The Idea of Justice

by sen

Social 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.

Genres: Philosophy, Nonfiction, Economics, Politics, Law, India, Justice

496 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2009

Reviews

[Lisa · Rating 5 out of 5]

A Nobel Laureate in Economics, for a change.

It has taken me quite some time to finish "The Idea of Justice". I just saw that I marked it as Currently-Reading a year ago. Usually, this would be a sign that I struggle with the content or writing style, but that is not the case at all. I enjoyed every minute of it. The reason it took me so long is rather that I needed time for Amartya Sen's thoughts to settle in my mind, and I frequently had to go back to reading primary sources of which I had only a vague memory (Mary Wollstonecraft, Adam Smith, The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, etc). I also had to read up on authors that were almost completely new to me, most notably philosophers from Asia. That in itself illustrates a point Sen makes over and over again: our knowledge and ideas are deeply influenced by the region within which we are socialized. Aristotle's "Ethics" thus were easy for me to grasp whereas I had to learn a lot more about the arguments between, say, Arjuna and Krishna to fully understand their ideas of justice.

Sen beautifully demonstrates the general problem of finding a definition for justice in a world where people see fairness as that which is most beneficial to them. He quotes Shakespeare's "King John":

Well, whiles I am a beggar, I will rail
And say there is no sin but to be rich;
And being rich, my virtue then shall be
To say there is no vice but beggary!"

Sen therefore makes a strong case for seeing the world with open-mindedness and from multiple points of view (In a Shakespearean way, maybe!), in order to establish not only a social contract for basic human rights, but the best possible freedom of choice for every single individual. What convinces me most in this context is that he is completely realistic about the discrepancy between a utopian, perfectly just world and the real state of affairs. He urges the reader, however, not to give up the fight for gradually enhanced justice just because perfect justice is not achievable at the moment. To dismiss Wollstonecraft's fight for women's rights only because it does not solve the issue of slavery would be nonsensical. Achievement in one area will lead to a better, more stable platform for other causes.

Focusing on global education (yes, that is close to my heart, I recognise my own personal bias here!) will support the fight for sustainable development, for a better environment as well as the fight against over-population and terrorism in a long-term perspective, even if it does not address these issues explicitly.

Another argument that struck me as important is the responsibility of a person in power to do whatever is possible for general justice. Sen goes beyond the idea of mutual benefit as a means to reach a just social contract between people or states, and argues that a person with more power than others has an asymmetric responsibility to work for the benefit of others, comparable to the role of a parent towards a child, which would not be able to survive without support. In a just society, power and responsibility must be linked. This strikes me as something any privileged individual should consider. It is easy to blame undefined "politicians" for their lack of commitment, but much harder to ask myself the question what I CAN, and therefore SHOULD, do to enhance justice in the world, starting in my own family and work environment.

Amartya Sen sees independent and free critical media and democratically elected leadership as massively influential in the process of achieving justice. The example of famines was interesting: it is much less likely for major famines to occur in functioning democracies, where critical voices will give elected leaders a strong incentive to act to prevent disaster, whereas an autocratically ruling dictator does not have to yield to public opinion and can ignore suffering and injustice with impunity. In a way, this worries me, seeing that media tend to develop extreme biases in different directions at the moment, serving not the purpose of objectively informing the public, but of brainwashing it into taking sides, thus using power without responsibility instead of supporting fair reporting of facts. A balanced and knowledgeable journalistic effort is still strongly needed, even though (or because) the internet spreads information at lightning speed.

A biased and one-dimensional media coverage will neglect the diversity of each human being's identity, a point that Sen makes especially in the context of different religious or national affiliations:

"Individual human beings with their various plural identities, multiple affiliations and diverse associations are quintessentially social creatures with different types of societal interactions. Proposals to see a person as a member of one social group tend to be based on an inadequate understanding of the breadth and complexity of any society in the world."

This resonates with me on a personal level. Having the experience of growing up in different countries, with different languages and social codes, moving from one place to another, I have naturally come to adopt different cultural habits and ideas that are not completely compatible with my passport country's perceived mainstream identity. The Third Culture Kids: Growing Up Among Worlds, merging different traditions to form something in between, will never be able to identify solely with "one side".

As our world grows more globally interconnected (which is a fact, whether we like it or not), we need to learn to look at things from the outside, to see the diversity of choices that are possible, and just. We need to enforce the general right of every single human being to be safe, educated, healthily fed and sheltered, and at the same time embrace the multiple ways in which this can be achieved. We all have complex identities.

A colleague recently told me that it is not possible for me to be interested in football (soccer), as I do not fit the idea of a football supporter at all: female, educated to a PhD level in Humanities, with no locally, nationally defined "home base", I just CANNOT like the beautiful game. Well, as a matter of fact, I do.

We need multiple connections to fight for a justice that does not end where personal benefit and local affiliation ends, we need to see the world from many angles and be able to put in what little power we have to make it at least partially better. Hard enough, but we have plenty of time while we are waiting for Utopia.

Well, this review turned out very different from what I intended. Suffice to say: Reading it made me feel hope on a small scale where I only felt despair on a global stage before. A strong recommendation for anyone interested in the development of humanity!

[T.R. · Rating 2 out of 5]

When an author as distinguished as Amartya Sen, Nobel Laureate in economics and acclaimed polymath and thinker, writes on the issue of justice, one expects great insight into an aspect central to human life and democracy. With more than 400 dense pages of text and footnotes, over 30 pages of notes, and a long preface, Sen's book tries to take the reader through a labyrinth of ideas and literature from ancient times to modern days. Indeed, in proposing an approach that is philosophically and morally relevant to human freedom and capability, and that integrates well with modern views on democracy and openness, Sen makes a stalwart contribution to the literature of our times.

Sen's essential thesis is simple. He sets up a contrast between two views of justice. The more paradigmatic traditional view, which Sen calls transcendental institutionalism, based on John Rawls's A Theory of Justice is set against a more realization-focused comparative approach developed by many thinkers and espoused by Sen himself. The former depends on a social contract among individuals that will ostensibly evolve in a hypothetical 'original condition' of impartiality where everyone is free of their vested interests due to a 'veil of ignorance' that separates them from what they will be in the real world. This is then supposed to lead to two fundamental principles of justice (liberty, equality and equity) and determine the right institutions and rules governing justice, after which we are home and free on the road to perfect justice. In the latter view, Sen questions whether perfect justice is either attainable or required, and if creating institutions and rules are sufficient to see that justice is actually achieved in the real world. The answer, rather obviously, is no. We are mostly not interested in what perfect or ideal justice is in a given situation; mostly, what we have are two or more options that we need to assess to see which would be more just. Such assessment, should be based on reasoning, preferably public reasoning that is open, impartial, and democratic and leads to the best social choices and actual realization of justice among people in the real world. The contrast between the two concepts is also presented by Sen as the distinction between the concepts of niti and nyaya in Indian thought.

This overarching message of the book and the additional weight provided by someone like Sen in pushing it, is a valuable one. It suggests that in a world rife with problems and conflicts, citizens and the media have a more central role in engaging with issues, learning about them, reasoning publicly over diverse choices, and arriving at rational and better courses of action.

In the end, however, the book disappoints more than it edifies, it frustrates more than it clarifies. To be fair, this is not because Sen's reasoning is defective or that the approach to justice he espouses in the book is vague or poorly reasoned. It fails partly because Sen is not really saying anything new in this book that he and others have not already said earlier. More important, Sen buries his simple and highly relevant thinking and his effort to pull ideas together under a cloud of pedantry and repetition. Only a diehard reader willing to suffer some poor, laboured writing in order to grasp some really rich ideas can plough through this book.

Does a man who knows so much about the economy of the world, know so little about the economy of words?

Early on, Sen describes the essential features of Rawls's theory briefly, with the apology that "...every summary is ultimately an act of barbarism..." and his counter-view and reasoning. This, along with other related ideas on the importance of reason and impartiality, is then repeated many times (easily over a dozen times, but one loses count) throughout the book. Not only does Sen repeat the basic idea of justice (often in more or less the same words) in the text, he repeats himself in the extensive footnotes, and just in case you haven't caught on, he obligingly marks in numerous additional footnotes that this same point was already made by him in an earlier chapter. It becomes rather more than a passing annoyance when he repeats his expression of what Rawls's 'veil of ignorance' means thrice in two paragraphs (pg. 197-8). If summaries are an act of barbarism, then how does one describe such verbiage: vandalism? To quote Sen himself (pg. 73): "Words have their significance but we must not become too imprisoned by them. Or even better, if only Sen had heeded the words of Ludwig Wittgenstein quoted in the first sentence of the first chapter of his book: "What can be said at all can be said clearly; and whereof one cannot speak thereof one must be silent."

Reading Sen's repetitive work, one feels for his editor, Stuart Profitt, who Sen says in the Acknowledgements made "invaluable comments and suggestions... almost on every page of every chapter", mentioning his "relief" at the end of this book, which we come to understand well. Still, one wishes Sen could have 'Profitted' more from the editing. Sorely tempted, at the end of the 400+ page book to commit a barbaric act myself, I summarised his tome into a single sentence:
John Rawls's theory that perfect justice can be derived by creating the right institutions and rules based on principled social contracts among people in a hypothetical original condition where everyone is ignorant of what they will be in the real world, is untenable; instead, the idea of justice requires open, impartial, and public reasoning to arrive at more just and democratic solutions through social choices made by comparing actual available alternatives, while being mindful of process and outcome on people in the real world.

Three other aspects I found wanting in this book are (a) the lack of discussion of real cases and choices on burning issues of justice, (b) the paucity of discussion on how his idea of justice naturally translates into important consequences for debates on global environment (e.g., climate change, wildlife conservation issues), and (c) his rather limited use of Asian philosophy, literature, and ideas. A few lines about each of these below.

Sen makes passing mention of some real cases: a line about the Iraq war and the role of the US (which he calls "this country", on pg. 71, giving away the readership he seems to be writing for), mentions of famines, the French Revolution, and rights of women and slavery. There is some empirical data and discussion on famine in Chapter 16, but again based on old material he has covered in his 1981 book Poverty and famines. When Sen does discuss a case in greater depth, it is rather frivolous invented examples, about personal freedom and choices when sitting on seats in airplanes, or three children and a flute. These are alright to introduce the nuances of choice in justice, but in all this mad, chaotic world could Sen really find no real cases where the same dilemma for justice is present? He talks so much about realization and consequence in the real world, but the real world of cases is strangely absent in his own book. Real injustice and the failure of institutions could be well illustrated and discussed in many cases: for example, the Bhopal tragedy, the Holocaust, or the case of global climate change.

