 Around the world, young people in particular mobilize, but for what? What are they saying? What exactly do they want? From Tunis, to Bahrain, to Wall Street. They know how to use social media to come together. Beyond all that, some say no coherent ideas, but there is a deep-seated, unsatisfied yearning to speak plainly and freely about the big basic issues. What is freedom, what is right, and what is wrong? Even though I'm free, I'm not free to violate the law of nature. I'm not free to take my own life or to sell myself into slavery. I think there is a great hunger around the world for serious debate about big ethical questions. Talk to Al Jazeera meets Michael Sandel, a teacher and professor at Harvard, whose online and personal lectures about justice have turned him into an international phenomenon. Michael, great to talk to you. Thank you for your time. Good to be here. Thanks for talking to Al Jazeera. Boy, you've got a, again, a runaway bestseller here. Boy, you really are on a roll with this book. It's called Justice, What's the Right Thing to Do? If you would, let's start with your definition of justice. You want me to define justice in a sentence? Me? Take a couple. Well, justice, really, and this goes all the way back to Aristotle and ancient Athens. Justice is giving people what they deserve, giving people their due. The real controversies arise, of course, when we come to figuring out who deserves what and why. That's when we start arguing about rights, about equality and inequality, and about what we owe one another as citizens. So is justice the same wherever you go in the world? Well, different societies have different moral and cultural traditions. But all societies, if you look just beneath the surface, do have deep conceptions of justice. And every society I've ever encountered also has disagreements about justice. So it's not simply that justice means one thing here, another thing there. We have, justice is something that all societies, in one way or another, argue about and disagree about. And that's really what the book is about. Do we have an intuitive sense of what's right and what's wrong? Or is it something that comes to us through education and our upbringing? Well, both. And I think we all have an intuitive sense of what's right and wrong, when as children we come home from school one day and say, the teacher treated me unfairly, or something unfair happened to that other kid on the playground, that is the beginning of discussions about justice. And then the parents say, why? What happened? Why was that unfair? That's where we begin. And where do we end? Well, it goes all the way back to what famous philosophers have written about justice. But what I try to do in the book is connect those big ideas about justice to the debates we have every day in politics and in our everyday lives. Well, Michael, we're at the dinner table and we're having a great meal. And I'm saying to you in the course of our discussion, it was wrong to bail out the big banks. It was absolutely wrong. It was unfair. They created the mess. And now they're using our tax dollars. This is the story of the United States. This is the story in the UK. And now we see the ripple effects around the world. And Michael, I'm saying to you it was wrong. Well, I would agree with you. I do think that there was a deep unfairness in the bailouts. Now, the argument at the time was, we've got to do it. Yes, it's unfair. The whole system will collapse. The whole system will collapse and then everyone will be worse off. That was the rationale for it. And what's interesting about that argument for the bailouts is maybe it was compelling. Maybe it had to be done. I think it should have been done in a way that imposed greater accountability on those who had been reckless and led us astray. But the bankers didn't want that. They fought back, hammer and tong, tooth and nail against that idea of regulation. We hear the debates today. Well, that's true. And I think the fact that we did not demand greater accountability of the banks who had gotten into this mess explains why there is such resentment. I think still today, resentment about the bailout. If you think about what resentment is, it's not only an emotion, it's anger and injustice. That's what resentment is. And because it was not really addressed, I think there's been a deep sense of disillusion with government ever since. And we also have a problem, and maybe this is unfair, but we have a problem with the CEOs of the top financial firms in the world making what appears to be, for folks who are blue collar workers on Main Street, ungodly amounts of money and not necessarily making a product. Well, and what that raises is an idea at the heart of all our conceptions of justice, which is, shouldn't there be some relation between contribution to the common good, to the public good, and pay remuneration? What's your view on that? Well, I think there has to be a connection, and that in our society it's out of whack. One of the examples I give in the book is, take the pay of an average school teacher in the United States. It's about $45,000 a year. Compare that, let's say, to the pay of a comedian on late night television, $31 million, or the pay of a sports star, Alex Rodriguez, the great star for the Yankees. He makes $25 million a year. Now is it fair that the school teacher makes $45,000? Do we really believe that the value of the contribution to society made by that school teacher is that much less than the contribution of even the best baseball slugger or even the best late night comedian? It's hard to justify from the standpoint of fairness, and I think that's also a source of disagreement and sometimes resentment. Your class is extraordinarily popular. This book is being well received around the world. Can you explain to us why, for example, you're experiencing such success in Asia? Can you explain that? Well, I've been frankly astounded by the reception of the book and also the television series in the class in Japan, in South Korea, and in China. And I think the reason is this. I think there is a great hunger around the world for serious debate about big ethical questions, about what's fair, what does it mean to