Michael Sandel was ignored by a generation of political optimists. Now he is searching for a way out of the mess he saw coming
Published Feb 7, 2026
I. Recollection One Friday last autumn, a message dropped into my inbox announcing that Michael Sandel, a Harvard University political thinker, would be awarded the Berggruen Prize, a sort of Nobel for public philosophers.
My first thought was that Sandel, a lifetime critic of the kind of philosophical liberalism that has influenced western politics for half a century, was a deserving winner. The 72-year-old has taught at Harvard since 1980, but has reached far beyond the ivory tower with his hugely popular Socratic style of moral questioning, calling for a less market-dominated and more civic-minded public philosophy.