My greatest disappointment with the book was, however, more personal. As someone interested in the environment conservation movement--including issues of global justice, social choices and sustainability, and the expansion of human ethical horizons to include nature and the interests of animals--I expected more from this book than I perhaps should have, given that it is, ultimately, written by a Harvard economist. Sen deals with sustainable development and the environment in a little over 4 pages (pg. 248-252), bringing mainly two points to the fore. One, that development should not be seen as antagonistic to environment as it could lead to benefits, for instance through empowerment, female education and reduction in fertility rates. Second, that conservation can be based on our sense of values and our freedom and capability to hold and pursue those values is sufficient substantive reason to pursue conservation goals: a sort of freedom to conserve, indeed.

When Sen speaks of social choices, rationality, and other aspects of people such as sympathy and sharing, he seems oblivious, at least in this book, about the rich literature in anthropology and biology (including evolution and animal behaviour and psychology), and ethics (including environmental ethics and animal rights). Arguably, these have more contemporary relevance to the issue than Adam Smith's early and other economists's recent speculations, uninformed by biology and anthropology, on these matters. The ideas of various thinkers such as Thomas Hobbes, Jeremy Bentham, Thomas Nagel, Adam Smith, and Mary Wollstonecraft, have been discussed extensively in the light of recent scientific research on human and primate behaviour, and moral philosophers have extended the ethical principles underlying human rights to issues of animal welfare and rights and environmental conservation. These are relevant, but missing, in the otherwise valuable chapters 'Rationality and Other People', 'Human Rights and Global Imperatives', and 'Justice and the World'. This may seem harsh, but until Sen can integrate these views of economics and justice with the stellar advances in fields of biology, anthropology, animal behaviour, and moral philosophy, he remains, not a polymath as some have called him, but like most other economists, mostly a 'math'.

Finally, Sen brings Asian philosophy to bear rather sparingly in the book. This includes, besides the niti-nyaya gradient, description of some essential ideas from Kautilya's Arthashastra, the famous debate between Krishna and Arjuna on duty and consequence in the Bhagavad Gita episode of the Mahabharata, about Akbar and Ashoka, and sound bytes from the Buddhist sutta nipata. That's it? That's all that thousands of years and billions of people have to contribute to the idea of justice? Or is this a deliberate choice by the author to keep the focus on the John Rawls and Kenneth Arrows of this world? I can't really tell.

In sum, this is an important book for the core idea it contains. For those who don't wish to wade through the whole book, four chapters are still worth reading that present the essentials: the Introduction, Chapter 4 on 'Voice and Social Choice', Chapter 11 on 'Lives, Freedoms, and Capabilities', and Chapter 15 on 'Democracy as Public Reason'. There are some interesting books and literature cited in the bibliography that can lead one to a wider reading (e.g., Jonathan Glover, Barry Holden, Jon Elster). One wishes, however, that Sen will enlarge his view and shrink his text in his next offering.

So it goes.

[Saadia B. · Rating 3 out of 5]

Took me a while to complete this. A good attempt but was too complex to comprehend.

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[Amin]

متاسفانه با اینکه قلم آمارتیا سن پیچیدگی زیادی ندارد، ترجمه آقای وحید محمودی ترجمه ای تحت اللفظی و در برخی موارد اشتباه و گمراه کننده است. نقش آقای هرمز همایون پور فقید در این ترجمه مشخص نشده است. اما جای تعجب دارد که مترجم حتی در ترجمه ترکیبهای قاعده مندی مانند
if... that... then...
هم دچار اشتباه شده است و عجیب تر آنکه عبارتهایی که کمی سخت بوده اند اصلا ترجمه نشده اند. به علاوه آقای محمودی مقدمه ای هم از خودشان در ابتدای کتاب نوشته اند و به زعم خود تلاش کرده اند تا نظریه سن را در بستر سایر نظریه ها مانند نظریه راولز بررسی کنند، اما در عمل به خلاصه غیرضروری از حرفهای سن میرسیم که خواننده ترجیح میدهد اصل آنرا در طول کتاب بخواند تا اینکه با رویکردی سوگیرانه از ابتدا و از نقطه نظر مترجم وارد بحث شود

[Billie Pritchett · Rating 5 out of 5]

Amartya Sen's proposal for justice is pretty commonsensical. Reading it reminded me of that moment when someone says something so self-evident, you smack your forehead and wonder why you didn't think of it. The thesis is this: Instead of focusing on ideal notions of justice, which by definition can't be realized in the real world anyway, one should think of justice as a continuum, in which some societies are more or less just relative to certain issues. The scope of these issues concerns people's capabilities in a given society. He is a little sketchy on what capabilities he's talking about, but his friend and colleague Martha Nussbaum has outlined some of these, and they are living a complete life, bodily health, bodily integrity, and affiliation with other people, among others. Having these capabilities as the factors for a theory of justice, a person can then rank societies and work to improve conditions relative to these rather ordinary, this-worldly factors. The way to determine social policy based on these criteria, Sen thinks, is to have reasoned, impartial discussion about what ordinary human capabilities can be accommodated in a society, even taking into account the perspectives of people in other countries. Sen admits that this will not clear up all issues, however. He writes that "a complete theory of justice may well yield an incomplete ranking of attractive courses of decision"; "an agreed partial ranking will speak unambiguously in some cases and hold its silence in others" (398). Sen does not believe that this is a deterrent to this terrestrial way of thinking about justice. Instead, he thinks it's one of its appealing features.

[Mitch · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is a most impressive achievement. Though it is lovingly dedicated to the memory of John Rawls I believe it to be far better than the overrated Rawls' Theory Of Justice. I had long longed for a book on justice that starts from behavior on earth rather than airy abstractions in the air and Sen delivers my wishes. Might become a classic.

[Drick · Rating 2 out of 5]

This a deeply complex philosophical tome on the concept of justice. In order to fully grasp the significance of his arguments, one has to be conversant with dozens of other philosophers both past and present. Herein lies my greatest critique of the book. While I gleaned many good insights and ideas from this book, I found myself listening in (figuratively speaking) to many side conversations and debates with other writers and philosophers, which took away from the clarity of Sen's argument. Arguing for a social; choice perspective rather than a social contract perspective of justice, he focuses on what is possible and conceivable rather than engage in thought experiments (like Rawls' "original position") to come up with the idea of justice. This much I appreciated, but I think he could have gotten there in half the pages and a much clearer focus. Those better steeped in philosophy will find my critique shallow and will instead appreciate the breadth and depth of his arguments. I particularly liked his inclusion of Asian philosophical and political thinkers particularly from India. His perspective is far more global and therefore more relevant to justice discussions in our own day.

[Chris Nagel · Rating 2 out of 5]

In this fairly repetitive, fairly uninspiring, fairly superficial book, Sen tells us he is here developing a practical and comparative alternative to "transcendental" theories of justice. The reason for doing this, according to Sen, is that philosophical theories of justice are always too unidimensional and too interested in absolute justice to be of any use for what you might call the dirty work of justice: responding to injustice, finding reasons to prefer one imperfect state of justice over another, etc. It's surprising to me that anyone would think that philosophical theories of justice are useless intellectual exercises in finding perfect states, or that in any case theories of perfect justice would be useless for making rational decisions about which of multiple imperfect states would be preferable. I mean, Republic wasn't a blueprint, but it still gives us ways we can think about actual life.

[Randal Samstag · Rating 4 out of 5]

Amartya Sen’s 2009 book, The Idea of Justice, will, I think, come to be seen as summing up the intellectual legacy of this remarkable man. The book references hundreds of books, papers, and talks by this Nobel Prize-winning economist with a lifelong weakness for philosophy. Ideas from Sen’s long career starting with his early education at Tagore’s school in Bengal, Santiniketan, to his long years of teaching at Harvard make an appearance in this book. His subject is justice and the book is a comparison of competing theories of justice from Aristotle to Rawls. While the book is dedicated to the memory of John Rawls, with whom Sen taught for many years at Harvard, it is an argument for an alternative approach to Rawls’s justice as fairness, one which emphasizes comparative consideration of social choice and is inspired by Adam Smith’s “impartial spectator” as opposed to Rawls’s “veil of ignorance”.

The acknowledgements section of the book presents a lived history of impressive intellectual achievement throughout the last half of the twentieth century. Sen came from Presidency College in Calcutta in the fifties to study at Trinity College, Cambridge where, as a brilliant economics and philosophy student, he was elected to the Apostles, the elite intellectual club of Russell, Wittgenstein, and Moore. He there meets the greats of twentieth century economics and philosophy from both the left and the right sides of the political spectrum including Pierro Sraffa, Maurice Dobb, Dennis Robertson, and his doctoral thesis adviser, the “totally brilliant but vigorously intolerant Joan Robinson.” As his career travels from England to the United States, back to India, and back to England and the US again, his academic acquaintance reads like a Who’s Who of twentieth century philosophical and social thought. He mentions Isaiah Berlin, Richard Hare, Quentin Skinner, Herbert Hart, Simon Blackburn, and Ian Hacking among the British intellectual aristocracy to whom he felt he owed credit for their friendship and criticism. Among the famous American academics with whom he engaged were Kenneth Arrow, W.V. O. Quine, and Hilary Putnam, Robert Nozick, Thomas Scanlon, Michael Sandel, Ronald Dworkin, Martha Nussbaum and dozens of others beyond Rawls.

Transcendental Institutionalism versus Comparative Assessment

A central argument of the book is that the tradition which Sen calls transcendental institutionalism has led political philosophy into a blind alley, far removed from a large swash of human reality. He critiques this tradition from Thomas Hobbes through John Locke, Jean Jacques Rousseau, David Hume, and Immanuel Kant to John Rawls in our day. The emphasis in this tendency of political theory is on finding the perfect institution that would deliver justice. For Hobbes this is a strong state that overawes the savagery that Hobbes sees in humans as our natural bent. Locke (the confused man’s Hobbes) and Rousseau rest their case on a social contract to ensure security of life, liberty, and (in Locke’s case especially) property. Hume strikes me as not really serious about political philosophy but inclined to Tory-ism by psychological preference. It is Kant, tormented by the scepticism of Hume, that struggles to produce ultimate arguments for the one true ethics, the one true version of justice, in the form of his categorical imperatives.

This line of thought leads in the twentieth century to Rawls with his grounding of the theory of justice on a fantasized “original position” of equality which will deliver his “two principles of justice” 1) “Each person is to have an equal right to the most extensive basic liberty compatible with a similar liberty for others” and 2) “Social and economic inequalities are to be arranged so that they are both (a) reasonably expected to be to everyone’s advantage, and (b) attached to positions and offices open to all.” (A Theory of Justice, Chapter I, Section 11) This is Rawls’s “justice as fairness.” That this papers over or ignores existing power relations is believed by Rawls and Rawlsians to be justified by the assumption from which the argument starts of an original situation of equality. Would that such a paradise had been our common origin! Unfortunately, we live in a world in which power has not evolved from such impeccable roots!

