Mr Sandel is a well-known political philosopher as well as professor at Harvard University. His work has been translated into 18 languages and was made into a televisions series in the United Kingdom, United States, Japan, South Korea, Sweden, Brazil, and countries in the Middle East. 

 

 

During the lecture Dr. Sandel discussed the most prominent contemporary moral issues the world is facing today, giving vivid real life examples. Sandel stressed that we have moved from a social market economy into a market oriented society. He mentioned the total wavering between humans and material in this increasingly materialistic age. Sandel believes that our society is caught in an embarrassing dilemma, where we even doubt the fairness of legal, personal and moral judgments that can in fact not be avoided because the law cannot be neutral. After having discussed many real live issues warmly with the audience such as a young selling his own kidney for ipad, buying your way into university or paying people to wait in line for your iphone 5, most students agreed that in fact there are things that shouldn’t be able to be bought with money. 

 

Dr Sandel concluded the lecture by pointing out that we need to think whether we want to live in a society where everything is for sale and if the answer is no how can we best prevent it. After his conclusion he opened Q&A, where students offered competing answers and challenged one another. 

 

 

After the lecture,  Ms. Xu, the moderator from CCTV-9, introduced all the participants of the panel, Prof. Liu and Dr. Rothlin to discuss with Prof. Sandel the role of the missing modern political debate in the market.  Questions discussed included: Do we want a market economy or market society? How is market ethics part in people’s public and personal life? How do we decide what can be traded in a market environment? 

 

After the panel concluded the discussion, the audience gave them a big applause and Prof. Sandel started the book signing of his new book.