What Money Can't Buy - the moral limit of markets

St Paul's Institute, London School of Economics and Political Science and JustShare public debate

Is there something wrong with a world in which everything is for sale? If so, how can we prevent market values from reaching into spheres of life where they don't belong? What are the moral limits of markets?

Noted public philosopher and Harvard professor Michael J. Sandel will explore some of these pressing questions with responses from Bishop Peter Selby. St Paul's Cathedral is delighted to host a discussion on this vital topic within a sacred space in order to explore the intersection between faith, morality and markets and the power that money has in our lives. Questions and comments from the audience will be taken.

Michael J. Sandel is the Anne T. and Robert M. Bass Professor of Government at Harvard University, where he has taught political philosophy since 1980. His recent book, Justice: What's the Right Thing to Do? relates the big questions of political philosophy to the most vexing issues of our time. His new book, What Money Can't Buy: The Moral Limits of Markets|, has just been published. At Harvard, Sandel's courses include Ethics, Biotechnology, and the Future of Human Nature, Ethics, Economics, and Law, and Globalization and Its Critics. His undergraduate course, Justice|, has enrolled over 15,000 students, and is the first Harvard course to be made freely available online and on public television. A recipient of the Harvard-Radcliffe Phi Beta Kappa Teaching Prize, Sandel was recognised by the American Political Science Association in 2008 for a career of excellence in teaching. He has been a visiting professor at the Sorbonne (Paris), delivered the Tanner Lectures on Human Values at Oxford University, and in 2009 delivered the BBC Reith Lectures. In 2010, China Newsweek named him the "most influential foreign figure of the year" in China.

Dr Peter Selby was Bishop of Worcester from 1997 until 2007 and in 2001 was also appointed to Bishop of Prisons, a post from which he also retired in September 2007. Dr Selby's interest in prisons is long-standing, and he is himself the son of refugees, and served for a time as the Chair of the Asylum Committee of the Refugee Council. His concern for prisons and the criminal justice system extends back to 1965 when he served as an interim chaplain at San Quentin, California, as part of his ministerial training. Since then, criminal justice and refugee issues have been consistent features of his work in the Church of England. He has served in posts involving adult education and policy development, as well as in pastoral and consultancy work, in South London and in the North-East. He became a bishop in 1984 in South-West London, and undertook research into international and personal debt as the William Leech Professorial Fellow in Durham from 1992 to 1997. He began his current role as President of the National Council for Independent Monitoring Boards on 1 January 2008.

St Paul's Institute| seeks to foster an informed Christian response to the most urgent ethical and spiritual issues of our times: financial integrity, economic justice, and the meaning of the common good.

JustShare| is a coalition of churches and charities committed to global development and social justice.

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