Sen offers a gentlemanly critique of this tradition aimed at arriving at a more realistic theory of justice. His heroes in this pursuit are Hume’s good friend Adam Smith, the marquis de Condorcet (Jean Antoine-Nicolas Caritat), and Mary Wollstonecraft. He mentions Jeremy Bentham, Karl Marx, and John Stuart Mill in his hall of heroes, but he critiques Bentham severely, and scarcely mentions Marx and Mill except in lists of theorists with the first-mentioned thinkers. He credits Condorcet with invention of Social Choice Theory, the field of work for which Sen earned his Nobel Prize in 1998. In his comparative perspective he is “engaged in making comparisons in terms of the advancement of justice whether we fight oppression (like slavery, or the subjugation of women), or protest against systematic medical neglect (through absence of medical facilities in parts of Africa or Asia, or a lack of universal health coverage in most countries in the world, including the United States), or repudiate the permissibility of torture . . or reject the quiet tolerance of chronic hunger . . “

The Veil of Ignorance versus the Impartial Spectator

A key dichotomy for Sen is the contrast between Rawls’s “veil of ignorance” and Smith’s “impartial spectator” as a central technique for arriving at just results. Rawls’s famous thought experiment put the emphasis on a hypothetical original condition in which differences of wealth and power are assumed to be suspended and the participants in the process of choice are presumed to be free to develop just solutions: “Among the essential features of this situation is that no one knows his place in society, his class position or social status, nor does any one (sic) know his fortune in the distribution of natural assets and abilities, his intelligence, strength, and the like” (A Theory of Justice, Chapter 1, Section 3). In contrast, Smith’s approach in The Theory of Moral Sentiments was to rely on consideration of the views of an impartial spectator before arriving at a choice. Sen spends much of this book in a respectful critique of Rawls’s theory. Mine would be much shorter: Rawls’s theory ignores existing power relations. Since we will never be in a world without existing power relations, a theory that imagines what results would arise in a situation of hypothetical equality has very little cash value to us poor mortals.

Sen prefers Smith’s approach over Rawls’s since it allows for a more realistic consideration of our actions. The device of the impartial spectator is used by Smith throughout The Theory of Moral Sentiments. I count 60 incidences of this phrase in seemingly every possible kind of moral comparison. The first is in evaluation of the potential virtue of holding resentments against someone who had done another bodily harm: “But we admire the noble and generous resentment that governs its pursuit of the author of great injuries not by the rage that such injuries are apt to arouse in the breast of the sufferer, but by the indignation that they naturally call forth in the breast of an impartial spectator . . . “ (Part I, Section I, Chapter 5) The last is in Part VII, Section 4: “Those who write about the principles of jurisprudence attend only to what the person to whom the obligation is due ought to think he is entitled to get by force — what every impartial spectator would approve of him for getting in that way, or what a duly appointed judge or arbiter ought to require the other person to allow or do.” The device of the impartial spectator is Smith’s magic wand to resolve any issue of practical virtue. What Sen makes of this is to argue for public dialogue on issues of justice that come up for question. He says,

In Smithian analysis, the relevant judgements can come from outside the perspectives of the negotiating protagonists; indeed, they can come from, as Smith puts it, any ‘fair and impartial spectator’. In invoking the impartial spectator, it is not, of course, Smith’s intention to give over the decision-making to the final arbitration of some disinterested and uninvolved person, and in this sense the analogy with legal arbitration does not work here. But where the analogy does work is in making room to listen to voices not on the grounds of their coming from the group of deciders, or even from interested parties, but because of the importance of hearing the point of view of others, which may help us to achieve a fuller – and fairer – understanding.

Another good quote from Sen about Smith’s outlook comes from his chapter on “Lives, Freedoms, and Capabilities.” He writes,

Indeed, the entire approach of the ‘impartial spectator’, on which the view developed in this work draws, focuses on the relevance of the society – and people far and near – in the valuation exercise of individuals. . . . To note the role of ‘thinking, choosing, and doing’ by individuals is just the beginning of recognizing what actually does happen (we do, of course, as individuals, think about issues and choose and perform actions), but we cannot end there without an appreciation of the deep and pervasive influence of society on our ‘thinking, choosing, and doing’.

Anyone who has tried to have a conversation with a dyed-in-the-wool libertarian (any conversation with a libertarian will eventually bring you around to the “free” market and the quest for liberty) will recognize the attitude to which Sen is reacting here. I relay a thread of one such interaction in the post Investing in Gold. One could say that much of the theory of neo-liberal economics is based on the illusion of isolated individual choice against which Sen argues here.

This is admitted by the purest (and perhaps the smartest) neo-liberal economist of them all, Kenneth Arrow, another friend of Sen’s:

In addition to ignoring game aspects of the problem of social choice, we will also assume in the present study that individual values are taken as data and are not capable of being altered by the nature of the decision process itself. This, of course, is the standard view in economic theory (though the unreality of this assumption has been asserted by such writers as Veblen, Professor J. M. Clark, and Knight) and also in the liberal creed. If individual values can themselves be affected by the method of social choice, it becomes much more difficult to learn what is meant by one method’s being preferable to another. (Social Choice and Individual Values, 1951)

Precisely! And it is exactly this “difficulty” that has led theorists like Varoufakis to assertion of economics’ s Inherent Error: It is not difficult, but impossible to close this loop, and likewise is it impossible to theorize coherently about individuals isolated from their society. (See my post Economics for Sceptics – Modern Political Economics.)

Social Choice Theory

Sen won his Nobel Prize for his work following up on Arrow’s development of Social Choice Theory (See his Nobel Lecture here). In Sen’s biographical sketch on the Nobel Website he tells of his early worry back in India, where he first heard of it, that Rawls's "impossbility theorem" doomed welfare economics or democracy, or both. Much of the next few decades of Sen's career were to be spent in working ways around Arrow's paradoxes. I would refer the interested reader to Sen's Nobel lecture for more details, but I will quote here his attempt from that lecture to define Social Choice Theory:

Social choice theory is a very broad discipline, covering a variety of distinct questions, and it may be useful to mention a few of the problems as illustrations of its subject matter (on many of which I have been privileged to work). When would majority rule yield unambiguous and consistent decisions? How can we judge how well a society as a whole is doing in the light of the disparate interests of its different members? How do we measure aggregate poverty in view of the varying predicaments and miseries of the diverse people that make up the society? How can we accommodate rights and liberties of persons while giving adequate recognition to their preferences? How do we appraise social valuations of public goods such as the natural environment, or epidemiological security? Also, some investigations, while not directly a part of social choice theory, have been helped by the understanding generated by the study of group decisions (such as the causation and prevention of famines and hunger, or the forms and consequences of gender inequality, or the demands of individual freedom seen as a "social commitment"). The reach and relevance of social choice theory can be very extensive indeed.

Suffice it to say that Social Choice Theory is an extension of the Benthamite calculus and the marginal utility theorists that followed Marshall in their development of what became welfare economics, the attempt to justify and explain (often using an impressive mathematical / logical apparatus) how consumer choice and benefit can occur in both capitalist and socialist (I am thinking of Lange here) societies. The fact that Arrow's "impossibility theorem" said that this led to authoritarianism was a problem that Sen was very much interested to avoid. His work in analysis of famines, inequality, and discrimination against women would just not work in a Social Choice framework without a "broadening" of the theory. This he explains in The Idea of Justice can be done by:

1) Focus on the comparative, not just the transcendental
2) Recognition of the inescapable plurality of competing principles
3) Allowing and facilitating re-examination
4) Permissibility of partial resolutions
5) Diversity of interpretations and inputs
6) Emphasis on precise articulation and reasoning
7) Role of public reasoning in social choice

In other words, he attempts to abandon the vain effort to close the system of neo-liberal economics by permitting multiple outcomes and multiple reasons to bring about comparative good, rather than transcendental perfection. I doubt that neo-liberal economics's severest critics would judge that this effort has been successful, but the Nobel committee was apparently convinced. The current reviewer must have great sympathy for the lifetime of effort of this man which has produced real good in the world by justifying efforts to do so.

Mary Wollstonecraft

As I have mentioned above, Mary Wollstonecraft is one of Sen's heroes, and for good reason. He proudly repeats her rejoinder to Burke's famous complaint against the French Revolution. In her letter to Burke, she has the temerity to point out the shallowness of Burke's defense of the American colonies. By ignoring the institution of slavery in England's American colonies, he was condemning millions of souls to intolerable suffering. While proclaiming the right of the owners of slaves to political independence, he was silent on the rights of those slaves.

But on what principle Mr Burke could defend American independence, I cannot conceive; for the whole tenor of his plausible arguments settles slavery on an everlasting foundation. Allowing his servile reverence for antiquity, and prudent attention to self-interest, to have the force which he insists on, the slave trade ought never to be abolished; and, because our ignorant forefathers, not understanding the native dignity of man, sanctioned a traffic that outrages every suggestion of reason and religion, we are to submit to the inhuman custom, and term an atrocious insult to humanity the love of our country, and a proper submission to the laws by which our property is secured.–Security of property! Behold, in a few words, the definition of English liberty. And to this selfish principle every nobler one is sacrificed.–The Briton takes place of the man, and the image of God is lost in the citizen! (A Vindication of the Rights of Man 1790)

Am uppity woman indeed! And one who put the great liberal / conservative Burke firmly in his place. That Wollstonecraft would be a hero of Sen's is quite fitting, since he has been a champion of women's rights in the twentieth century and a frequent associate of Martha Nussbaum, a twentieth century defender of the rights of women.

Critique of Bentham

One of the great problems for Sen in trying to extend a theory which is based in Bentham's hedonistic calculus is that he realizes that Bentham's hedonism cannot be justified as the sole principle of justice. As Moore pointed out 100 years before, Plato destroyed hedonism as a theory of ethics in the Philebus. The fact that 150 years of economic "science" has been based on this failed theory is an embarrassment to this profession, but also a big problem for Sen. An example of his approach to dealing with the problems that hedonism presents is his argument for recognizing that the fact that the poor don't complain about their poverty is no reason to conclude that this it is justified.

The utilitarian calculus based on happiness or desire-fulfillment can be deeply unfair to those who are persistently deprived, since our mental make-up and desires tend to adjust to circumstances, particularly to make life bearable in adverse situations. It is through ‘coming to terms’ with one’s hopeless predicament that life is made somewhat bearable by traditional underdogs, such as oppressed minorities in intolerant communities, sweated workers in exploitative industrial arrangement s, precarious share-croppers living in a world of uncertainty, or subdued housewives in deeply sexist cultures. The hopelessly deprived people may lack the courage (or opportunity, my emphasis) to desire any radical change and typically tend to adjust their desires and expectations to what little they see as feasible. They train themselves to take pleasures in small mercies.

