MADRID 2019 The Future of AGEING

Michael Sandel teaches political philosophy at Harvard University.  He has been described as “the most relevant living philosopher,” a “rock-star moralist,”(Newsweek) and “the most popular philosopher in the world.”(El País).

His writings—on justice, ethics, democracy, and markets--have been translated into 29 languages. His legendary course “Justice” was the first Harvard course to be made freely available online and has been viewed by tens of millions of people.  In 2018, he received the Princess of Asturias Award for Social Sciences.

Sandel’s books include What Money Can’t Buy: The Moral Limits of Markets;  Justice: What’s the Right Thing to Do?;  The Case against Perfection: Ethics in the Age of Genetic Engineering;  Public Philosophy: Essays on Morality in Politics;  Democracy’s Discontent; and Liberalism and the Limits of Justice. 

He has been a visiting professor at the Sorbonne and delivered the Tanner Lectures on Human Values at Oxford and the Kellogg Lecture on Jurisprudence at the U.S. Library of Congress. 

Sandel has sought to extend the reach of philosophy beyond the academy. His BBC radio series “The Public Philosopher” explores the philosophical ideas lying behind the headlines with audiences around the world, including a discussion of violence against women, recorded in India, and a debate about democracy in Britain’s Parliament.  In Brazil, he led a debate on corruption and the ethics of everyday life that reached an audience of 19 million on Globo TV.  In Japan, his series on ethics for NHK, Japan’s national television network, convened students from China, Japan, and South Korea to discuss whether moral responsibility for historic wrongs extends across generations.

In the U.S., Sandel has served on the President's Council on Bioethics and is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. A graduate of Brandeis University, he received his doctorate from Oxford University, where he was a Rhodes Scholar.

Sandel’s global lectures have taken him across five continents and packed venues such as St. Paul’s Cathedral (London), the Sydney Opera House (Australia), the Public Theater in New York’s Central Park, and an outdoor stadium in Seoul (S. Korea), where 14,000 people came to hear him speak.