve to achieve greater reduction or to achieve the necessary reductions at less cost now at the time this was 1997 I got into trouble I wrote an op-ed in the New York Times arguing against this trading scheme I worried that letting countries buy the right to pollute would be like letting this guy in the Grand Canyon pay to tosha's beer can I thought we should try to strengthen not weaken the moral stigma attached to despoiling the environment and I worried that if rich countries could buy their way out of the obligation to reduce their own emissions we would undermine the sense of shared sacrifice necessary to future global cooperation on climate change well this op-ed appeared and a few days later The Times was flooded with scathing letters mostly from economists many of them my Harvard colleagues they said I fail to understand the virtues of markets or the affair for the efficiencies of trade or even elementary principles of economic rationality amid this torrent of criticism I did receive a sympathetic email from my old the economics professor I had in college he wrote that he understood the point I was trying to make but he also asked a small favor would I mind not publicly revealing the identity of the person who had taught me economics well so that was 20 years ago and I felt I felt pretty much in the wilderness on this question at least but then but just recently I read the encyclical of Pope Francis on climate change and I found that I wasn't alone in the wilderness now the language of the encyclical is suggestive and telling for the distinction with which I began between the argument from fairness and the argument from the corruption or degradation of intrinsic goods and attitudes because the argument of the encyclical and it's a it's a post moral argument is that it's not enough to come up with technological fixes for global warming and climate change instead this is an occasion to reconsider the mode of life and the values and attitudes in the stance of human beings toward the natural world that have given rise to the environmental crisis he writes Pope Francis does that if we approach nature in the environment without an openness to on wonder if we no longer speak the language of fraternity and beauty in our relationship with the world our attitude will become that of masters consumers exploiters unable to set limits on their immediate needs and he cited the teaching of st. Francis which he said was no mirror no mere asceticism but something more radical a refusal to turn reality into an object simply to be used and controlled so these are the larger stakes it's not only about dealing coming up with a public policy to deal with climate change it's about transforming ourselves once we lose our humility and become enthralled with the possibility of limitless mastery over everything we inevitably end up harming society and the environment he wrote and so environmental education he said has to be about more than policies in fact it must quote promote a new way of thinking about human beings life society in our relationship with nature and he added we need to reject a magical conception of the market because we're profits alone count there can be no thinking about the rhythms of nature its phases of decay and regeneration biodiversity is considered from the purely economic or technocratic point of view at most a deposit of economic resources available for exploitation with no serious thought for the real value of things so back to intrinsic goods or sacred Goods and then and then he takes on directly the buying and selling of carbon credits this system he writes seems to provide a quick and easy solution under the guise of a certain commitment to the environment but in no way does it allow for the radical change which present circumstances require it may simply become a ploy which permits maintaining the excessive consumption of some countries now shortly after the encyclical appeared there appeared in the new york times letters to the editor and op-ed pieces saying wonderful that pope francis is in favor dealing with global warming but isn't it too bad that he added all of this moral language and came out against carbon trading so his encyclical elicited the same outrage from economists and and certain policy walks that mine ad in fact there was one article in new york times included a quote from the director of environmental economics at the Harvard Kennedy School who whose quote is as follows I respect what the Pope says about the need for action but this referring to his critique of carbon trading it's out of step with the thinking and work of informed policy analysts around the world who recognized that we can do more faster and better with the use of market-based policy instruments and the guy who wrote this was one of the people who wrote a letter that appeared back twenty years ago against me but the more revealing op-ed and I kept track of the the negative press three that Pope Francis was collecting on this issue the more interesting and revealing op-ed a few days after the encyclical came not from an economist but from a philosopher who attacked the encyclicals case against carbon trading on very astute grounds this was from a philosopher in Toronto who wrote as follows the Pope gets well here I should tell you this he said I find nothing objectionable about the Pope's moralizing tone and language of sin that was generous but then he says but the Pope gets carried away condemning the efficiency driven paradigm of Technology overlooking the fact that efficiency efficiency is a moral principle this commitment can be found I'm still quoting from the philosopher at the heart of the polluter pays principle which Pope Francis also endorses now most people like this idea when it's read forward if you pollute then you should pay they dislike it however when read backward if you're willing to pay then you should be allowed to pollute but he's saying that strictly speaking these are equivalent we're back to the guy in the Grand Canyon tossing