One thing the world needs, one thing this country desperately needs is a better way of conducting our political debates.
We need to rediscover the lost art of democratic argument.
(Applause) If you think about the arguments we have, most of the time it's shouting matches on cable television, ideological food fights on the floor of Congress.
I have a suggestion.
Look at all the arguments we have these days over health care, over bonuses and bailouts on Wall Street, over the gap between rich and poor, over affirmative action and same-sex marriage.
Lying just beneath the surface of those arguments, with passions raging on all sides, are big questions of moral philosophy, big questions of justice.
But we too rarely articulate and defend and argue about those big moral questions in our politics.
So what I would like to do today is have something of a discussion.
First, let me take a famous philosopher who wrote about those questions of justice and morality, give you a very short lecture on Aristotle of ancient Athens, Aristotle's theory of justice, and then have a discussion here to see whether Aristotle's ideas actually inform the way we think and argue about questions today.
So, are you ready for the lecture?
According to Aristotle, justice means giving people what they deserve.
That's it; that's the lecture.
(Laughter) Now, you may say, well, that's obvious enough.
The real questions begin when it comes to arguing about who deserves what and why.
Take the example of flutes.
Suppose we're distributing flutes.
Who should get the best ones?
Let's see what people -- What would you say?
Who should get the best flute?
You can just call it out.
(Audience: Random.)
Michael Sandel: At random.
You would do it by lottery.
Or by the first person to rush into the hall to get them.
Who else?
(Audience: The best flute players.)
MS: The best flute players.
(Audience: The worst flute players.)
MS: The worst flute players.
How many say the best flute players?
Why?
Actually, that was Aristotle's answer too.
(Laughter) But here's a harder question.
Why do you think, those of you who voted this way, that the best flutes should go to the best flute players?
Peter: The greatest benefit to all.
MS: The greatest benefit to all.
We'll hear better music if the best flutes should go to the best flute players.
That's Peter?
(Audience: Peter.)
MS: All right.
Well, it's a good reason.
We'll all be better off if good music is played rather than terrible music.
But Peter, Aristotle doesn't agree with you that that's the reason.
That's all right.
Aristotle had a different reason for saying the best flutes should go to the best flute players.
He said, that's what flutes are for -- to be played well.
He says that to reason about just distribution of a thing, we have to reason about, and sometimes argue about, the purpose of the thing, or the social activity -- in this case, musical performance.
And the point, the essential nature, of musical performance is to produce excellent music.
It'll be a happy byproduct that we'll all benefit.
But when we think about justice, Aristotle says, what we really need to think about is the essential nature of the activity in question and the qualities that are worth honoring and admiring and recognizing.
One of the reasons that the best flute players should get the best flutes is that musical performance is not only to make the rest of us happy, but to honor and recognize the excellence of the best musicians.
Now, flutes may seem ... the distribution of flutes may seem a trivial case.
Let's take a contemporary example of the dispute about justice.
It had to do with golf.
Casey Martin -- a few years ago, Casey Martin -- did any of you hear about him?
He was a very good golfer, but he had a disability.
He had a bad leg, a circulatory problem, that made it very painful for him to walk the course.
In fact, it carried risk of injury.
He asked the PGA, the Professional Golfers' Association, for permission to use a golf cart in the PGA tournaments.
They said, "No.
Now that would give you an unfair advantage."
He sued, and his case went all the way to the Supreme Court, believe it or not, the case over the golf cart, because the law says that the disabled must be accommodated, provided the accommodation does not change the essential nature of the activity.
He says, "I'm a great golfer.
I want to compete.
But I need a golf cart to get from one hole to the next."
Suppose you were on the Supreme Court.
Suppose you were deciding the justice of this case.
How many here would say that Casey Martin does have a right to use a golf cart?
And how many say, no, he doesn't?
All right, let's take a poll, show of hands.
How many would rule in favor of Casey Martin?
And how many would not?
How many would say he doesn't?
All right, we have a good division of opinion here.
Someone who would not grant Casey Martin the right to a golf cart, what would be your reason?
Raise your hand, and we'll try to get you a microphone.
What would be your reason?
(Audience: It'd be an unfair advantage.)
MS: It would be an unfair advantage if he gets to ride in a golf cart.
All right, those of you, I imagine most of you who would not give him the golf cart worry about an unfair advantage.
What about those of you who say he should be given a golf cart?
How would you answer the objection?
Yes, all right.
