The Idea of Justice

The Idea of Justice Book Description

This major philosophical work, by one of the world's leading public intellectuals, constructs a new theory of justice, not from abstract ideals or notions of what perfect institutions and rules might be, but from what the results of a system are practically, in the world. It highlights the importance of public reasoning and argues that a system of justice should require the agreement not just of the community which is making laws, but of outsiders who might be affected, or who might have valuable perspectives to offer. The methods and conclusions of the book have implications for many different fields of intellectual activity, not only those connected with justice. It is the most ambitious and wide-ranging book Amartya Sen has yet written.
Social justice: an ideal, forever beyond our grasp; or one of many practical possibilities? More than a matter of intellectual discourse, the idea of justice plays a real role in how--and how well--people live. And in this book the distinguished scholar Amartya Sen offers a powerful critique of the theory of social justice that, in its grip on social and political thinking, has long left practical realities far behind.
The transcendental theory of justice, the subject of Sen's analysis, flourished in the Enlightenment and has proponents among some of the most distinguished philosophers of our day; it is concerned with identifying perfectly just social arrangements, defining the nature of the perfectly just society. The approach Sen favors, on the other hand, focuses on the comparative judgments of what is 'more' or 'less' just, and on the comparative merits of the different societies that actually emerge from certain institutions and social interactions.
At the heart of Sen's argument is a respect for reasoned differences in our understanding of what a 'just society' really is. People of different persuasions--for example, utilitarians, economic egalitarians, labor right theorists, no--nonsense libertarians--might each reasonably see a clear and straightforward resolution to questions of justice; and yet, these clear and straightforward resolutions would be completely different. In light of this, Sen argues for a comparative perspective on justice that can guide us in the choice between alternatives that we inevitably face.

About the Author
Amartya Sen, winner of the 1998 Nobel Prize in Economics, is Lamont University Professor, Harvard University. He is known for his contributions to welfare economics, for his work on human development theory, welfare economics, famine, the underlying mechanisms of poverty, gender inequality, and political liberalism. He is a distinguished economist-philosopher who won the 1998 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences for his work on welfare economics.

In 1981, Sen authored Poverty and Famines: An Essay on Entitlement and Deprivation, a book in which he demonstrated that famine occurs not only from a lack of food, but from inequalities built into mechanisms for distributing food. Sen's contribution to development economics and social indicators is the concept of 'capability' developed in his article 'Equality of What'. He argues that governments should be measured against the concrete capabilities of their citizens. This is because top-down development will always trump human rights as long as the definition of terms remains in doubt (is a 'right' something that must be provided or something that simply cannot be taken away?). For instance, in the United States citizens have a hypothetical 'right' to vote. To Sen, this concept is fairly empty. In order for citizens to have a capacity to vote, they first must have 'functionings.' These 'functionings' can range from the very broad, such as the availability of education, to the very specific, such as transportation to the polls. Only when such barriers are removed can the citizen truly be said to act out of personal choice. It is up to the individual society to make the list of minimum capabilities guaranteed by that society. For an example of the 'capabilities approach' in practice, see Martha Nussbaum's Women and Human Development.
He also wrote a controversial article in The New York Review of Books entitled 'More Than 100 Million Women Are Missing', analyzing the mortality impact of unequal rights between the genders in the developing world, particularly Asia. Other studies, such as one by Emily Oster, have argued that this is an overestimation, though Oster has recanted some of her conclusions. The book Philosophy of Economics: On the Scope of Reason in Economic Inquiry published first in Routlege's International Library of Philosophy in 1989 contains a critique of social choice theory including Sen's 'paretian liberal' analysis. Other recent books by Amartya Sen -
* Identity and Violence: The Illusion of Destiny
* The Argumentative Indian
* Rationality and Freedom
* Inequality Reexamined

Amartya Sen's books have been translated into more than thirty languages.

 

 

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