justice and harvard

i just discovered "itunes u", the section of the itunes store where you can download lectures from universities around the united states (maybe the world?) for free...i'm into it.

i found a set of lectures from harvard entitled "justice" by this guy mark sandel. over 14,000 people have attended his lectures, so i thought it would be interesting to hear what he had to say on the topic. it's such a broad thing, justice, and so hard at times to distinguish between the justice that is legal, justice that is biblical, and the average person's idea of justice--which is generally just a synonym for revenge. but this post is only vaguely about the out-workings of justice.

after listening to the first twelve minutes of the sixth lecture, my mind is already jumping at the content of what the guy said. i will finish the lecture soon, but i wanted to post a few quotes from it and get your thoughts.

here he is discussing the thoughts of this guy (i think his name is Kant) on freedom as opposed to the Utilitarian idea of freedom. this dude, kant, wrote a book called The Supreme Question of Morality...just so you have some sort of reference. I believe, although i'm no harvard student and i haven't yet listened to the first five lectures, that my paraphrase in the first little chunk shows a bit of what the utilitarian idea of freedom is. and i know they had previously discussed whether or not it was okay to sacrifice (in any sense) one person's well-being or happiness for the greater good....

so here we go:

paraphrased from the first few minutes:

some people consider freedom to be the ability to get what we want, pleasure without obstacles and the avoidance of pain. a more stringent definition of freedom: when we seek pleasure/avoid pain, we are acting as the slaves of those appetites. in a sense these appetites are chosen for us and we are finding a way to achieve them. freedom is the opposite of necessity--it is a law one chooses for oneself 

quoted directly:

"to act freely is not to choose the best means to a given end, it is to choose the end itself for its own sake

insofar as we act on inclination or pursue pleasure, we act as means to the realization of ends given outside us; we are instruments rather than authors of the purposes we pursue.

insofar as we act autonomously, according to a law we give ourselves, we do something for its own sake, as an end in itself. when we act autonomously, we cease to be instruments to purposes given outside us. we become, or can come to think of ourselves as, ends in ourselves.

this capacity to act freely is what gives human life its dignity. respecting human dignity is seeing people not as means to an end but as ends in themselves. this is why it's wrong to use people for the sake of other people's well being or happiness."

thoughts?