For many years Sen co-taught a class at Harvard whose curriculum included Jeremy Bentham's article "Anarchical Fantasies". This is Bentham's rousing critique of the French Revolution and its Declaration of Rights, in response to which Bentham proclaims, "Natural rights is simple nonsense: natural and imprescriptible rights, rhetorical nonsense, - nonsense upon stilts."


For the remainder to this review see my blog: http://notesfrommylibrary.wordpress.c....

[Alex · Rating 2 out of 5]

I had high expectations of this book when I first heard of it. Amartya Sen has some serious academic achievements, he's regarded as one of the worlds leading experts on famines, and the book had high ambitions. The Idea of Justice, not even Rothbard could've come up with a more powerful and impressive name for a book. Understandably, I expected a philosophical treatise on, well, the idea of justice. Boy, was I in for a ride. I really wanted to like this book, if not as something that I could agree with, then as something that would at least challenge my libertarian views. Within a few pages, I realized how wrong I was.

Let me first say something about the style of the book. Its trains of thought are the opposite of stringent. The author keeps referring the reader back to earlier chapters where he (supposedly) already tackled a question, all the time. It was also filled with redundancies. These two things don't go along well. When you refer me to an earlier chapter after I read something that sounded like that earlier chapter, I feel cheated. Reading 400 pages isn't fun when they all sound the fucking same. I've read books that developed out of stand-alone essays that had more of a red string running through them.

The worst thing about his style, though, is how extremely imprecise and relativistic his writing is. I'm used to libertarian philosophers. They tend to give you definite ideas that you can easily grasp, incorporate into your worldview, cricitize and modify. Sen gives you suggestions on how things might be and shares his thoughts on what he believes could be important, hidden behind a layer of pretentious academic phrases. There is nothing definite to grasp or to criticize, and that makes reading the book tiresome. I had no sense of reward, no moment were I felt like everything was coming together.

That brings me to his philosophy. You'd expect there to be a lot of that in a book with 400 pages, but no, it doesn't go beyond giving these vague suggestions and unpolished thoughts. At one point, Sen mentions three systems of ethics that have different ideas on how to allocate resources, namely marxism, libertarianism and utilitarianism. He notices that they are in conflict with each other, says that this conflict cannot be decided in favor of one ideology and calls it a day. I think he did that to illustrate how complex questions of justice are. Why, of course they are complex to the point of not being solvable when you outright refuse to remove the clutter and the bullshit surrounding them! The book goes on like that, making statements that it instantly relativizes, and telling the reader about aspects that have to be considered alongside other conflicting aspects. That's the equivalent of "be yourself" and "listen to your heart", except worse.

To summarize, on a philosophical level, the book fails. The only things I gained from it were the niti-nyaya-distinction and the word "transcendental institutionalism" and its counterpart, as well as some admittedly very interesting thoughts on environmentalism, but in a book as long as this one, a few decent ideas only make the difference between two stars and one star.

Now, Sen is also an economist. In fact, that's his primary occupation. So you'd expect him to share some of his economic ideas, right? Wrong. Check out the footnotes for that, sucker! Sen could've dealt with different government programs in this book and detailed which ones are more effective, but he never did that.

Another beef I have with this book is that despite supposedly dealing with justice, it really only deals with social justice. General welfare and equality are not justice, they are general welfare and equality. Granted, they are related to the question of how goods should be distributed, which is a question also related to justice, so dealing with both makes sense, and mixing them together is understandable. However, not only does The Idea of Justice not deal exclusively with justice, it doesn't really deal with it at all aside from the question of distributing scarce goods. No mention at all of the criminal system, for example. Why does a book about justice not deal with justice? I blame the modern Zeitgeist. Justice is not in. Justice rapes consequentialism, pragmatism and relativism hard if you allow it to, and then what are you left with? Nothing that supports tyranny and social engineering, that's for sure, and the planners that run academics and politics can't have that.

The Idea of Justice only gets two stars from me because of the few decent (sometimes genuinely good) passages inside it, and because one star is reserved to books that I find outright disgusting, depraved, vile and worthless. The Idea of Justice is far from meeting these terms, but I still can't recommend or even like it.

[Adnan Fakir · Rating 5 out of 5]

Sharing an older review of the book I had written for a newspaper when the book was launched. The ideas still recur to me from time to time, hence the post:

Within the past month I was lucky enough to be able to meet with Amartya Sen thrice; at a conference, at a discussion and signing of his new book "The Idea of Justice," and at a dinner where I was honored to be able to hold a long discussion with him. Here I will draw on my understanding of him and his subject to give a brief review of his new book, "The Idea of Justice."

One of the carried misconceptions that I would like to point out in the beginning is that Sen is not a quote-and-quote hard boiled economist. Rather he is more of a philosopher of economic thought. As such most of his work carries inherent philosophies which can shake off the first readers. "The Idea of Justice" is entirely a building of philosophical ideologies as he draws on economic reasoning, current policies, laws and politics. One of the introductory examples Sen provides involves taking three kids and a flute. Anne says the flute should be given to her because she is the only one who knows how to play it. Bob says the flute should be handed to him as he is so poor he has no toys to play with. Carla says the flute is hers because it is the fruit of her own labor. How do we decide between these three legitimate claims?

Sen argues that with the current system which follows policies and laws based on a search of a "just society" as put forth by English Enlightenment Philosopher Thomas Hobbes and followed on by John Locke, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Immanuel Kant and the contemporary most influential figure John Rawls (thereby often being referred to as the Rawlsian project; much of Sen's critique is towards Rawls' 1971 book, "A Theory of Justice"), there is no arrangement that can help us resolve this dispute in a universally accepted just manner. What really enables us to resolve the dispute between the three children is the value we attach to the pursuit of human fulfillment, removal of poverty, and the entitlement to enjoy the products of one's own labor.

Who gets the flute depends on your philosophy of justice. Bob, the poorest, will have the immediate support of the economic egalitarian. The libertarian would opt for Carla. The utilitarian hedonist will bicker a bit but will eventually settle for Anne because she will get the maximum pleasure, as she can actually play the instrument. While all three decisions are based on rational arguments and correct within their own perspective, they lead to totally different resolutions.

The current system, Sen argues, revolves around an imaginary "social contract" where we are trying to make ideally just institutions assuming that people will comply with it. Sen identifies two major problems with this "arrangement focused" or "transcendental institutionalism" approach. The first is a feasibility problem of coming to an agreement on the characteristics of a "just society;" the second a redundancy problem of trying to repeatedly identify a "just society."

What Sen proposes is a "realization-focused" approach that "concentrates on the actual behavior of people, rather than presuming compliance by all with ideal behavior." Instead of focusing on an ideally just society which is influencing much of the recent political economy, Sen's alternative focuses more on the removal of manifesting injustice on which we all rationally agree and the advancement of justice from the world as we see, instead of looking for perfection, which Sen points out, can never be attained.

What makes Sen's writing more appealing to me is how he correlates many previously almost sadly unnoticed eastern ideologies with the western approaches, including those of Kautliya, the Indian political economy and strategy writer now claimed to be the Indian Machiavelli (which is funny because Kautliya was from the 4th century BC being compared to Machiavelli from the 15th century) and from early Indian Jurisprudence, namely the niti and the nyaya, to mention a few. Although Amartya Sen touches on these eastern topics as inspirational matters, I would be more satisfied if he had gone into more detail of their analysis in his book, "The Idea of Justice."

[Jennifer · Rating 2 out of 5]

I think the central idea of this book raises an interesting challenge for the role ideal theory (and consequently a big swathe of political philosophy)could play in policy recommendations. Do we need a theory of justice when we can rely on our intuitions in particular cases? However, Sen doesn't really argue for his thesis in this book, he covers too much but argues too little. It could have been heavily edited into a third of its current size. Nonetheless, it is worth reading at least the first third of the book.

[Arun Pandiyan · Rating 5 out of 5]

I assess the quality of a book by its contents, the number of annotations I make on each page, the number of sentences I highlight in a chapter, and the number of elementary google searches I make whenever I come across new terms and concepts, which directly influence the number of hours I spend reading the book. Given that, The Idea of Justice by Amartya Sen kept me hooked for nearly three weeks, with annotations running across multiple pages, and I have also shared valuable information from the book on my Facebook, as I kept reading.

Sen’s intellectual dominance across the fields of philosophy, history, economics, polity, religion, and literature has made the book a masterclass in practical reasoning. Though this book is a critique and revision of John Rawl’s 'A Theory of Justice' in which the author defined Justice as “the first virtue of social institutions, as truth is of systems of thought”, in his book, Amartya Sen invoked the ideas of a positive theory which is a combination of Adam Smith’s Impartial Spectator, Social Choice Theory, and the Capabilities Approach to evaluate Justice.

Bringing in multiple references from mythology and history, Amartya Sen rightly points out the limitations in the prevailing liberal polity which revolves around the philosophy of utilitarianism and deontology. Sen’s prolific explanation on the need for an ‘impartial spectator’ delving into the moral philosophy of Adam Smith, who advocated a non-discriminative assessment of Justice by sidelining the parochial and traditional inclinations of an individual, by simply selecting a judge from a different culture is an important element of this book. Sen’s arguments on why enclosed and confined identities within a society can be detrimental to democratic ideals such as public discussion, participatory governance, freedom of speech, and inclusive development. If you have a general positive inclination towards any form of identity politics, I recommend you to read this book to understand its perils as well.

In his previous book ‘Development as Freedom’, Sen had passionately argued how improving individual freedom can bring about collective prosperity. In this book, a substantial number of chapters had been allocated by the author to sing encomium on the concept of democracy. Sen completely dismisses the narrative that the concept of democracy is a ‘western’ which is completely alien to the Indian civilization, by citing historical events and narrations related to Buddha, Akbar, and Ashoka. The entire chapter on democracy emphasizing representation, participatory governance, free media, rights of an individual, secularism, and freedom of speech should be included in the school curriculum, but most importantly it must be made available within the reach of the post-modernists/Marxists who hold a quixotic belief that the only the philosophy of communism but not democracy can build a ‘fair and just society.

Between Amartya Sen’s The Idea of Justice and Michael J. Sandel’s Justice: What’s The Right Thing To Do, I will easily rank the former as a quintessential work in the subject, because while the latter dealt with the moral and ethical philosophies of Kant, Bentham, Stuart Mill, and Thoma Paine, Sen stood taller in his analysis of Justice through the lens of practical reasoning.