the can these are equivalent it's the second reading that offends people when they contemplate rich countries you know paying people in poor countries to reduce their emissions for them yet any sensible approach must allow this now but what's a stood about this reply by this philosopher is that he glimpses the larger stakes he says the Pope is not hostile to market mechanisms because he's a raving socialist as some had suggested instead his stance is a natural consequence of his theology remember says the writer the philosopher even though the Pope is adopting a progressive stance on the environment he is not a liberal the fundamental problem with markets in Pope Francis's view I'm still quoting is that they cater to people's desires whatever those desires happen to be what makes the market a liberal institution is that it does not judge the relative merits of these desires and that's what the Pope doesn't like about that that's what makes it poke not a liberal he wants an economic system not that satisfies whatever desires people happen to have but the desires that they should have a system that promotes the common good but the philosopher disagrees with that way of thinking because he points out people disagree about what the common good is and the Pope is appealing to a conception of the common good he claims that is specifically Christian and on that basis he's criticizing carbon trading but the philosopher thinks this is a mistake it's a mistake to reject the liberalism that is non-judgmental with respect to the content of desires and one reason it's a mistake is that we don't agree on how to value intrinsic or sacred goods and furthermore quote the problem of climate changes so urgent we can't wait around waiting for people to come to some kind of spiritual agreement all that we can demand is the people pay the full cost that their consumption imposes on others the fee and the fine the beer can the driver in Ugandan wildlife preserve well the merit of this critique by the philosopher which sees more clearly what's at stake than those economists who are saying well this is just irrational is that it brings out the connection between our becoming market societies and our having a kind of public discourse that is empty of larger moral and spiritual meaning what does this suggest for how we should think about mark once we see that markets and commerce change the character of the goods they touch sometimes by corrupting them sometimes by valuing them in the wrong way sometimes by indulging desires that are unworthy once we see that then we have to ask where markets belong and where they don't and we can't answer this question without deliberating about the proper way of valuing goods we can't answer this question without reflecting publicly not just privately about intrinsic goods even about sacred Goods now such deliberations touch unavoidably on competing conceptions of the good life this is terrain on which on which we often fear to tread for fear of disagreement we hesitate to bring our moral and spiritual convictions into the public square but shrinking from these questions does not leave them undecided it simply means that markets will decide them for us this is the lesson of the last three decades the era of market triumphalism has coincided with a time when public discourse has been largely empty of moral and spiritual substance our only hope of keeping markets in their place is to find our way to a rejuvenated democratic discourse that enables us to deliberate openly and publicly about the meaning of the goods in the social practices we prize thank you very much [Applause] thank you very much Michael it what a privilege to have you here and have you connect the dots for us in the way that you just did with everything from the beer can and the Grand Canyon to Pope Francis in his encyclical it's really extraordinary to to hear you speak again thank you when you wrote what money can't buy there had just been real tumult in the stock market people were talking for a time about the limits of markets there was some expression of what you call the fairness argument in Occupy Wall Street to certain extent and some of the language of the tea party that some years ago now has anything changed since since you made that argument well we've had an election and I think what happened in the election is not unrelated to some of these themes but before saying why I think that I can't let the occasion pass Paul has a copy of what money can't buy here and Paul was a was my editor when he was back in his life as an editor at FSG both for what money can't buy and for justice and so both of these books bear his mark and his thoughtfulness and his insight and I just wanted to thank you Paul for that very much thank you and now and now the FS G's losses Georgetown's gain but to turn to the to your question and the election I think that what we saw in the past election was a backlash against a public discourse empty of larger moral meaning now in the nature of backlashes it's in their nature that they are blunt and imprecise and oft often contain a lot of ugliness but I think we should not allow ourselves I think we should condemn the ugliness but not allow it to distract us from the legitimate grievances with which though the dark side of Trump and right-wing populism around the world are entangled and I think that there are fundamental questions about values about human dignity about the scope of national community in the face of a globalizing economy about the tendency of unchecked market driven globalization to undermining dislocate communities and to deprive especially working people of the basis of self-respect in the dignity of work I think this concatenation of of unaddressed moral questions caught up with the liberal technocratic dispensation that had gone unquestioned and that contributed to a certain kind of smug complaisance I think among without the Democratic Party in the u.s. also the political elites in Britain who did not see brexit coming I think