Question: What forces have shaped humanity most?

Michael Sandel: Well I’m very influenced by Hagel, who did have a kind of world, historical picture. And I don’t agree with Hagel’s conclusions; but I think that he had a … vision about the relation of history and philosophy that I learned a lot from, and that I find still very powerful. And his trajectory – the story that one comes away with trying to grapple with Hagel’s philosophy – is a story of human understanding and political practice moving from a very firmly located, particular, rooted, bounded political experience … say going back to the Greek … gradually, with the advent of Christianity and ultimately the enlightenment, universalism, a kind of move away from the local, in particular, as the source of meaning, or obligation, or allegiance toward a kind of universal appreciation of the claims of humankind … . But then Hagel said that was not enough. That was not self-sufficient. It was too unrooted. It wasn’t connected. It was a kind of abstract, moral outlook that wasn’t rooted in an actual embodiment of ethical life. So the next part of the project was to try to reconcile, or to bring together, or to hold together … perhaps the universalist aspirations of the enlightenment, or the enlightenment reason . . . secular reason on the one hand with a sense of belonging, and rootedness, and place in the world are kind of situated … life … . So that was the way Hagel set up the problem. And I think in casting the problem in that way, or the challenge, I think he had a deep insight. Now he had a particular solution having to do with the end of his career and so on that I don’t agree with … . But especially today with the tension between the globalizing tendencies of the economy and the revival of particular ethnic, national, religious, regional beliefs, yearnings, and claims. I think we see, still, the tension between the universalizing aspiration with the desire to find a particular … to find a particular place in the world. And there is great confidence – … – that eventually religious differences would fade away. National differences would cease to have significance, and we would kind of all be citizens of the world. Individuals, but also universal citizens. But the middle terms of moral life, and the middle terms of public life have had a staying power. Which is why we see the revival of nationalism, of religion … and sometimes with a dark consequence. And so I think the basic challenge of reconciling the universal aspiration of freedom with a sense of situation in a particular place in your world … I think that challenge is with us still.

Recorded on: 6/12/07