Justice: Justice: What’s The Right Thing To Do?

According to Jiminy Cricket you should ‘always let your conscience be your guide’. But what about hard cases and new problems? Yes, we have the four principles. Maybe we need no more, just as I only need the brake, accelerator, clutch, and steering wheel to drive. Do I really have to worry about what lies under the bonnet? But if, as Dunstan has suggested, doctors are society’s ‘accredited moral agents’ then perhaps we should know about morals as well as muscles? There’s more to ethics than four principles just as there’s more to musculoskeletal medicine than doling out naproxen.

Justice is by far the best general introduction to moral theory that I have come across. Also the liveliest. Sure, Sandel covers Aristotle and Kant and Bentham and the gang, but the book is full of stories of real moral problems. This reminds us that ethics is not about moral theory. Ethics is about what to do when Jiminy Cricket lets us down.

The book covers the usual curriculum of moral philosophy: utilitarianism versus duty, liberty, free markets, inequality, virtue, and human welfare. Interestingly (and very much in the tradition of Aristotle) Sandel also covers issues such as friendship and loyalty. Morality exists within a social space and within human relationships. We are also reminded that few problems are genuinely new. An open market for kidneys? Read what Kant said about the rich buying the teeth of the poor for attempted implantation.

Sandel is a lawyer and political philosopher, not a medical ethicist. It is refreshing to talk about morals in the wider world rather than just our own well-rehearsed problems. From whether it would be justified for a soldier to kill three enemy sympathiser civilians to save the lives of 19 of his comrades, to whether Clinton lied to the American people or merely ‘misled’ them, this book will give you plenty to think about. And you will find that you have received a pretty good education in moral theory without really noticing.

This book is easy, fun, erudite, and genuinely worthwhile. I suggest it as introductory reading to ethics students. If combined with some notes on one’s own ‘ordinary’ cases it would be a brilliant starting place for self-certified CPD.

• © British Journal of General Practice 2014