something similar was at stake there so in a way I think both brexit and the election of Trump were an angry verdict on three plus decades of the kind of politics not only that was morally and spiritually empty but that had a tin ear for the anger and resentments created by a system of globalization that he did to rewards on those at the top but left other people ordinary people feeling disempowered and and dislocated so the anger out there is an anger of people who are recognizing the limits of a market society and the way it doesn't allow a place for them and yet hoarseness of the discourse has to do with our lack of a vocabulary to speak about these things yes its course because people are angry and resentful and they feel that elites are looking down on them and they're not entirely wrong about that one of the biggest divisions now in American politics is between those who've been to college and those who haven't and well I'm I'm struck I think back in 1958 British sociologist Michael Young wrote a book called the rise of the meritocracy he coined the term meritocracy and we consider for the most part meritocracy to be a term of praise an ideal worth aspiring to we don't have perfect equality of opportunity everyone knows that but if only we did then allowing the market to function would reward those who deserved it that's the idea underlying meritocracy and underlying the agenda of making equality of opportunity fuller truer removing barriers but what Michael Young meant by meritocracy was actually a dystopian vision not an ideal because what he glimpsed was that as rewards in place in position based on class those were giving way that they were giving way to a system where people would rise to the top based on their merit and he thought there would be that if that ever came true really true it would be deeply oppressive and insulting to those on the bottom who could no longer say well I was born I had the bad judgment to be born to poor parents they would have to take it as a judgment on themselves and worse those on the top would take their success as the measure of their virtue and merit now he thought that in the year 2033 there would be a populist revolt and he used that word populist revolt against this new dispensation well he was just he it came 17 years early I think that the resentment of a leads reflects a legitimate anger at a system that rewards people on the top those people inhale deeply of their success believing they deserve it in virtue of their talents in hard work and by implications those on the bottom deserved their fate and it's interesting either Trump nor Bernie Sanders talked that language from from Mill Clinton to Barack Obama to Hillary Clinton part of what was tinny about Hillary Clinton's public discourse insofar she had a theme it was this removing barriers so that everyone could rise as far as their talents would take them but that's puzzling in a way why would that be a just society even if you could achieve it where people on top would be the ones who had for whatever reason greater talents and those at the bottom why would that be a basis of moral desert neither Trump nor Bernie Sanders talked the language of trying to perfect equality of opportunity they talked about inequality of power in different ways so I think part of the end this is an overly elaborate answer to the question you put to me Paul but I I think the anger at the markets the way the markets tributed rewards is deepened by the meritocratic story we tell ourselves not only are the winners in a market society and a market driven globalization fortunate or lucky they get what they deserve and so do you and people don't like that rightly so so the meritocracy is market-based thinking by another name and that it obscures the fact that our talents otherwise known as our gifts yes aren't aren't on our own doing we enter life with a variety of gifts that then get reckoned in market terms rather than in human terms exactly and you're you're shifting from the language of talent to guess and we do use them interchangeably is very telling because the language of gifts invites us to consider that it's not our own doing talents the language of talent seems easier to assimilate to effort nyeon doing so I think the way out of this is exactly as your language suggests Paul that we have to find a way to encourage and remind those on top to regard their the talents that got them there as gifts for which they are indebted rather than as their due and I think that I think that there is a an underlying on articulated recognition of this as for example when remember after the financial crisis the financial industry came in for quite a bit of public criticism and the head of Goldman Sachs blurted out I think when he was under pressure of the congressional hearing we're doing God's work when he was asked whether you know high-speed trading really did contribute all that much to the common good we're doing God's work so I think we need well maybe to build on that suggestion even if the question the way the way he applied it and the activity to it she applied it but just to pick up on one other thing you said Paul a meritocracy installs the market dispensation but it goes a step further it then more eliza's the results of what the market has dispensed and that makes makes it not only unfair but also galling there are two different responses to inequality if you're looking up one of them is to say the system is rigged it's unfair and if you say that and believe that then you work to try to bring about a more fair system but another response is to say maybe because the American Dream is so interwoven with this meritocratic idea maybe I haven't worked quite as hard maybe I'm not quite as talented maybe I haven't contributed quite as much as Bill Gates or Steve Jobs and so this in the to coexist and our intention and when when you get the second that fuels anger and resentment it's the difference between regarding the arrangement as unfair and regarding it as humiliating