Michael Sandel has taught the course "Justice" for over fourteen thousand Harvard students.
His central question is: "What is the right thing to do?"
He analyzes predicaments in the light of Jeremy Bentham's and Immanuel Kant's lessons.
Bentham is the founder of Utilitarianism. For the 18th English thinker, the right thing to do is to maximize utility, that is, we should balance our pleasure over pain, happiness over suffering. Doing so, we end up maximizing our overall level of happiness. Betham's aphorism summarizes this concept: "The greatest good for the greatest number".
Bentham's Utilitarianism resulted in the moral principle of Consequentialist, which locates morality in the consequence of an act. In other words, moral decisions are swayed by the results of our acts.
Kant, the 18th German philosopher, created a different way to analyze what is the right thing to do when we face moral deadlocks. Categorical is the concept which locates morality in certain duties and rights; in other words, the intrinsic quality and character of our acts matter morally. It cannot be right to kill one person to save another or others.
Bentham's and Kant's political philosophical theories, although essentially different, avoid decision-makers become skeptical and taking for granted that skepticism, or the absence of moral reflection, can be an unscathed way out for human dilemmas.
Either Consequentialism or Categorical philosophies both help decision-makers articulate reasons and principles lying behind judgments. This cognitive task is vital "to awaken the restlessness of reasoning and see where it might lead", concludes Sandel.
http://www.ted.com/speakers/michael_sandel.html
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