Geophilosophy Lecture Series: Michael Sandel at Casa dei Tre Oci

In June, Berggruen Institute Europe hosted 2025 Berggruen Prize Laureate, Professor Michael Sandel, for a conversation surrounding the challenges and potential futures of contemporary democracy.

One of the world’s foremost political philosophers, Professor Sandel has spent decades interrogating liberal political thought, the moral contradictions of markets and meritocracy, and more. Across his many works including Justice, What Money Can’t Buy and, most recently, The Tyranny of Merit, he has critically examined what economic, social, and political institutions owe to the dignity of those who they govern.

Professor Sandel illustrated that the polarized – and at times even resentful – landscape of democracy today is a direct product of economic and moral transformations which began decades earlier. Specifically, finance-driven neoliberal globalization has both widened inequality and fractured communities. Simultaneously, it has constructed a “rhetoric of rising” which encouraged citizens that this failure was the fault of individuals – and not of institutional or societal insufficiency. Thus, those left behind, he argued, were left not only in a state of economic insecurity but also as possessing a profound sense of humiliation believing that, “your failure must be your fault.”

Consequently, Sandel's renewed “politics of the common good” grounds itself in two interconnected projects: reconfiguring the economy and renewing a sense of collective civic morality and responsibility. Work, in this light, becomes both an economic act and a means further connecting citizens to one another. As Professor Sandel succinctly pointed out, “It's as producers, not consumers, that we contribute to the common good, and win recognition for doing so.”

Ultimately, Sandel’s “politics of the common good” revives an understanding of democracy as a shared civic endeavor based in recognition, dignity, and a sense of belonging. Such a project does not seek to eliminate political disagreement, but to create the conditions for citizens to engage meaningfully across their differences. You can watch the full lecture here.