[William Bies · Rating 3 out of 5]

The major element in Sen’s project is a concern for social realization versus disinterested procedural correctness. It is all well and good for philosophers in their ivory tower, taking their cue from Socrates, to debate what ideal justice may be. One could imagine the debate enriched now, in the era of globalization and accelerated international contacts, with the possibility of comparing different systems, perhaps in order to take them apart and reduce them to their elements, then to recombine everything, drawing on what, upon comparison, proves itself superior in each sphere, to construct a new synthetic ideal. However one may evaluate the prospects of such a venture, this would not be Sen’s cup of tea. For what really matters to him, as far as actual justice goes, is not somebody’s thoughts on what it may, after due examination, turn out to be in the abstract, but the social realization of a given political philosophy in concrete legal codes. This characteristic emphasis of Sen’s does reflect his Indian heritage. There, one has wielded the terminological distinction between niti, or institutional form (all that a Rawlsian transcendentalism aims at), and nyaya, or the social realization or manifest content produced within a society’s institutions, whatever their form. Form without content, one could well fear, lends itself to potential abuses that would go unexamined, while content without form would lack vision and offer little, if any, protection against error. Arguably, there ought to be a balance between the two, niti and nyaya, and Sen’s barely concealed impatience with an academic community that has conventionally assigned an almost exclusive priority to the side of niti could very well be justified

Aside from bounded rationality, Sen’s main innovation in his idea of justice, going back to his seminal Tanner lecture from 1979 at Stanford, is to introduce the concept of capabilities as a counter to the Rawlsian emphasis on primary goods. In good liberal fashion, Rawls presumes throughout in his theory of justice that the question of fairness of a societal order revolves around its distribution, not of any good per se, but of the primary goods (viz., rights, liberties, opportunities, income and wealth), those the possession of which enables one to secure a just allotment of all the necessaries of life as well as a due measure of the superfluities (such as honor and professional recognition). The reason behind Rawls’ focus on primary goods may be attributable to the classical liberal’s healthy respect for individual autonomy. Supposing a man to have been properly brought up and educated, once he attains his majority he may be trusted to fend for himself and for his interests, as long as he be endowed with adequate resources in the form of primary goods. To ask more would be tantamount to paternalism. Yet for Sen, ever concerned with outcome and not mere equality of opportunity, this is not enough. The individual’s happiness with his lot in life rests upon more than what he could have had, in principle; but what he did have, or what he was, in fact, able to achieve in reality, given his particular circumstances and characteristics. For instance, a disabled person will derive less utility from an equal measure of the primary goods than would someone who was not so disabled. One could multiply instances. Someone graced with native intelligence, or at least cleverness, can likewise derive more utility from a given supply of the primary goods than could the unintelligent man etc.

Sen prefers a capability approach to a resource approach because the latter is only necessary, but not sufficient to ensure substantive freedom.

In the section on capability and personal liberties, we can see how, in one respect, Sen offers merely a minor tweak on Rawls, viz., bring in the far-reaching role of capabilities to critique Rawls’ difference principle in addressing distributional justice, but retain Rawls’ commitment to the priority of personal liberty and procedural fairness: ‘As discussed in Chapter 2, in departing from John Rawls’ focus on primary goods in the Difference Principle in addressing distributional issues, and in bringing in the far-reaching role of capabilities in that exercise, there is no hidden intention of disputing Rawls’ reasoning on other issues. Those issues include the priority of liberty, which forms the subject matter of the first principle in Rawls’ theory of justice’ (p. 299). The priority in question will merely not be as extreme as Rawls’ lexicographic ordering entails. Hence, for all his sound and fury, Sen’s break from Rawls is not complete. If one consults the text of his Tanner lecture from 1979, one can see that Sen still thinks in terms of mathematical economics. Replace Rawls’ optimization algorithm with a different rank ordering and incorporate the full informational complexity residing in capabilities; in the end, Sen still contemplates a rational and quantifiable decision procedure, merely a far more complicated one than Rawls does. What is needed, though, in order to break out the iron cage of Rawlsian rationalism is not a suitably souped-up subtler kind of rationalism, but another way of conceiving of the nature of reasoning itself on moral matters that goes beyond the limitations of a simple-minded rationalism.

A number of immediate criticisms of Sen’s project in toto occur to this reviewer. Sen cannot answer these criticisms:

1) Why would our concept of justice be expected to converge when going to larger and larger communities? Wouldn’t the pluralism he praises rather suggest non-convergence and indefiniteness? The implicit assumption throughout is that one can only gain in perspective by going beyond the territorial boundaries of one ethnic group, and that every gain in perspective will translate into a more adequate view of justice. But, first, what if we encounter anti-democratic or totalitarian attitudes? Can we speak of a lessening of parochialism when incompatible systems are to be combined? Wouldn’t, in this case, our encounter with a focus group other than our own rather reinforce our confidence in the rightness of our own system? True enough, often incompatibilities will be only apparent or will point to a deeper layer of agreement, in light of which both sides can learn. For instance, one may well profit from a comparison of English common law with Continental law inherited from the Romans via Napoleon. Nevertheless, it would seem that some kind of overarching theory is needed in order to compare differing systems; one cannot honestly merely judge the one in terms of the other (although, even here, one could potentially run across a solution abroad that one would evaluate as superior strictly on one’s own terms).

This last point goes to the heart of Sen’s proclaimed preference for the comparative approach as against transcendental ones. Is this opposition really coherent at root? Isn’t some sort of metatheory needed to carry out a comparison of differing principles of justice? But, then, aren’t we thus relegated back to the domain of the transcendental, at one remove? Sen has a valid point, nevertheless. Back in the era of the Greek city-state, one could envision a transcendental ideal of justice for a polis that every citizen would second; the Greeks were aware of barbarian customs, after all, but since foreign residents enjoyed limited rights, they had no say as far as the organization of the polity was concerned. This situation of cultural homogeneity no longer applies in modern western multiethnic democracies. Hence, any transcendental ideal that will put itself forward in the future must reckon with severe intergroup differences within a polity and offer some means towards their theoretical resolution (although, being transcendental ex hypothesi, it will not be the same as what a philosopher along the lines of Sen’s predilections might put forward, as it will aim at a coherent, universal norm, though doubtless one of greater nuance and complexity than we have witnessed hitherto). The transcendentalists are now constrained to meet Sen’s challenge.

2) At least some global norms are implicitly assumed throughout: income equality or at least moderate inequality as a goal; equality of women as far as rights are concerned (so far as feasible); desirability of humanitarian interventions to limit losses from famine and natural disasters and so forth. Not only are commonalities across the globe in the evaluation of specific goods such as these presupposed, Sen’s project as a whole cannot fly without some notion of a unitary truth that applies everywhere. Sen fails to raise the question of what justifies his confidence in convergence to a presumably more adequate idea of justice when parochialism is overcome, much less to answer it satisfactorily.

3) Given conflicting theories of justice, some decision procedure will be needed to determine a just and workable public policy. What’s wrong with Rawls’ political liberalism, what else could there be? Wasn’t liberalism, in its origins, an attempt to found a workable polity in the presence of conflicting and irresolvable differences in the early modern period? As we saw in 2), Sen can, in fact, be blasé about the need for a decision procedure because he seems implicitly to presume that the worldview of modern progressive liberalism is the only one that rational interlocutors could be prepared to consider. If so, naturally there will be little difficulty to be expected about how conflicting principles of justice can be harmonized in practice. But what protection would Sen offer against the rule of the strong (militarily or culturally)?

Granted, one could argue that political liberalism of a Rawlsian type goes too far to an extreme of pure proceduralism, at least in theory. In practice, no workable political system can be purely proceduralist. Western democracies have succeeded to the extent they have owing to a constitutional order that preserves much wisdom from the past (encoded in common law, for instance), while providing arrangements for legislative or judicial reforms by which to address emerging problems (such as stark economic inequalities during the Progressive era). This observation is non-trivial. Sen does not anywhere discuss any hard issues where there is major public disagreement: abortion, death penalty, legalization of drugs, prostitution, racism, sexism, LBGT rights etc. Will Sen’s programmatic idea of justice as a happy outgrowth of a comparative process meet with shipwreck when confronted with genuine disputes over matters of principle such as these? The prognosis is not very encouraging. Radical libertarians aside, one can well compromise, say, on the extent of coercive redistribution of wealth in order to promote a desired greater degree of equality, or lesser degree of inequality, when the peace of a society depends on this, but how can there be compromise on the legality of abortion, the death penalty, gay marriage etc.? A certain amount of inconsistency in the law is unavoidable. Recent experience in western democracies shows, however, that conflicting parties are less and less willing to endure such inconsistency and strive to prevail absolutely over their opponents. This spells disaster for Sen’s idea of justice; it simply won’t work under current conditions.

At no point does Sen seek to review the data surrounding any two (or more) competing visions of justice and to isolate from them any commonalities, which would hint at a true, if hidden, principle of justice held in common by the two parties. Much less does he reason from any such common principle to any conclusions that could be agreed upon by the two contending parties. Yet, isn’t precisely such a procedure what a comparative approach, properly understood, would have to entail? If one were to takes one’s cue from Sen’s presentation, one would suppose that the comparative approach consists in identifying two competing alternatives and making them conceptually clear to all contending parties, which then in a kind of gestalt switch immediately settle their differences and agree upon which alternative happens to be closer to an incrementally improved idea of justice – no arduous analysis required!

Hence, Sen is at odds with himself. He wants to reject transcendentalism in favor of a comparative approach, which he feels to be more suited to a multicultural world, but plurality, if anything beyond mere contradiction is to emerge from it, must presuppose multiple ideals of justice, each presumably embodying its own element of truth, together with a certain commonality that would ensure that these multiple, perhaps superficially conflicting ideals could, in principle, be folded together into one universal good by abstracting the element of truth from each and recombining these elements in a harmonious manner. Sen does recognize this implicitly (not explicitly, to be sure), but he signally fails to supply the necessary tools by which to accomplish such a theoretical deconstruction and reconstruction. What is needed and what one would have been entitled to expect from a political philosopher of Sen’s caliber would be a multicultural organon to complement Aristotle’s. The existence of such a multicultural organon, which would have to comprise a set of metalogical principles by means of which to criticize competing visions of justice, is far from clear, by the way. But, surely, Sen adduces no argument in the basis of which to exclude it, when he rejects transcendentalism on largely empirical grounds (by pointing to what he supposes a rational observer would concede are persisting injustices in the world, which a Rawlsian approach would be powerless to address). And, for Sen’s whole project to be coherent at all, one must rather want to affirm the existence of this multicultural organon!

