Michael Sandel in The Guardian:
I am fortunate to have enough money not to have to worry about the necessities of life. Beyond that I try to think about money as little as possible.
I grew up in a Jewish family, and we have raised our children in a Jewish tradition. Religion gives a framework for moral enquiry in young minds and points us to questions beyond the material.
If you pay a child a dollar to read a book, as some schools have tried, you not only create an expectation that reading makes you money, you also run the risk of depriving the child for ever of the value of it. Markets are not innocent.
I almost became a political journalist, having worked as a reporter at the time of Watergate. The proximity to those events motivated me, when I wound up doing philosophy, to try to use it to move the public debate.
Philosophy can be debilitating. It demands a critical sensibility, and to try to apply that to everything can be a very disquieting thing – the disquiet is necessary, even if you are unmoored by it.
More here.