Audience: The cart's not part of the game.
MS: What's your name?
(Audience: Charlie.)
MS: Charlie says -- We'll get Charlie a microphone in case someone wants to reply.
Tell us, Charlie, why would you say he should be able to use a golf cart?
Charlie: The cart's not part of the game.
MS: But what about walking from hole to hole?
Charlie: It doesn't matter; it's not part of the game.
MS: Walking the course is not part of the game of golf?
Charlie: Not in my book, it isn't.
MS: All right.
Stay there, Charlie.
(Laughter) Who has an answer for Charlie?
All right, who has an answer for Charlie?
What would you say?
Audience: The endurance element is a very important part of the game, walking all those holes.
MS: Walking all those holes?
That's part of the game of golf?
(Audience: Absolutely.)
MS: What's your name?
(Audience: Warren.)
MS: Warren.
Charlie, what do you say to Warren?
Charley: I'll stick to my original thesis.
(Laughter) MS: Warren, are you a golfer?
Warren: I am not a golfer.
Charley: And I am.
(MS: Okay.)
(Laughter) (Applause) You know, it's interesting.
In the case, in the lower court, they brought in golfing greats to testify on this very issue.
Is walking the course essential to the game?
And they brought in Jack Nicklaus and Arnold Palmer.
And what do you suppose they all said?
Yes.
They agreed with Warren.
They said, yes, walking the course is strenuous physical exercise.
The fatigue factor is an important part of golf.
And so it would change the fundamental nature of the game to give him the golf cart.
Now, notice, something interesting -- Well, I should tell you about the Supreme Court first.
The Supreme Court decided.
What do you suppose they said?
They said yes, that Casey Martin must be provided a golf cart.
Seven to two, they ruled.
What was interesting about their ruling and about the discussion we've just had is that the discussion about the right, the justice, of the matter depended on figuring out what is the essential nature of golf.
And the Supreme Court justices wrestled with that question.
And Justice Stevens, writing for the majority, said he had read all about the history of golf, and the essential point of the game is to get very small ball from one place into a hole in as few strokes as possible, and that walking was not essential, but incidental.
Now, there were two dissenters, one of whom was Justice Scalia.
He wouldn't have granted the cart, and he had a very interesting dissent.
It's interesting because he rejected the Aristotelian premise underlying the majority's opinion.
He said it's not possible to determine the essential nature of a game like golf.
Here's how he put it.
"To say that something is essential is ordinarily to say that it is necessary to the achievement of a certain object.
But since it is the very nature of a game to have no object except amusement, (Laughter) that is, what distinguishes games from productive activity, (Laughter) it is quite impossible to say that any of a game's arbitrary rules is essential."
So there you have Justice Scalia taking on the Aristotelian premise of the majority's opinion.
Justice Scalia's opinion is questionable for two reasons.
First, no real sports fan would talk that way.
(Laughter) If we had thought that the rules of the sports we care about are merely arbitrary, rather than designed to call forth the virtues and the excellences that we think are worthy of admiring, we wouldn't care about the outcome of the game.
It's also objectionable on a second ground.
On the face of it, it seemed to be -- this debate about the golf cart -- an argument about fairness, what's an unfair advantage.
But if fairness were the only thing at stake, there would have been an easy and obvious solution.
What would it be?
(Audience: Let everyone use the cart.)
Let everyone ride in a golf cart if they want to.
Then the fairness objection goes away.
But letting everyone ride in a cart would have been, I suspect, more anathema to the golfing greats and to the PGA, even than making an exception for Casey Martin.
Why?
Because what was at stake in the dispute over the golf cart was not only the essential nature of golf, but, relatedly, the question: What abilities are worthy of honor and recognition as athletic talents?
Let me put the point as delicately as possible: Golfers are a little sensitive about the athletic status of their game.
(Laughter) After all, there's no running or jumping, and the ball stands still.
(Laughter) So if golfing is the kind of game that can be played while riding around in a golf cart, it would be hard to confer on the golfing greats the status that we confer, the honor and recognition that goes to truly great athletes.
That illustrates that with golf, as with flutes, it's hard to decide the question of what justice requires, without grappling with the question, "What is the essential nature of the activity in question, and what qualities, what excellences connected with that activity, are worthy of honor and recognition?"
Let's take a final example that's prominent in contemporary political debate: same-sex marriage.
There are those who favor state recognition only of traditional marriage between one man and one woman, and there are those who favor state recognition of same-sex marriage.