For reasons such as these, the comparative approach, as set forth by Sen, is uncritical. The posture of Socratic ignorance bases itself on the profound and humble insight that self-critique is always necessary, if one wishes to pursue the truth. Yet, Sen foresees no role for self-critique on the part of either party, nor do they critique each other. Rather, they seize – uncritically – on some shared standard they happen to have in common, on the basis of which one or the other competing principle of justice reveals itself to be superior and choiceworthy. Then a comparison of some other competing principles is instituted, which may be resolved by appeal to some other shared standard. One wanders blindly, trusting that each step constitutes a local improvement – though how could one know this, in the absence of any global standard of ideal justice? The motivation for trusting in such a procedure seems to be the non-sequitur of religious pluralism; one observes the diversity of conflicting religious doctrines across cultures in the world, and, rather than seek evaluative standards by which to determine which among them, if any, are true, one concludes facilely to a relativist position: all are equally true, or each is true in its own way – which is as much as to say, all are equally false.

Rawls’ analytic procedure in his Theory of Justice, with its totalizing ambition, amounts truly to an iron cage. Sen – sensibly enough – feels constricted by it and seeks in his Idea of Justice to break out of Rawls’ strictures by introducing a host of complicating considerations. True, Rawls’ monolithic approach runs roughshod over the complicating detail and perplexities that attend every genuine disagreement over justice. With such a coarse theoretical instrument, one could hardly expect to arrive at a fully adequate and universally acceptable concept of justice. Thus, Sen performs us a service. But, by rejecting transcendentalism root-and-branch in favor of nothing but local comparisons, he clips the wings of speculation, which must be animated by the enthusiastic hope of discovering a universal good and corresponding high idea of justice. Refuse, on principle, to proceed geometrically – as does Sen – as it were, and one could not but end up merely rattling the bars of the cage. In this restricted sense, Sen fails to go beyond discipleship of Rawls.

So – in our terms – all Sen really says, in the end, is that phronesis is more complicated nowadays than it used to be in the past, when political discourse could take place within the confines of a homogeneous Greek polis, Italian republic in Machiavelli’s time or nation-state such as England in the early modern period; therefore, the aporia of today’s multicultural world. But don’t we run here into the basic problem-statement of political liberalism? True, Rawls himself is too rationalistic, or not himself a virtue-ethics theorist like Alasdair MacIntyre. If Sen disagrees with Rawls, why doesn’t he produce an alternative? That is, we need principles and flexible rules for their application, or a return to traditional jurisprudence and casuistry. But all we find in Sen are general observations and scholastic distinctions concerning what the issues are, such as these relevant distinctions in the context of a discussion of the nature of freedom: opportunity versus process aspect of freedom; direct versus indirect control; getting what one would want due to having a preference versus out of sheer luck. In particular, Sen proposes no novel principles or casuistic derivations as applications from overarching principles. Yes, the issues he raises are apposite but he contributes little, if anything, to their resolution.

The undue emphasis on scholastic distinction-making leads to a distortion of reason in Sen – he refrains outright from reasoning deductively. Chapter 15 on democracy as public reason affords a case in point: it furnishes us with a good example of Sen’s non-theoretical approach, call it historical criticism; likewise again, the closing section in chapter 15 on the role of the press and the media. No theoretical principles here, just historical observations; important though it may be as a corrective to Rawlsian-type theorizing, as Rawls does ignore or treat only implicitly the institutional role of the free press in democracy. No doubt all this historical criticism would be relevant to a more adequate and universal notion of justice, but it is left unsynthesized. Sen fails at the properly philosophical task of integrating all his observations and criticisms, just as they may be when taken in isolation, into a rounded-out theoretical system. As such, he leaves his idea of justice as an incomplete sketch, a project for another more enterprising philosopher to take up.

[Indinewton · Rating 5 out of 5]

I must say very few people are able to understand the truth inside the truth of the book. Their are two layers of book. One that is sufficient to explain the summary of the book and second that explains insight of the author in the book and believe not everyone has that talent. All the critics never penetrated the second layer and those who penetrated say....this book is not for everyone. To practice whether you are among those readers or not simple practice an example where justice is against what would have been fair? so they have two kinds of court...one supporting what is fair and other what is just. Very few can know the subtle difference between the two. If you can then what are u waiting for, go and buy this book.

[Emmanouil · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ο Αμαρτύα Σεν με εύληπτη και εμπεριστατωμένο γραφή ασκεί κριτική στο έργο του Τζον Ρωλς και ταυτόχρονα παρουσιάζει την δική του θεωρία της δικαιοσύνης. Επηρεασμένος από τον Kenneth Arrow, ενστερνίζεται την θεωρητική παράδοση της κοινωνικής επιλογής και αντιτίθεται στην ιδέα του κοινωνικού συμβολαίου. Αποφεύγει την ιδανική θεωρία για την ανεύρεση της δίκαιης κοινωνίας και την διατύπωση των ιδανικών θεσμών δικαιοσύνης. Πιστεύει ότι η προσοχή μας πρέπει να εστιάζει σε αξιολογήσεις των κοινωνικών πραγματώσεων και σε συγκριτικά ζητήματα προαγωγής της δικαιοσύνης ενώ ιδιαίτερη βαρύτητα δίνει στο δημόσιο λόγο. Η υπεραναλυτική του γραφή ενώ σε βοηθάει να καταλάβεις τις έννοιες που πραγματεύεται οδηγεί κάποιες φορές σε επαναλήψεις.

[Abhishek · Rating 2 out of 5]

The rating is from a layman's point of view. Dr. Sen goes into rigorous discussion about every topic and most of the times a layman reader concludes wrongly that there are no rights or wrongs whereas the original method points to an iterative process of arriving at wrongs vs right. Going becomes tough as the chapters progress, still Dr. sen is able to bring back the readers to the start of thinking process with each new chapter. Again this book appears to be written for the people having some familiarity with the subject. I would suggest Justice by Professor Sandel, if one is looking for a easier introduction on the subject.

[Auri90 · Rating 2 out of 5]

Hat sich ganz gut gelesen, manchmal etwas ausschweifend....

[Jenn · Rating 1 out of 5]

zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

I gave up halfway through

[Kandachamy Vijayakumaran · Rating 4 out of 5]

An elaborate treatment of the idea of justice by a world famous scholar. A second reading would be needed to track and behold the diverse issues covered in the book.

[Steph De Mel · Rating 3 out of 5]

Amartya Sen is one of my intellectual heroes: a development economist turned philosopher and erstwhile Master of the Cambridge college at which I cultivated my own love of these subjects, he’s someone I’d be extremely excited to find myself seated next to at a dinner-party. I’ve been meaning to read “The Idea of Justice” for some time, and I’m glad finally to have got around to it.

It’s quite dense subject-matter, and makes for slow reading. While I find his arguments interesting and (with some caveats) compelling, however, this book is so repetitive that I found myself becoming increasingly impatient the further I got through it. I appreciate Sen’s attempt to make these complex ideas digestible for a lay audience, but this narrative voice feels nearly condescending in its insistence on (self-indulgent) recapitulation.

With a better editor, I think this might have been a four-star reading experience for me; as it is, however, I feel rather brow-beaten and slightly exasperated at having to wade through 300+ pages of tiny typeface when I got the majority of what I needed from this book in the introduction.

[Caleb · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sen is without a doubt one of the most humane and reasonable intellectuals of recent times. This book presents an extended critique of Rawlsian political theory, offering in its place, an account of justice drawing upon social choice and the capabilities approach. Sen argues that an ideal notion of a just society is both unnecessary and irrelevant to making comparative choices between practicable options. Whereas social choice theory provides insights into the possibility of making comparative evaluations without complete agreement concerning the ranking of options, the capabilities approach provides a foundation for thinking about what sort of choices have to be made. Sen complements these theories with an emphasis on public reason, deliberation, and the importance of social movements in bringing injustices to public awareness. Sen does offer a neatly packages notion of justice but provides tools that can enable ordinary persons to think about what it would mean to live in a society that was more just than ours is.

[WaldenOgre · Rating 3 out of 5]

阿马蒂亚·森在本书中阐述的核心观点其实非常简单：由于人类所追求的多元价值的“不可通约性”，一个完美的、所有人都能赞同的正义制度在现实中是不可能存在的。因此，一个真正有可行性的正义制度，可能只是一个基于比较的制度。这个基于比较的制度，它不可能实现对所有人类价值的精确排序，可能实现的充其量只是一个局部排序；它不是为了达成绝对的正义，而是为了消灭明显的非正义。无法确定绝对正义，不是我们放弃比较的理由，“我们能合理地走到哪一步，就走到哪一步”。

然而，为了证成这一观点，阿马蒂亚·森不得不花费绝大部分的篇幅，去反驳、修正、补充各类既存的正义理论（最主要的就是罗尔斯的理论）。虽然这一选择实属无可奈何也难以完全避免，但它确实使阿马蒂亚·森自己的理论阐述显得零碎、冗长且不流畅。最后，在这基础上，译者又令其雪上加霜。虽然译文大体能够理解，但诸如“未实现的本身不能使一项权利变为不是权利”这种句子的存在，证明了译者的中文语感实在是存在着很严重的缺陷。

[A. B. · Rating 5 out of 5]

Amartya Sen’s The Idea of Justice is a masterpiece of philosophical and social thought. I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book and learned a lot. The first serious political philosophy I have read, I feel that Sen will be formative for my political thought. A chapter-wise summary follows.

In the Introduction, Sen distinguishes between transcendental institutionalism (niti) and realisation-focused comparison (nyaya) approaches to political philosophy. The former seeks to develop an abstract Platonic idea of justice while the latter seeks to develop pragmatic tools to remedy injustice in order to slowly become more just as a society. The former focuses on institutions alone, the latter also focuses on human needs and social demands.There is also no unique standard but multiple conflicting standards for what choice is to be taken at a given moment.

In Chapter 1, Sen defends the role of reason and rationality as providing the necessary basis for objectivity which will help us judge what is the right thing to do. Reason should not be seen in contradistinction to the passions, but capable of granting priority and choosing the right path among available alternatives.

Chapter 2 analyses Rawls' Theory of Justice noting how the sophisticated theory could be extended through developing a capabilities approach and not solely focusing on distribution of primary goods; noting actual social behaviour and not solely just institutions, noting issues with the social contractarian approach, as well as note the importance of global perspectives for justice. Rawls' theory is based on a graded list of principles: a system of equal basic liberties, followed by equality of opportunity, followed by equity of general purpose resources.

Chapter 3 explores how institutions should promote justice, but not embody justice alone; the social states that actually emerge should also be core to analysing the notion of justice.

Chapter 4 explores how social choice theory is useful for making public policy decisions. Social choice theory forms the framework for a theory of justice by: focusing on the comparative, not the transcendental, recognising the plurality of competing principles, allowing reexamination, permitting partial resolutions, allowing a diversity of interpretations and inputs, emphasising precise articulation and reasoning, and encouraging public reasoning.