in a way and I think that the reason that our politics is roiled with the anger and resentment that it is is because there's not just unfairness but also a kind of humiliation that goes with this moralizing the outcome the dispensations of the market arrangements so the market society is claiming to be agnostic about goods yes in fact is moralizing left right and center yes and meanwhile yeah anything out all sorts of other goods that aren't equated with success in our society exact good of raising your children in a certain way yeah we're cultivating your garden or or contributing to community life these things they don't contribute to success so we don't value them in the market society exactly exactly and the people who who are left out of the success culture the vocabulary to value those other things is is withering or it's just not there anymore yeah exactly when you when I first met you you learned that I had gone to Fordham and you said Paul you have to understand I'm a dissident at Harvard but what what I say would be perfectly straightforward and intelligible that forward what what did you mean by that just being recorded what's going to happen you'll tell me later maybe well I would put it this way it's it's very difficult to make the case well I've put it another way it's not difficult to make the case I chatting with President enjoyed the outside just before we began I've said that we're engaged in a countercultural project those of us who are concerned with bringing up the language of the common good more directly to bear on public life and that's because it's partly because of the prestige and presence of a certain economic way of thinking that dominates and not only economics has conducted in the Academy mainstream economics there are dissenting voices so mainstream economics has a self confidence about itself as a as a science of human behavior a value neutral science of human behavior and social choice that has allowed it to break free of its historic entanglement with and subordination to moral and political philosophy if you think back to the classical economists from Adam Smith to John Stuart Mill and Karl Marx despite their ideological differences they shared the view that economics was a subfield of moral and political philosophy not a separate value neutral science but the way we for the most part teach economics these days in universities that's no longer the case so that's part of what I was thinking but more than that even among philosophers philosophy analytic philosophy anglo-american analytic philosophy has absorbed many of these same aspirations and I would say prejudices which is to heap moral and spiritual discourse outside of public discourse about law what the law should be and that's why I say that that trying to make space for a language of the common good in public democratic discourse is leaning against the current in most places that I go though not at fordham in georgetown we hope not so while you'll tell me I mean I don't know that's what I'm imagining so in your in the book you you track the expansion of market-based thinking in everyday life but there's a parallel expansion of market-based thinking in intellectual life where what economics used to be the dismal science and now it's the exuberant science that will explain everything to everyone yes and and and take other fields into itself yes it was better when it was more dismal and less exuberant and unless smug in its conviction that it's possible to discuss social and economic arrangements in a way that is detached from moral reflection so what I part of I mean part of my project I think our biggest most fundamental project is those of us who share these concerns is to recast the terms of public discourse in democratic citizenship to make it more hospitable to moral and spiritual argument but a related concern that I have is to argue for reconnecting economics the way it's studied and taught to reconnect it with a moral and political philosophy to reinvent the old discipline of moral and political economy as a unitary field of study and how do you do it is it just using these terms and saying them in as many different places as possible does it have an effect or what should we do if we want to reclaim some of the space for a humanist discourse the space that's now taken up by by market thinking how do we do it well I think we have to go case-by-case and try to show the limits of moral reasoning that tries to proceed in technocratic terms or in moral terms that keep conceptions of the good outside so the debate about climate change and global warming that I spoke about is one example but I think we need to have those debates with regard to a whole range of public questions including health care which has been largely fought out in technocratic terms to to the way we conceive education so that's at the level of trying to influence public discourse but I also think we have to try to nurture communities within civil society that already are sites for this richer kind of public discourse I think it would be and I don't think we can hope through public discussion and debate and op-ed pieces and so on to change national public discourse without at the same time relying on civil society to provide places where citizens can gather and speak in public about such things schools congregations unions social movements these are I think indispensable sites for any attempt to rejuvenate public discourse writ large we we have to start in the Tocqueville Road when he was so struck by the New England Township and its place in democracy in American democracy about citizens learning the habits and dispositions that equipped them to exercise self-government in the small sphere within their reach but the idea is that it's the sphere becomes larger the reach can then expand so I think we have to that this project has to try to draw strength from these sites within civil society where a more richer kind of public discourse already to some extent is present when I hear you say