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The Sandelian Republic and the Encumbered Self

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 September 2015

Richard Dagger
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Abstract

In Democracy's Discontent, Michael Sandel argues for a revival of the republican tradition in order to counteract the pernicious effects of contemporary liberalism. As in his earlier work, Sandel charges that liberals who embrace the ideals of political neutrality and the unencumbered self are engaged in a self–subverting enterprise, for no society that lives by these ideals can sustain itself. Sandel is right to endorse the republican emphasis on forming citizens and cultivating civic virtues. By opposing liberalism as vigorously as he does, however, he engages in a self–subverting enterprise of his own. That is, Sandel is in danger of undercutting his position by threatening the liberal principles upon which he implicitly relies. This danger is greatest when he presses his case against the unencumbered self, when he appeals to the obligations of membership, and when he treats republicanism and liberalism as adversaries rather than allies.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Review of Politics , Volume 61 , Issue 2 , Spring 1999 , pp. 181 - 208
Copyright
Copyright © University of Notre Dame 1999

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References

James Farr's invitation to participate in a panel on “Sandel and His Critics” prompted me to write this paper and present an earlier version of it at the 1998 meeting of Midwest Political Science Association. I am grateful to Professor Farr and to Terence Ball, the anonymous referees for The Review of Politics, and my colleagues in the ASUMPL reading group, especially Avital Simhony, for their advice and encouragement.

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3. Sandel, Michael, Democracy's Discontent: America in Search of a Public Philosophy (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996), p. ix Google Scholar. Further references to this book appear in the text, in parentheses, as DD.

4. Cp. “Procedural Republic”: “But I suspect we would find in the practice of the procedural republic two broad tendencies foreshadowed by its philosophy: first, a tendency to crowd out democratic possibilities; second, a tendency to undercut the kind of community on which it none the less depends” (p. 27).

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8. See also Liberalism and the Limits of Justice, pp. 147–54, where Sandel develops this argument.

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15. I owe this point to two anonymous reviewers for the Review of Politics.

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19. As quoted in Democracy's Discontent, p. 15.

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22. The following discussion is adapted from my Civic Virtues, pp. 13–18.

23. For a valuable account of and argument for the republican conception of liberty as “nondomination,” see Pettit, Philip, Republicanism: A Theory of Freedom and Government (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997), esp. part 1Google Scholar. Note also Pettit's, “Reworking Sandel's Republicanism,” The Journal of Philosophy 95 (1998): 73–96 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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28. Or so I argue in Civic Virtues, chap. 11.

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