respect rights, how should we deal with the growing inequalities in our societies. I think there's a great hunger that is not often satisfied because we don't, if you look at our public debates, and this is true not only around the world, it's true in the United States. We don't often really address the big questions. And I think that's why we find a frustration with politics. They're hard. They're difficult. They're hard. We don't. But we're not even asking about them. And yet they do lie just beneath the surface of all the partisan arguments and bickering that we often have. I think that our political debates would be much more civil and respectful if we actually engaged more directly with the big moral questions. Even though we disagree about them, because then people could really try to understand one another, not only between political parties, but across societies and cultures. Boy, a couple of things come to mind. What are your thoughts now as you've watched what we're calling the Arab Spring? Revolutions breaking out in Tunisia, in Egypt. What are your thoughts? How do you see sort of ground up, bubbling up from the people and taking on their governments in a really significant way? Well, I think that the Arab Spring is one of the most important political developments of our lifetimes. I think we will look back decades from now and see it as such. We don't know how these revolutions will play out, one country to the next. But what we do know is that this is a historic moment. And I think that what it's about fundamentally is a quest for human dignity and respect and for citizenship. Citizenship that matters. The desire to be a citizen has come to the fore and animated these revolutions. And at a time when democracy is struggling, even in the established democracies around the world, when people are so frustrated with how political systems are working, I think there is something deeply inspiring about what we've learned from the Arab Spring and what we've witnessed. I think it should be an inspiration to those of us in established democracies to try to embody more fully the ideals of dignity and justice and above all of citizenship. What does it mean to be a citizen whose voice counts? You worry about the next chapter? The revolution is one thing. Establishing that whatever we're calling it, if it's a democracy, establishing that next thing. Are you concerned about how the next chapter plays out? Absolutely. And there's reason to be concerned. The future is unpredictable. But I think that what will be remembered historically, whatever fall starts, there may be and there may be many fall starts. I think that the Arab world is better off and the world as a whole is better off as a result of the Arab Spring, even though we don't know what the result will be country to country. It may be very messy and yet it is an apocal moment in modern history. Michael, I travel all over the world now and I have been keenly sensitive to issues of poverty, inequality in my life. I've seen a lot of it. I see so many people from all over the world who are working for nothing, who are working for nothing. And they are making tons of money through their labor, countries and corporations. Michael, it's just not right. Well, this is one of the biggest questions of justice, including global justice that we face today. The growing gap between rich and poor, between the haves and the have nots. And so it's a question that rises within countries. What can we do about the gap between rich and poor within a society? And in the U.S. and Western European countries, the traditional debate has been should there be a safety net, should there be a welfare state, should there be a way of improving employment and educational prospects for those least advantaged members of society? It's also a question that arises, if you look around the world, between countries. The gap between rich and poor countries is widening. So one of the great benefits of global capitalism is that it increases wealth. But one of the great challenges that goes with that is the increase in wealth tends to go to those at the top. And so we can't rely, I don't think, on free markets alone, unfettered markets to deliver justice. Markets are useful tools and instruments for generating wealth. But the distribution of income and wealth that they produce is not just or fair. So it's a further question, and it's a question of justice. It's a political question, and it's a moral question. What to do with that wealth? What to do with that affluence? How to distribute it in a way that, if we're talking about a given society, enables people to share a common life as fellow citizens. What happens when the gap between rich and poor is too great? Not only are those at the bottom left behind, but we really cease to share a common life. And any society that aspires to be a democracy has to have enough equality of condition. I don't mean everyone has to have the same amount of income and wealth. They have basic access to education, to health, to enough to eat, to the ability to rise. There has to be a rough equality of condition sufficient to say that we're in this together. We share a common life. We can argue about what the common good looks like because we are fellow citizens. And if the inequalities are too vast, if the inequalities are too vast, then we really begin to inhabit different societies, different places. And that's damaging to democratic life. And it's corrosive of the common good. And a similar thing could be said of the global inequalities that we see. Do you see the potential for what we've seen in, say, Greece and Spain in terms of people rising up against their governments? Look, we don't have jobs. And you're asking for more hardship from us, more austerity from us. Do you see a situation where the people of America, the poor in America, the black in America, the poor whites in America, the poor in America, will finally have had enough of the inequality that they will rise up? Is that possible? Because I don't see the brakes being applied to this idea of making more money of the capitalist system and that disparity between rich and poor and that gap. I see that. I don't see breaks on that. Do