that and think about it in in the Catholic context I think about and incentivizing and the role of incentives historically Christianity had a certain incentives incentives based arrangement that you were going to get into heaven if you bathed in a certain way that that way of thinking about Christianity has receded we don't think of the heavenly incentive to the extent that we wants to so our community now tries to look for other ways to explain things why should we have a common life because it's good for us or should we try to explain it incentive based terms that is attractive or you'll get a better job or life will be more interesting I know that this is just a quandary that I faced in my adult life as a Catholic how do we think about these things should we use incentive based language or should we just assert there's a common good that has nothing to do with the market and it's good for you people so come along with us well I'm inclined to say and here I'm speaking as a is a friendly and sympathetic onlooker I'm inclined to say the second that the language of what's good for a person rather than the incentive language you can't give on that I don't think we can give up on that speaking more broadly I think that the incentive moral and spiritual education that leans too heavily on incentives even the incentive of salvation is well it's not self-sufficient it's not enough to inspire and the danger is that leaning too heavily on incentives which are often incentives of fear in the case of theologies makes a faith tradition vulnerable to the slide into other incentives like indulgences which are a classic example of a good that money can't buy though people tried and and that generated its own backlash if I remember correctly but it's it's a little bit the question it's a deep question it reminds me of a similar question that comes up in another setting which is to do with the humanities in the place of the humanities in a liberal arts education and we read all the time about humanity the humanities being in crisis and fewer and fewer students enrolling or majoring in the humanities instead flocking to computer science or economics and very often under this pressure Commission's on the humanities and groups that try to come up with reports on how to revive the humanities how to make the case for the humanities come up with reports that talk that essentially say here's a famous person who made a lot of money do you know what he or she was a humanities major that's that's the incentive that's the incentive way and I think it I don't think it carries conviction ultimately I don't think it wins over many students to the study of the humanities and I think it's bad faith and people know that students know that now whether that also applies in well do you think that that analogy is true what do you think in the case of Catholic community and theology in relation to incentives I mean yeah well Peter Thiel the founder of PayPal studied with Rene Girard the Catholic philosopher and I don't I'm not sure that one is connected with the other in a good way I think Pascal and one of his most enigmatic pensees said make religion attractive and Pope Francis has made religion enormous li attractive and has made care for our common home enormous li attractive but I think that that's partly the issue that some of his detractors have with him that it's considered improper to to make this stuff attractive that it should just be good for you yeah I wouldn't divorce the two though having some having a theology in a faith bringing out its attractive qualities and persuading adherence that it's actually for their good I don't think those are at odds if what you mean by it's good for you it's not the incentive-based idea the the cruder version that you were describing that simply mobilizes fear or the desire to make money I mean those are the two classic when when one speaks of incentives those are the two classic motivations that incentives appeals in fear or making money those are the big ones anyhow and they can compel they can compel obedience at least for a time up to a point but they can't inspire and that's why I think that but to speak of a faith or a faith tradition as being attractive or inspiring I I think it can be in line with people coming to see it poor they're good without thinking of it in incentive terms stick over their head I know there are questions from the audience but I have one last question my own and so you took the position you took on Kyoto in 97 and now 20 years later we have an immensely attractive influential public figure speaking eloquently and powerfully about alternatives to the market society does it make a difference in your work do you to someone at that level speaking this language have an effect and what effect is it well yes the voice of Pope Francis has had I assume you're speaking about Pope Francis and not our new president the voice the voice of the voice of Pope Francis has I think had a tremendous impact by offering not only an attractive example but of showing how it can be done and by it I mean engaging in a kind of moral reasoning that draws upon a faith tradition that not everyone shares but that nonetheless is accessible to those within and outside the faith and very often when I've tried to make the case as a matter of moral and political philosophy that we should be more welcoming of all sources moral and spiritual secular spiritual and otherwise all moral sources in public discourse and moral argument people invariably say but if someone brings a spiritual or faith tradition to bear in democratic public discourse that excludes everybody who doesn't share that faith and I've tried to argue in the abstract not necessarily depends how it's done people have in mind a dogmatic assertion when often when people think of religion having a place in public discourse they say well but you can't reason with these people that's what they say because they're dogmatic and that's why to which my answer has always been dogmatism is