Justice

"What is the justice?"


So simple but difficult to answer this question is.




Yesterday night I watched Professor Michael Sandel's special lecture on TV.

His classes are interesting enough to have been made into a popular television series that was later translated and aired in Japan on NHK from April 4th to June 20th, which was called "ハーバード白熱教室 (Justice with Michael Sandel)".


Additionally, a book by Prof. Sandel tited "これからの「正義」の話をしよう―いまを生き延びるための哲学― (Justice: What's the Right Thing to Do?)" has become a best-seller not only in the US but also in Japan.




That popular Harvard University professor Michael Sandel held a discussion on political philosophy and morality at the University of Tokyo on August 26th.

Through his class, as the issue of social inequality, Prof. Sandel posed a question about baseball star Ichiro Suzuki.

He makes about 40 times as much as President Obama in a year, and about 400 times as much as a teacher in Japan. Prof. Sandel asked the audience whether they thought Ichiro's salary was fair, and whether it would be morally correct for the government to tax him and redistribute the money.


Regarding historical mistakes and whether current generations should apologize or pay damages for them, Prof. Sandel directly asked whether the audience thought President Obama should apologize for the atomic bombs dropped on Japan.

The discussion was just heated, especially the latter one.

Now we are facing a serious problem of Senkaku(Diaoyu) Island, and need to think what the claims of both sides are like and how to compromise each other.

But before discussing this problem, we never overlook or ignore the idea of respect others and of having a large number of people feel happy.

Regardless of profit, we ahould put an eye on a moral responsibility.

Well, that's not concrete......(^□^;)


If you're interested in such topic, go to Justice web page, watch the videos, and think by or for yourself, "What is the justice?".

Justice with Michael Sandel→http://www.justiceharvard.org/