The World is a Classroom

In India for a three-city Bangalore,Mumbai,Delhi tour as part of the Infosys Science Foundation Public Lectures,Sandel raised hypothetical situations,offered options,sought questions and investigated possibilities. At an interview,the eloquent gestures that you associate with him he conducts his Justice classes in the woodpanelled,bowl-shaped,1,000-plus-seater Sanders Theatre,with one hand in pocket and the other pointing to audience fall away and he speaks with slow deliberation. Even so,this 59-year-old professor makes a compelling figure. Small of frame with deep-set eyes and disappearing eyebrows and lips,he appears like a sage in a cut suit. He is also liberal with certain adjectives,drizzling his speech with amazed and fascinated,revealing a wonder-struck professor rather than a cynical one.

So how has he made moral philosophy voguish? Sandel attributes it to a great hunger for serious discussions on the big moral questions. He says political discourse is often reduced to shouting matches or technocratic discussions that fail to inspire,but people want something better. And he hopes to provide that through the global classroom. His ideal of a global classroom was realised,where else but in a Tokyo studio,while interacting in real-time with students from Tokyo,Shanghai and Harvard. There were large screens and simultaneous translations. He says,Education,especially higher education should be a public good and not an exclusive property. We are not simply providing a resource to the rest of the world,we are also inviting mutual learning.

Ask him why,and how,he brings theatre into the classroom,and he looks bemused and maybe embarrassed. He doesnt see himself as an actor,he says,but as a facilitator who guides students on a journey and tells them a story about themselves. The real drama is in the interaction between students and topics. He says,We are dealing with the big questions of moralities,ethics,what could be more dramatic than that? We are reading these texts with an understanding that we have a stake in it. I see my role as bringing out the drama that inters these questions.

If given a choice,of all the philosophers,Sandel says,he would have breakfast with Socrates,I dont know if he was agreeable but I would choose him. The power of a Socratic dialogue any day triumphs over the convenience of a monologue.

This is his second visit to India,the first being a family vacation 10 years ago to Delhi,Rajasthan and Agra. India is cacophonous in a wonderful way,he says,and passionately held convictions show that it is a democracy teeming with diversity. In India knotted in scandals of corruption,Sandel sees anti-corruption movements as heeding a democratic impulse. But he warns: Those who galvanise public sentiments might not be the best to find political solutions.

He says politics held him in thrall in 1974. The Godfather: Part II had released,ABBA was topping the charts,but it was also the summer of Watergate trials. Sandel,an intern in the Houston Chronicle,sat in on the impeachment arguments. It was a dream-come-true,he says. He soon veered away from political journalism to academia,but he says he remains engaged with the political,Im still keenly interested in connecting philosophical ideals to the real world. I havent given up on the impulse to be interested in political argument and debate. I am interested in how to make it a bit better.