A Comparison Of Sandel's Views On Justice And The Common Good

Sandel has two positions on justice and the common good, one is relativist position and one is not. The relativist view is “don’t judge them by some outside view. But instead conceive justice as a matter of being faithful to the shared understandings of a particular tradition (8:05).” Sandel believes the problem with this view is it makes justices seam holy conventional. America is made up of many different cultures and religions therefore this view will cause controversial issues. The “second principle of justice depends on… moral worth or the intrinsic good of the ends right to serve (8:55).” This links justice to honors and advantages of the human good. It looks at justice in respect to human life as a whole, religion and culture not taken into consideration. Sandel believes this is a better view because “people have

I do believe everyone has different moral views and their bases are religion. However I do not believe we eliminate the problem by looking at the human community as our first obligation. Yes justice depends on moral worth but that stems from your religion and the environment around you. The same sex marriage controversy is a good example of this. In the Christian religion you are told that same sex marriage is a sin; therefore many Christians do not support the state accepting same sex marriages. Victoria makes a valid point, “the government does not have the right to impose a certain minority or majority based on a religion within our state (21:10).” I believe this to be true however this makes laws controversial. Each religion has their own beliefs and way of life therefore universal laws are hard to pass such as same sex marriage. Sandels solution to this is “the government should try to make these laws neutral with respect to these competing moral and religious views (27:00).” This is a great idea but I’m not sure it is possible considering there are so many different religions with different views in