A New Politics for the Common Good

For the fourth and final lecture in this year's Reith Lectures, Professor Sandel travels to the home of American government, Washington DC.

President Obama won the presidency on a promise of change after campaigning for moral and civic renewal. But what should that look like?

How does a new politics of the common good recast our understanding of government and what it means to be a citizen?

Professor Sandel Sandel argues that a new citizenship requires a politics that leans against the privatizing tendencies of our age, and that a healthy democracy requires that we think of ourselves less as consumers and more as citizens.

Lecture Three: Genetics and Morality

In the third Reith lecture, Professor Sandel considers how we should use our ever-increasing scientific knowledge.

New genetic technologies hold great promise for treating and curing disease, but how far we should go in using them to manipulate muscles, moods and gender?

Lecture Two: Morality and Politics

In the second of the 2009 Reith Lectures, Professor Michael Sandel asks what's the role, if any, for morality in politics?

Some say there is no place for morality and religious argument in politics. But Professor Sandel disagrees and argues for a more robust debate in public life everywhere which includes morality and spiritual views.

This is an essential element of what he calls 'A New Citizenship'.

He thinks that often it's not possible for the state to be neutral on moral questions and calls for a more robust debate about issues such as commercial surrogacy and same sex marriage.

The programme is chaired by the British broadcaster, Sue Lawley.

Lecture One: Markets and Morals

The Reith Lectures are a series of annual radio lectures on significant contemporary issues.

This year's theme is A New Citizenship and the lectures are delivered by political philosopher and Harvard University professor, Michael Sandel.

In the first of four lectures, Professor Sandel asks, what are the moral limits of markets?

In the wake of the global financial crisis, he considers the expansion of markets into areas once the preserve of the state: prisons, schools, and hospitals and more controversially, the global trade in kidneys and other body parts for transplantation.

He ponders the question, are there some things which money can't or shouldn't buy?

How should we think about the use of markets in cases such as these? Sandel offers a moral framework and suggests a more searching public debate about the moral limits of markets is an essential aspect of a "new citizenship".

The Reith Lectures were started by the BBC in 1948, and named after its first Director General, Lord Reith.

Professor Sandel's lecture was recorded at the iconic home of BBC Radio, the Radio Theatre at Broadcasting House in London.