How many here favor the first policy: the state should recognize traditional marriage only?
And how many favor the second, same-sex marriage?
Now, put it this way: What ways of thinking about justice and morality underlie the arguments we have over marriage?
The opponents of same-sex marriage say that the purpose of marriage, fundamentally, is procreation, and that's what's worthy of honoring and recognizing and encouraging.
And the defenders of same-sex marriage say no, procreation is not the only purpose of marriage; what about a lifelong, mutual, loving commitment?
That's really what marriage is about.
So with flutes, with golf carts, and even with a fiercely contested question like same-sex marriage, Aristotle has a point.
Very hard to argue about justice without first arguing about the purpose of social institutions and about what qualities are worthy of honor and recognition.
So let's step back from these cases and see how they shed light on the way we might improve, elevate, the terms of political discourse in the United States, and for that matter, around the world.
There is a tendency to think that if we engage too directly with moral questions in politics, that's a recipe for disagreement, and for that matter, a recipe for intolerance and coercion.
So better to shy away from, to ignore, the moral and the religious convictions that people bring to civic life.
It seems to me that our discussion reflects the opposite, that a better way to mutual respect is to engage directly with the moral convictions citizens bring to public life, rather than to require that people leave their deepest moral convictions outside politics before they enter.
That, it seems to me, is a way to begin to restore the art of democratic argument.
Thank you very much.
(Applause) Thank you.
(Applause) Thank you.
(Applause) Thank you very much.
Thanks.
Thank you.
Chris.
Thanks, Chris.
Chris Anderson: From flutes to golf courses to same-sex marriage -- that was a genius link.
Now look, you're a pioneer of open education.
Your lecture series was one of the first to do it big.
What's your vision for the next phase of this?
MS: Well, I think that it is possible.
In the classroom, we have arguments on some of the most fiercely held moral convictions that students have about big public questions.
And I think we can do that in public life more generally.
And so my real dream would be to take the public television series that we've created of the course -- it's available now, online, free for everyone anywhere in the world -- and to see whether we can partner with institutions, at universities in China, in India, in Africa, around the world, to try to promote civic education and also a richer kind of democratic debate.
CA: So you picture, at some point, live, in real time, you could have this kind of conversation, inviting questions, but with people from China and India joining in?
MS: Right.
We did a little bit of it here with 1,500 people in Long Beach, and we do it in a classroom at Harvard with about 1,000 students.
Wouldn't it be interesting to take this way of thinking and arguing, engaging seriously with big moral questions, exploring cultural differences and connect through a live video hookup, students in Beijing and Mumbai and in Cambridge, Massachusetts and create a global classroom.
That's what I would love to do.
(Applause) CA: So, I would imagine that there are a lot of people who would love to join you in that endeavor.
Michael Sandel.
Thank you so much.
(MS: Thanks so much.)
"The New Colossus" by Emma Lazarus Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame, With conquering limbs astride from land to land; Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name Mother of Exiles.
From her beacon-hand Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
“Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she With silent lips.
“Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”
What do horror movies and comedies have in common?
The two genres might seem totally different, but the reason they're both so popular is perhaps because what they have in common: their use of dramatic irony.
First, let's clarify.
There are three types of irony out there.
Situational irony is when you expect one thing, but get the opposite.
Verbal irony is when someone says something, but truly means the opposite.
Dramatic irony, though, is what we will be looking at right now.
Dramatic irony is when the audience seems to know more about an event, a situation, or a conversation than the characters in the movie, on the show, or in the book do.
The audience is in on a secret that the characters have missed.
This is a great story-telling device that creates tremendous emotion within that text.
Think about it for a moment.
How does it feel when, in a horror film, you know that the scary villain is hiding behind that door in the darkened room.
The music becomes eerie, the lighting creates complete shadows, this has to be bad for the hero!
Of course, though, that hero must enter the room to find the villain.
You feel tremendous tension and the suspense of knowing that someone will jump out and be scary, but you just don't know when.
That tension is dramatic irony: you know something more than the characters in the film.
Now, take the typical comedy.
There will probably be some type of "misunderstanding".
Again, we know more of what is going on than the characters do.
Picture two characters making a plan for a birthday surprise for their roommate while that roommate overhears the entire conversation from the hallway.
From there, confusion and misunderstanding occur, and the tension builds.