Chapter 5 argues that impartiality and objectivity is necessary for the evaluation of social justice. Impartiality is of two kinds' closed impartiality (which only invokes the menbers of a given people-group for whom decisions are being made) and closed impartiality (which invokes judgements from outside the focal group to avoid parochial bias).

Chapter 6 argues in favour of a Smithian model of the impartial spectator when it comes to the evaluation of social justice, instead of a Rawlsian model based on the social contract and the spectator being part of the in-group. The former allows for justice to flourish much more, as when we learn to see ourselves through the eyes of others.

Chapter 7 explores the notion of position. Sen distinguishes between subjectivity, positional objectivity (objectivity based on objective features of the position one occupies that is publicly accessible to others), and 'a view from nowhere' objectivity of the Smithian impartial spectator that seeks to incorporate perspectives from far away and other groups. He argues in favour of the Smithian approach of the impartial spectator.

Chapter 8 explores the distinction between rational choice, understood as the condition that agents have sufficient reasons to act the way they do; from rational choice theory (RCT), the dominant behavioural model in contemporary economics. This model equates rationality with the maximising of self-interest. Sen disagrees with this and notes the role of ethical behaviour in motivating various human actions. He criticises the smallness that has been thrust upon Smith as the paragon of self-interest; as Smith himself recognised the value of various other motivations people have -- including sympathy, generosity, and public interest. Being considerate of the desires of others is not incompatible with rationality, although it may be incompatible with RCT.

In Chapter 9, Sen notes the plurality of impartial reasons there may be for an action to occur. There are various different approaches to the pursuit of rational behaviour that are not parasitic on the logic of mutually beneficial cooperation alone. Mutual benefit based reasoning is based on symmetry and reciprocity. However, we are motivated by other reasons as well, including the responsibility and obligations that comes from having effective power.

In Chapter 10, the storyline of the Gītā is explored along with its ethical consequences. Krishna is a deontological purist of a peculiar kind, while Arjuna is more attuned to consequential evaluation. One should not stick to consequence-independent niti alone, but deal with socially realised nyaya. In evaluating actions, we should not take an impoverished account of solely looking at the outcome in terms of a state of affairs. Instead, we shoyld have a rich conception of all the agency information, including actions undertaken, agencies involved, processes used etc. along with the simple outcomes. This is what Sen calls 'culmination outcomes'. There can be good reasons to take note of both agent-relative and agent-independent concerns in appraising what happens in the world. Thus, nyaya over niti.

Chapter 11 begins the discussion of the capabilities approach. Instead of focusing on GDP and GNP as the ultimate end of development, we should see them as means and the quality of life as measured on indicators of human development as of prime importance. Instead of more utility-based and resource-based indicators of human development, we should focus on the capabilities approach whereby humans are given the freedom to live lives that they value. This freedom has two aspects: the opportunity aspect of choosing between various alternatives as opposed to one, and the process aspect of being able to follow one's own preferred method without coercion to attain one's goal. As against the view that capabilities should be considered based on communities and not individuals, Sen cautions against seeing human beings as part of a single community alone, and recognise the diversity of the identities we may identify with. Community capability reduces to individuals' capabilities to live and act with others.

Chapter 12 discusses how the capabilities approach is better than the resources approach and critiques Rawls' theory for its focus on distribution of primary goods. The capabilities approach is better able to account for handicaps like disabilities, focuses on ends rather than means, is sensitive to individual variations, and can guide the just delivery of public services.

Chapter 13 discusses the role of happiness, well-being, capabilities, and how these three interact. Happiness should not be the main indicator because internal judgements of happiness are misleading; given that people tend to adapt to their circumstances. Social conditions of health as opposed to individual perceptions of health have more value for public policy. Instead of a focus on utility alone, as has been dominant in welfare economics, we should expand our imagination and focus on the capabilities approach which recognises the value of freedom. There is a four-fold distinction we should keep in mind, (a) well-being achievement, (b) agency achievement, (c) well-being freedom, and (d) agency freedom. People may sometimes prioritise their agency freedom over their well-being freedom and that should be respected (except in fringe cases like mental disability).

Chapter 14 discusses the importance of equality for all approaches to justice. However, even in Sen's own approach, he does not defend an equality of capability alone, but chooses to uphold a multifold view of equality on various fronts. Also, despite his arguments against Rawls, he upholds the importance of liberty like him.

The idea of freedom is also multifold, focusing as it does on capability, lack of dependence, and lack of interference. The Pareto principle might sometimes conflict with the principle of liberty as in the Prude-Lewd example.

Chapter 15 introduces the discussion of democracy as public reasoning, not just elections. Sen traces the history of democracy across the world in a brief tour, and notes that it is not solely a Western idea and should not be considered as such. Cultural parameters of non-Western regions are not inimical to the practice of true democracy. The media and information plays a very important role in keeping governments accountable.

Chapter 16 is more empirical in tone than the other chapters. It seeks to argue for the importance of a nyaya and not just a niti approach to democracy. Famines, while constant in British India, never occurred in democratic India. The Indian pace of development puts out the lie that democracies do not grow as fast as autocracies. Kerala is a prime example of a state where strong traditions of public reasoning led to a liberal and democratic society. Despite 26/11, there was no Muslim pogrom in India, showing the importance of the immediate public debates that followed.

Chapter 17 explores the question of human rights and their importance. Contra thinkers like Bentham who see such rights as primarily legal, Sen sees them as ethical imperatives that seek to preserve certain freedoms. There is debate over whether a right is a right if it does not have a corresponding duty. Economic and social rights are another kettle of fish compared to the classical human rights. How can they be enshrined in law without the possibility of implementation, as in say, poor countries?

Chapter 18 notes that public wrath and rational protest need not be seen as opposed, but can complement each other. Justice must not just be done, but be seen to be done. There may be a plurality of reasons for a particular social action, but definite conclusions can still emerge. Partial orderings can be helpful here. There are reasons to take a comparative approach as well, for two reasons. First, avoid bias by recognising the interdependence of people's interests. Second, recognise the pertinence of other people's perspectives. Global democracy through global public reasoning can be pursued even without a global state.

[Silash Ruparell · Rating 4 out of 5]

This review also appears on my blog www.silashruparell.com

My one liner: Nobel Prize winning economist. A comprehensive survey of the great theorists' competing notions of justice, concluding that a system based on Social Realism (or taking society as it is) is preferable to constructing institutions of justice in a vacuum (“Transcendental Justice”).

Framing the debate on the nature of justice, Amartya Sen provides a practical illustration, which he calls Three Children and a Flute, in the Introduction of the book: Imagine which of three children Anne, Bob and Carla should get a flute about which they are quarrelling. Anne claims the flute on the grounds that she is the only one who knows how to play it. Bob, on the other claims the flute because he says that he is the only one of the three who is so poor that he has no toys of his own, so the flute would give him something to play with. Carla then intervenes and says that it was she who made the flute with her own painstaking labour, and just as she finishes her work “these expropriators came along to try to grab the flute away from me.”

It is clear that theorists of different persuasions would give the flute to different
candidate. The economic egalitarian would give it to Bob, on the basis that poverty and inequality should be reduced. The utilitarian hedonist “would face the hardest challenge”, but would be persuaded to give it to Anne, as her pleasure would be greatest from owning and playing it (though he would recognise that Bob’s incremental pleasure in owning it may outweigh this). The libertarian would of course have no hesitation in awarding it to Carla.

Amartya Sen’s credentials in leading us towards new theories of justice are of course impeccable, so this is a book that we have to pay attention to. “Transcendental Justice” is the term he gives to the theories, which seek
to prescribe an institutional framework to the ideal form of justice, a sort of
build-it-and-they-will-come approach. Sen uses the work of John Rawls as his "departure point". Sen was a student of Rawls, and whilst he acknowledge Rawls’ contribution to modern thinking on justice, he also considers it to be too rigid. Rawls’ concept of “Justice as Fairness” is centered on a requirement of “primordial equality”, namely that the “parties involved have no knowledge of their personal identities, or their respective vested interests, within the group as a whole. Their representatives have to choose under this ‘veil of ignorance’”. The primordial equality requirement then goes on through a chain of reasoning to determine the types of institutions that would be required to deliver it.

Sen is more drawn to the “Social Realisation” school of justice. This is more concerned with justice as resulting from “actual institutions, actual behaviour and other influences.” These concepts are to found in Smith, Condorcet, Bentham, Wollstonecraft, Marx, and Mill. In Sen’s words all of these thinkers, though having very different ideas about the demands of justice were “all involved in comparisons of societies that already existed or could feasibly
emerge”.

Sen is able to draw on Indian notions of justice, both from Sanskrit texts on jurisprudence and also from the Hindu epics of the Bhagavad Gita and the Mahabharata. So in Sanskrit literature, niti and nyaya both stand for justice. Niti signifies organisational propriety (and hence more akin to the transcendental institutionalism) and Nyaya which stands for a comprehensive
concept of realised justice. And he draws on examples of Eastern emperors who have come to symbolise one or the other. Contrast the practical, societally relevant forms of justice practised by both Ashoka (a Buddhist) and Akbar (a Muslim) on the one hand, with the much more prescriptive format expounded by Kautilya (a must-read by the way, if you want do a compare and contrast with Machiavelli), the latter having little faith in the ability of his subjects to make such decisions for themselves.

The arguments that Sen draws us towards are those of Adam Smith in his Theory of Moral Sentiments. Smith invokes the concept of an “impartial observer” who can adjudicate on fairness given the world as it is, and who can take into account factors and opinions which are not merely present within the immediate community but which are geographically distant, but nevertheless relevant. Sen believes that this is a more relevant way to approach justice in an interconnected world in which we grapple issues such as global terrorism and the financial crisis.

Overall, there is as you would expect real intellectual substance in this book. But it is highly readable, and more importantly highly relevant for how we think about what constitutes realistic justice.

[William Connolley · Rating 2 out of 5]

Hobbes, as we all know, taught us the meaning of Justice quite some time ago. And yet it is an unpopular definition, since it lacks wiggle room; there is nothing there for smooth-tongued lawyers or slippery politicians or unscrupulous economists.

Sen, to be fair, lays his approval of theft out for all to see early on with a parable: consider three children disputing the ownership of a wooden flute. Child A asserts that she is the only one who can play it, and thus should have it. Child B says that he is much poorer than the other two, and has no other toys, and thus should have it. Child C says that she has spent the past few months making the flute by herself. Hobbes, and I, and any other sane person, immeadiately sees the correct answer; but that is far too simple for the oh-so-sophisticated Sen, who wraps a cloud of squid-ink around a desire to steal the flute and gain the power and prestige that go with allocating it. Back in the real world, he is keen on "patent reform" to make drugs more available to the third world, which is apparently "clearly" part of "global justice", also an undefined term. But if you wish to improve the lives of the poor, and are granting yourself in imagination god-like powers to change the world, why not imagine giving these poor folk western-style govt instead of the hideously corrupt pols currently keeping them poor?