you? Well, traditionally, the restraint in the American political experience, the restraint on excess, excess power and wealth being concentrated at the very top, the traditional restraint on excess have been various social movements that have led to reforms. The populist movement in the late 19th century was one. And then the progressive movement in the early 20th century. And gradually, a new social contract is struck. There's a renegotiation of the social contract. One of the striking things about our period, if you look back over the last few decades, is that there hasn't really, there has been great accumulation of wealth at the top. And there has not really been a renegotiation of the social contract. So that those in the middle class and below have not really shared in the fruits of the affluence that has come as a result of global capitalism over the last three decades. So I think what we're missing, what we very much need, is a robust public debate about questions of justice, equality and inequality and the shared obligations we have to one another as fellow citizens. You're a dangerous guy. You're one of these thought guys. You're dangerous. And here you are on one of the major institutions on campus here. And you're this guy who is encouraging folks to think critically. Give me, because we say that phrase so much in critical thinking, critical thinking. What does that mean? So that we all have some kind of a sense of a working definition, at least from your mind, Michael, of what it means to think critically. Well what it means to think critically is to reflect seriously on our own moral and political convictions. It's to figure out what we believe and why. Now I have the privilege of teaching young people between the ages roughly of 18 and 25 years old. And I've had a chance to speak to them and engage in dialogue with students, especially university students, now all around the world. I think at that age, roughly when you're in college or university, there is a special kind of moment of openness. A window is open to critical examination and self-examination about fundamental convictions on questions of justice, what's right and wrong, how to live a life. So my privilege is to be able to engage in discussion and learning with students, young people at a time, when that window is open. When we get older and go about our lives, we have other preoccupations. It's still possible to critically reflect, to figure out what we believe. But the age really roughly of 18 to 25, that's a special time. And there is, I think, a special openness to even a sense of exhilaration about figuring out what we really believe on fundamental questions of values, of justice, of rights, of equality, of civic virtue, of mutual obligation of citizens. And that's a powerful moment. I can imagine. It's a powerful moment. Yeah, it is. It is also a moment. Now, I've said it's young people. It's also a moment that was experienced by those people who gathered in Tahrir Square in rare moments in politics and in history. Entire populations experience a chance critically to reflect, collectively to gather, and to aspire to self-government. It's rare. In the life cycle of a person, it tends to come roughly at the age of college students. How is it that powers, even superpowers, were marking the decade, the 9-11 decade, 10th anniversary of the attacks on September 11, 2001. And there's been so much discussion about the impact of those events on the rest of the world. And so much of the really tough debate has been about the war in Iraq. How is it that superpowers can create a scenario, make an argument for an invasion of a country that has been so roundly rejected by so many quarters of the world, and so that you have other significant portions of the world saying that's just unfair? Does that ever come up as a line of discussion in your talks? Well it does. And there are deep disagreements around the world about America's actions in the aftermath of 9-11. There are also, as you well know, deep disagreements within the United States about those policies. And so when I say I think that what we need is a kind of global public discourse, global civic discourse. One of the things that I think we might learn from that kind of global public discourse would be that it's not as if people in one country have one view and people in another country have another and there's a clash. There are differences in cultural perspectives, to be sure. But I think one of the things that's striking is that there may be, if we imagine, a kind of global public discourse about questions of justice, including just war theory, just distribution of income and wealth, what's fair in pay and remuneration, how should societies organize themselves, what should be the role of religion in formulating laws, and all of these fiercely contested questions. I suspect we are going to find not only disagreements across cultures and societies, but also within them. And we may find some surprising commonalities across cultures in working through these questions. So I would like to plunge into this experiment in global public discourse if we can pull it off without any preconceptions, but simply with this, a willingness to question and to listen. Because I find as a teacher, one of my assets, one of the things I need the most is not only the ability to lecture and tell students what famous philosophers in the past have said about justice, but I also have to learn an ability to listen. Teaching is a lot about listening, because that's when you hear where people are coming from. It's part of respect. It doesn't mean you'll agree with them. It may enable you to sharpen your challenge to them. But listening for the reasons, the convictions, the beliefs, moral ideas lying behind someone's view, whether it's about war, whether it's about equality and inequality, whether it's about human rights, refugee policy, whether it's about democracy and tyranny, listening for the underlying moral argument, the underlying moral conviction, that's the starting place, starting point for genuine reasoning together about hard ethical questions and questions of justice. Michael, thank you. It's a pleasure talking to you. Thank you, Tony. Appreciate it.