This isn't the same tension as the horror film since it is probably pretty funny as the character tries to figure out the whos and the whats, but it serves as a great example of the tension and suspense of dramatic irony.
This tension or suspense in both genres drives the story and keeps the plot progressing.
The audience wants, no, needs, to see the tension of the dramatic irony broken either by the scary person jumping out of the shadows or by someone finally revealing someone's true identity and clearing up the confusion.
So, when you feel like you are in on a secret, that is dramatic irony, a hallmark of all the great writers, from Shakespeare to Hitchcock.
I want to help you re-perceive what philanthropy is, what it could be, and what your relationship to it is.
And in doing that, I want to offer you a vision, an imagined future, if you will, of how, as the poet Seamus Heaney has put it, "Once in a lifetime the longed-for tidal wave of justice can rise up, and hope and history rhyme."
I want to start with these word pairs here.
We all know which side of these we'd like to be on.
When philanthropy was reinvented a century ago, when the foundation form was actually invented, they didn't think of themselves on the wrong side of these either.
In fact they would never have thought of themselves as closed and set in their ways, as slow to respond to new challenges, as small and risk-averse.
And in fact they weren't.
They were reinventing charity in those times, what Rockefeller called "the business of benevolence."
But by the end of the 20th century, a new generation of critics and reformers had come to see philanthropy just this way.
The thing to watch for as a global philanthropy industry comes about -- and that's exactly what is happening -- is how the aspiration is to flip these old assumptions, for philanthropy to become open and big and fast and connected, in service of the long term.
This entrepreneurial energy is emerging from many quarters.
And it's driven and propelled forward by new leaders, like many of the people here, by new tools, like the ones we've seen here, and by new pressures.
I've been following this change for quite a while now, and participating in it.
This report is our main public report.
What it tells is the story of how today actually could be as historic as 100 years ago.
What I want to do is share some of the coolest things that are going on with you.
And as I do that, I'm not going to dwell much on the very large philanthropy that everybody already knows about -- the Gates or the Soros or the Google.
Instead, what I want to do is talk about the philanthropy of all of us: the democratization of philanthropy.
This is a moment in history when the average person has more power than at any time.
What I'm going to do is look at five categories of experiments, each of which challenges an old assumption of philanthropy.
The first is mass collaboration, represented here by Wikipedia.
Now, this may surprise you.
But remember, philanthropy is about giving of time and talent, not just money.
Clay Shirky, that great chronicler of everything networked, has captured the assumption that this challenges in such a beautiful way.
He said, "We have lived in this world where little things are done for love and big things for money.
Now we have Wikipedia.
Suddenly big things can be done for love."
Watch, this spring, for Paul Hawken's new book -- Author and entrepreneur many of you may know about.
The book is called "Blessed Unrest."
And when it comes out, a series of wiki sites under the label WISER, are going to launch at the same time.
WISER stands for World Index for Social and Environmental Responsibility.
WISER sets out to document, link and empower what Paul calls the largest movement, and fastest-growing movement in human history: humanity's collective immune response to today's threats.
Now, all of these big things for love -- experiments -- aren't going to take off.
But the ones that do are going to be the biggest, the most open, the fastest, the most connected form of philanthropy in human history.
Second category is online philanthropy marketplaces.
This is, of course, to philanthropy what eBay and Amazon are to commerce.
Think of it as peer-to-peer philanthropy.
And this challenges yet another assumption, which is that organized philanthropy is only for the very wealthy.
Take a look, if you haven't, at DonorsChoose.
Omidyar Network has made a big investment in DonorsChoose.
It's one of the best known of these new marketplaces where a donor can go straight into a classroom and connect with what a teacher says they need.
Take a look at Changing the Present, started by a TEDster, next time you need a wedding present or a holiday present.
GiveIndia is for a whole country.
And it goes on and on.
The third category is represented by Warren Buffet, which I call aggregated giving.
It's not just that Warren Buffet was so amazingly generous in that historic act last summer.
It's that he challenged another assumption, that every giver should have his or her own fund or foundation.
There are now, today, so many new funds that are aggregating giving and investing, bringing together people around a common goal, to think bigger.
One of the best known is Acumen Fund, led by Jacqueline Novogratz, a TEDster who got a big boost madeline68@example.org.
But there are many others: New Profit in Cambridge, New School's Venture Fund in Silicon Valley, Venture Philanthropy Partners in Washington, Global Fund for Women in San Francisco.
Take a madeline68@example.org.