damaging to democratic public discourse but I don't think the faithful have a monopoly on Dogma or dogmatic arguments and democratic discourse so what Pope Francis shows by his example is that it's possible to engage in moral reasoning that is rooted in a faith tradition and a theology that is nonetheless accessible and available and open to argument and disagreement by by democratic citizens generally and that's the power that's the power of of his example and as far as how I draw on this even when I'm out of doors so to speak not in the riggs library at Georgetown I've been doing a series trying to use new technology to create global public discussions about ethical questions for the BBC and we use a noose new high-tech studio where there's a wall of 60 with 60 monitors and there's can be someone each from different countries around the world we have about 30 or 40 countries represented and one of the top we did one on immigration the ethics of immigration and the refugee crisis in went on meritocracy and we also did one on global warming and in as the discussion unfolded I gave them a passage from Pope Francis encyclical on global warming and the one that argued about the need to transform attitudes not just to come up with a scheme a scheme or a fix and I was interested to hear how people would react to that argument and so I formulated it as a question because there's a polling device that begins the discussion and I said suppose that science were able to come up with a technological fix to climate change that would enable us to address the problem of global warming without changing our attitudes or our values would that be an unqualified good or would it be a mixed blessing that technology and that was the question I put to them and they disagreed they they divided it and we had a debate about that but even that formulation of the question was made possible for me by the fact that Pope Francis had made that argument which is a different way of reasoning about this great challenge that we all face I can't wait to see that it's going to be a airing next year or well it's it's online now I can say if you go to BBC the global philosopher sandal or something and you can put in the climate change one or their four of them on there you can see thank you so much are there questions in the audience yes thank you are here on parity nationalization of Evans elbows there's a current debate about protecting our safety net and also about four and eight and there are a lot of times the utilitarian arguments advanced you know if we feed children their brains will develop and then they'll work better right if we care for the poor abroad they won't become terrorists or and so on do those kind some they some people think those arguments have more resonance and say it's the right thing to do right but do they do those kind of arguments undermine the sense of culture of whether you're advocating it's a great question they do but that doesn't mean we should never use them because sometimes utilitarian arguments can be important strategically to win support for important measures such as the ones you're describing and in those cases and this is a matter of practical judgment that's bound up with moral reasoning in those cases we need to decide whether to pay the price in corrupting attitudes for the sake of getting the health care program or the aid of the developing world in a given moment what's important is that when we make those utilitarian arguments we not lose sight of the fact that those arguments are an expedient that may be morally justified but that's not easy to do because there's a tendency especially if they work if you have rather frequent recourse to them and to forget that they are an expedient that may be taking a toll on attitudes that ultimately may be corroded and unavailable to support other larger morally more ambitious projects is another example of this one form it takes is talk you hear this in policy circles all the time including ones committed to the developing world into good things to speak of human capital its increasing human capital this anti-poverty program let's say because they'll grow up and they'll become productive workers and they'll pay taxes and so on the recipients well the language of human capital I always find grating and disquieting because it gets us in it distracts us from the language or displaces the language of the human person so sometimes we we have to make a devil's bargain but it's important to remember remember it for what it is question right there hi thanks for being here my name is Adam Wagner I'm a student at Georgetown my question is kind of twofold I think they relate so if we were to replace our kind of current market-based discourse with more discussion on morals who decides what those morals are and how do we avoid comp neo-colonialist thinking and like the tyranny of the majority right right that's a great question thank you for that well the short answer is who decides we do where we we democratic citizens do and what now it's true when you mention the the risk of lapsing into neo-colonialist presumption it's true that the the community of those engaged in the public discourse in the moral reasoning we have to pay attention to that because if we don't we'll fall prey to the danger that you describe sometimes when people ask the question but who's to decide what the common good means or what is what counts as a sacred good who's to decide sometimes that's a rhetorical question meant to suggest that there is no right answer to these questions and therefore we shouldn't engage in them but I don't think that was the spirit of your question I think when you were saying who should decide who's to decide you're actually maybe you actually meant that as a question who should be the participants and how should we decide I mean I think we need quickly to change the question to how should we decide and which is to say how should we engage in moral reasoning under conditions of disagreement disagreement about