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In Defense of Prejudice, Sort Of

  • Putting these thinkers in conversation, Sandel offers what he calls a situated conception of reason, or “reasoning within the world,” as the book’s subtitle has it. Our individual experiences are not the antithesis of reason but its basis, the ground on which we stand while we peer out on the world and expand our horizon. The result is a remarkable, deeply humanizing book.
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  • To explain this view of bounded freedom, Sandel offers the illuminating metaphor that we are compelled to become authors of the latest chapter in a book already written by others. “In this situation, the author is clearly not free to write whatever he desires. Insofar as he must continue the story, any addition, any new creation, is determined by the standard of [the] story itself, by the unity of meaning that the text expresses. The addition, even if we speak of it as a wonderful enhancement, is nothing other than the story itsel**f.”
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