These funds are to philanthropy what venture capital, private equity, and eventually mutual funds are to investing, but with a twist -- because often a community forms around these funds, as it has at Acumen and other places.
Now, imagine for a second these first three types of experiments: mass collaboration, online marketplaces, aggregated giving.
And understand how they help us re-perceive what organized philanthropy is.
It's not about foundations necessarily; it's about the rest of us.
And imagine the mash-up, if you will, of these things, in the future, when these things come together in the experiments of the future -- imagine that somebody puts up, say, 100 million dollars for an inspiring goal -- there were 21 gifts of 100 million dollars or more in the US last year, not out of the question -- but only puts it up if it's matched by millions of small gifts from around the globe, thereby engaging lots of people, and building visibility and engaging people in the goal that's stated.
I'm going to look quickly at the fourth and fifth categories, which are innovation, competitions and social investing.
They're betting a visible competition, a prize, can attract talent and money to some of the most difficult issues, and thereby speed the solution.
This tackles yet another assumption, that the giver and the organization is at the center, as opposed to putting the problem at the center.
You can look to these innovators to help us especially with things that require technological or scientific solution.
That leaves the final category, social investing, which is really, anyway, the biggest of them all, represented here by Xigi.net.
And this, of course, tackles the biggest assumption of all, that business is business, and philanthropy is the vehicle of people who want to create change in the world.
Xigi is a new community site that's built by the community, linking and mapping this new social capital market.
It lists already 1,000 entities that are offering debt and equity for social enterprise.
So we can look to these innovators to help us remember that if we can leverage even a small amount of the capital that seeks a return, the good that can be driven could be astonishing.
Now, what's really interesting here is that we're not thinking our way into a new way of acting; we're acting our way into a new way of thinking.
Philanthropy is reorganizing itself before our very eyes.
And even though all of the experiments and all of the big givers don't yet fulfill this aspiration, I think this is the new zeitgeist: open, big, fast, connected, and, let us also hope, long.
We have got to realize that it is going to take a long time to do these things.
If we don't develop the stamina to stick with things -- whatever it is you pick, stick with it -- all of this stuff is just going to be, you know, a fad.
But I'm really hopeful.
And I'm hopeful because it's not only philanthropy that's reorganizing itself, it's also whole other portions of the social sector, and of business, that are busy challenging "business as usual."
And everywhere I go, including here at TED, I feel that there is a new moral hunger that is growing.
What we're seeing is people really wrestling to describe what is this new thing that's happening.
Words like "philanthrocapitalism," and "natural capitalism," and "philanthroentrepreneur," and "venture philanthropy."
We don't have a language for it yet.
Whatever we call it, it's new, it's beginning, and I think it's gong to quite significant.
And that's where my imagined future comes in, which I am going to call the social singularity.
Many of you will realize that I'm ripping a bit off of the science fiction writer Vernor Vinge's notion of a technological singularity, where a number of trends accelerate and converge and come together to create, really, a shockingly new reality.
It may be that the social singularity ahead is the one that we fear the most: a convergence of catastrophes, of environmental degradation, of weapons of mass destruction, of pandemics, of poverty.
That's because our ability to confront the problems that we face has not kept pace with our ability to create them.
And as we've heard here, it is no exaggeration to say that we hold the future of our civilization in our hands as never before.
The question is, is there a positive social singularity?
Is there a frontier for us of how we live together?
Our future doesn't have to be imagined.
We can create a future where hope and history rhyme.
But we have a problem.
Our experience to date, both individually and collectively, hasn't prepared us for what we're going to need to do, or who we're going to need to be.
We are going to need a new generation of citizen leaders willing to commit ourselves to growing and changing and learning as rapidly as possible.
That's why I have one last thing I want to show you.
This is a photograph taken about 100 years ago of my grandfather and great-grandfather.
This is a newspaper publisher and a banker.
And they were great community leaders.
And, yes, they were great philanthropists.
I keep this photograph close by to me -- it's in my office -- because I've always felt a mystical connection to these two men, both of whom I never knew.
And so, in their honor, I want to offer you this blank slide.
And I want you to imagine that this a photograph of you.
And I want you to think about the community that you want to be part of creating.
Whatever that means to you.
And I want you to imagine that it's 100 years from now, and your grandchild, or great-grandchild, or niece or nephew or god-child, is looking at this photograph of you.
What is the story you most want for them to tell?
Thank you very much.
(Applause)