morality and disagreements about faith and to to respond to that challenge how should we decide we have to look to the various traditions of moral reasoning univ of political philosophy to get some instruction and some suggestion which is why I think this enterprise were must also have a history I think that our ability to reason together about hard moral questions is enriched if it's informed by an exposure to Plato and Aristotle and that matter Confucius and and those discourses of reflection on the right way to live and to organize our societies that come from from different communities question in the far back healthcare family is a moral issue that's you thank you healthcare certainly a moral issue that's immediately at hand the affordable care act of the Obama administration included as necessary mandates which are now being challenged by the current administration the issue of insurance seems to me is one for all and all for one the mandates were to be incentives and yet they've not had the effect that we hope born is a comprehensive cascade of events right how would you structure that right it's well the dilemmas that we've been discussing really are very much at state just as you suggest in the debate about health care the mandates were seen by the critics is a violation of freedom you're being forced to buy a product an insurance plan health insurance plan whether you want to or not and the sanction well it's interesting you have to pay a penalty if you don't under a bomber care is that penalty of fear a fine well it's too low currently to get everyone to do it so you might say oh well that's just a technical problem and a political problem for hire then more people would abide by it I would would get the insurance rather than pay the the fine or is it a fine or is it a tax and it's on this question the Supreme Court's decision in Justice Roberts decision huh and he saved the constitutionality of it as you know by construing construing it it's a tax but what this suggests is that the whole mandate I think the mandate was an unfortunate expedient kind of like we were discussing earlier that arose because this was a jerry-rigged system you'll forgive me if you were involved in the planning of the policy a jerry-rigged system trying to expand access and coverage without fundamentally changing the the private the private insurance market the provision of health insurance through a through private insurance companies I think it would have been better the way I would change it would be to have a single-payer health care system and be done with it have Medicare for everyone and the critics would would the argument against that that went often here's is well they'll call that socialist socialized medicine but they called Obamacare socialized medicine even though it kept these private insurance companies in place and had to go through these rather elaborate contortions including the mandate to try to get everybody into the risk pool it was a it was a an ugly approximation of a moral argument that we are all in this together and we should all share one another's faith with regard to the provision of health so I would back up and say the underlying problem now I know it's politically difficult but the underlying problem it goes back to the language and the attitudes that we want to cultivate the underlying problem is that there was never really made a robust moral argument that we as we owe it to our fellow citizens to see to it that access to health care should not be based on the ability to pay but on the need for it and that's part of what it means to be a citizen that should have been the moral argument but what happened and it's a perfect example even President Obama who was very gifted in some in some areas lost his moral voice for the most part when it came to arguing for Obamacare because it was so heavily technocratic and elaborate and jerry-rigged and had made so many concessions to the private health insurance industry and the pharmaceutical companies and so I heard him in the summer before it was voted on I am a kind of a c-span addict I like to hear kind of long unfiltered political speeches and I heard him explaining it saying well we have to bend the cost curve in the out years so I thought no wonder he's having trouble getting this past there's nothing inspiring in that and then in the fall came and he in a speech to Congress read a letter that Ted Kennedy had written him about health care at Ted Kennedy had just died and he read it and there was the moral argument based on mutual obligation of citizens for one another there it was and he read it beautifully but it was Ted Kennedy's letter and so I think we shouldn't underestimate the price we pay goes back to this issue of lapsing into utilitarian or technocratic language to achieve ends that we ourselves privately yes we do have a moral moral impetus as I'm sure Obama did have a moral conviction that everyone should be covered in the risk should be shared and the cost should be shared of course he believed that but he became so captured by the language of technocracy and bending the cost curves in the out year that he of all people lost the ability to make a moral argument for it and I think that's why it continues to be vulnerable because though they got it through with the technocratic arrangements and the mandate and just glued through the Supreme Court and it got through the Congress there was never the the way was never prepared by a broader moral argument about what we owe on another is citizen wow I just learned something really important that that was phenomenal thank thank you so much there be the opportunity for a few further questions during the break I think but thank you all for being in for this first session and we'll reconvene here in a few minutes [Applause]

Channel: Berkley Center

Views: 400

Keywords: Berkley Center, Religion, Peace, World Affairs, Georgetown University, Washington, DC

Id: t3zM1NPf3lU

Length: 88min 3sec (5283 seconds)

Published: Tue May 02 2017