Sen would like to contrast what-he-calls a "transcendental" approach (he has been reading too much Kant) with a "comparative" approach. The T-folk seek ultimately just institutions by construction1; the C-folk are more interested in comparing outcomes under actual institutions. He claims Hobbes for the T-folk but this is an error on his part (I don't think he has actually read much Hobbes); Hobbes doesn't really design institutions; his work is at a deeper level than that, on the definition of the word. Sen wants his ideas of Justice to guide his social arrangements, in some way; again, he doesn't justify this he rather takes it as given; but I say that on a sub-stratum of Justice you can build many different social arrangements and it isn't at all clear why your Justice should guide these at all.

Sen is deeply in thrall to Rawls, who he regards as the leading political philosopher of our time, which is toss. But he does at least manage to notice what so many others fail to see, that there will not be agreement under the Veil of Ignorance.

Sen's main point remains his desire for a comparative theory of justice, as opposed to one that would allow the construction of institutions, so he spends lots of time pointing out that Rawls' theory isn't useful from his point of view. He is though rather shy of talking this through with examples. At one point (p 104 in my edition) he calls out famine, or exclusion from medical access, as things calling urgently for remedy, which said remedy would advance Justice. But he does this without any form of comparison, so it isn't really clear that he even needs his comparative theory. Indeed, it isn't really clear that he needs any theory of Justice, since he is able to identify Injustice without it, and to know that removing this Injustice would "advance Justice".

Implicitly, though, he has in mind a comparison of "the existing world" with one pet Injustice - say, Famine - with another (imaginary) case - the same world, but without the malign situation. Since the two differ (in his imagination) in no way other than one lacks , it is easy for him to say that the second is better. But of course, the second world doesn't actually exist, and nowhere does he knuckle down to the hard work of thinking how to compare the real world, with a better one where has been alleviated, but the various trade-offs necessary for that have taken place.

Notice that what he is calling for can also be interpreted as a call for piecemeal changes, rather than revolution. If we followed the imaginary Rawls program and devised new ideally just institutions, putting them in place would be a revolution. Sen is implicitly calling for fixing one thing at a time. This is exactly the idea of "piecemeal social engineering" that Popper puts forward in TOSAIE; can Sen really be that badly read that he doesn't know this?

It is easy to nod along at his idea that all we need to do is compare something unjust to something better and prefer the better; but I don't think it works. Imagine: you have wrangled control, or influence, somewhere, and get to promote Justice within some limited area. You perhaps look around, and identify , and you think what might be done to make a . But you can't do any of this without a theory of what is Just, or where you want to get to. It is like Popper's point that to do Science, you cannot simply . Without a theory, and idea, you have no wlay to decide what to observe. And a theory of (In)Justice that amounts to no more than "I know it when I see it" isn't transferrable from one mind to another. And when the goons from Sen's govt come to take away your flute, you can have no answer to "but we say it is Just".

He is keen on Adam Smith's "impartial spectator" as an arbiter of morals, and this is nice, because Smith's humane discussion in The Theory of Moral Sentiments is worth reading. But his problem is that he leans too hard on the Spectator, he hasn't really understood that the Spectator is a purely imaginary being. Yet Sen repeatedly speaks as though the Spectator can bring us information, in the way that a perspective from a real person outside us could. On a similar vein, he is keen to discuss what groups-of-people might form Rawls' Under-the-Veil groups. Unfortunately, there is no answer to this; it is (yet another) weakness in Rawls, which he sweeps under the carpet because there is no answer. Sen is worried that Rawls' (effectively national) groups might lack external perspective from - ker-ching! - perhaps people in poorer nations. But this is unthinking of him: people can still read under the Veil. Do we owe "concern" to people in other nations (p 129)? Sen would like to think so, but doesn't address the overwhelming additional complexity that forcing this "concern" would entail. Page 140 worries about exclusionary neglect and global justice, without ever noticing that most of the "excluded" folk's main problem is their own government, not anyone else's.

On page 61 there is a discussion of whether people can be expected to act in compliance with the agreement made Under-the-Veil. Rawls, who expects unanimity, thinks there would be (yay, and even unto the seventh generation, but what then?); Sen, who thinks there wouldn't be, regards this as a flaw; but the point is that we have the criminal law to deal with those who break the law. On page 75 we have a discussion of Goodness and Smartness which would benefit from reading Hazlitt. On page 82 he asserts that we have to seek institutions that promote justice rather than simply are just. But whether or not the state should force, nudge, or push folk to be moral is a subject of intense debate, not something to be simply asserted.

He has a couple of pages of "critique of the enlightenment" which says that their over-reliance on reason has lead to atrocities like Stalin and Pol Pot. This is stupid, obviously, so he then walks it back again.

There is a brief discussion of whether we owe duties, due to our power, to the less powerful. Sen clearly thinks we do, but is unable or unwilling to advance any clear arguments in favour of the idea (around p 206). There's also a discussion of "consequential-ism" vs "duty-ism", conducted bizarrely within an Arjuna-Vishna framework, p 210. At no point does Sen realise that one good reason for following rules-aka-duty is that the consequences of some actions cannot reasonably be forseen (if you decline to fight a battle for fear of killing people, will that save the people, or - perhaps by making the battle less decisive - kill even more people? Sen just doesn't think things through).

He is keen on capabilities; cripples are poorer than they look. This is something you need to worry about, if you insist on mixing justice and economics.

By p 374 we're on human rights: there's a right not to be assaulted, there's a right not to be tortured, and you definitely don't want to stop and think: hold on... isn't not being tortured already covered in not being assaulted? Why do we need a seperate, much more limited right? The answer of course is that, oh dear, "not being assaulted" turns out to be too broad; under certain circumstances The State is going to assault you (police controlling a riot, perhaps); and so we need a seperate right for oh no The State really really won't violate this one, except very rarely and in the darkness. But subtleties of that order are beyond Sen, vitiating his discussion.

He doesn't seem very good at economics: if someone wants to do something, in ordinary economic terms that is what they want, it is in their interest to do it, it represents utility to them; doing it is good to them and being prevented is bad. But Sen insists we must carefully examine whether it is really in their "interest" to do the thing - which is, in reality, impossible to do. This all seems a part of his paternalism.

Full review: https://mustelid.blogspot.com/2025/12...

[Tyler · Rating 5 out of 5]

I agree with Sen's argument that justice is best considered with respect to what actually happens in the world as opposed to some idealized conception of justice on a chalk board in an ivory tower.

I tried reading The Theory of Justice by John Rawls a while back but I couldn't really connect with it quite as much as I did with this book. Rawls' argument (or at least the gist of it from what I was able to absorb) seems to be that justice is fairness and in a perfect world each person would be equal at birth but also responsible for what happens to him/her in life if he/she were to end up "less equal" than others. On top of that is the idea that we can (or should?) allow a certain amount of inequality as long as those worse off in this unequal scenario are still better off than they would be if the those who end up better off are still making the lives of the worse off better. That is a horrible sentence but it's my best shot.

As an example, we might say that it's okay for Bill Gates to hang on to his billions of dollars because he has in many ways made the lives of many people around the world better off because of his philanthropy. Another example of this could be that we are okay with young college students dreaming of becoming doctors (and more wealthy than most as an added benefit) if it means the future patients of these doctors are better off than they would be if it weren't for the whiff of self interest of these aspiring doctors. We are not okay, on the other hand, with bank executives reaping huge windfalls when their economic inventions fail to increase the financial security of the worse off in our society. At least that's my general interpretation of the Rawlsian theory of justice. This is a useful analysis but The Idea of Justice has a much more nuanced and useful analysis of the topic of Justice.

Maybe the reason I was able to actually finish Sen's book was that it had a more real-world perspective. I think his point that justice can be found by looking at injustices is much more productive. It's so important to pay attention to how government officials and business figures act and if anything rubs you the wrong way speak out about it.

Ultimately, I really don't feel worthy of saying anything important or groundbreaking about this book, but I am glad I read it and I'm glad the world has Amartya Sen.

[Leonardo · Rating 4 out of 5]

Se trata de un libro no demasiado revelador, pero muy erudito. Lo que más me sorprendió es su nivel de abstracción, requiere mucho conocimiento del estado de la discusión, pero creo que incluso aunque lo tuviera las ideas que plantea no son fáciles de asimilar. Da la sensación de estar refiriéndose al planeta tierra, y a las sociedades humanos, incluso pensando en casos concretos, pero raramente los nombra. También me sorprendió al inicio del libro donde hace algunos agradecimientos y nombra a sus amigos, colegas, gente con la que dio clases o compartió discusiones. Se trata de una larga lista de mucha gente, donde muchos son muy conocidos y entre los que pude identificar varios premios nobel, o gente que hizo contribuciones fundamentales en la filosofía y la economía del siglo XX. Creo que explica mucho de como el resto del libro es como es.

Rescata mucho a Rawls, especialmente su Teoría de la Justicia, aunque también marca sus diferencias. El otro libro discutido en profundidad es la Teoría de los Sentimientos Morales. Aunque también se discute bastante Hobbes, Kant, Rousseau, Condorcet, Arrow, Dworkin, y seguro algún otro que se me escapa.

No tengo la capacidad de identificar el gran aporte del libro y resumirlo en unas pocas líneas. Entiendo que va por el camino de propiciar instituciones basadas en la discusión pública, sobre la base del observador imparcial smithiano, y el velo de la ignorancia rawlsiano. Si no interpreto mal, la idea es imponer incluso algunos otros límites a la libertad respecto del incremento que Rawls se hace a sí mismo en La justicia como equidad. Insiste en el enfoque de las capacidades como método de alcanzar la justicia. Cierra con una pregunta que me parece clave: "¿Qué es ser un ser humano?".

[Richard Thompson · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have read a lot in the area of the philosophy of justice. I took the Harvard MOOC on justice (it wasn't very good). I confess that I haven't read Rawls, but I have read so many people commenting on Rawls that I feel like I have read the original. I'll definitely get around to the original some day. But until reading Sen, I always felt that the other commentators on justice were missing something, though I wasn't sure what it was. Sen helped me to put my finger on it. The thing that the others were missing was the multidimensional nature of justice. It's hard to pin down because there are so many ways of looking at it. However, that does not mean that it defies analysis. It may defy complete analysis. It may not be possible to have a clean simple useful definition of perfect justice or the perfectly just society. It may be that perfect justice isn't even possible because the factors to be considered in reaching a just solution to some problems may be contradictory. And it is probably impossible to start from set of first principles to define just institutions that can be the basis for a just society. There are too many factors at play and too many arbitrary choices, so that inevitably, someone will get left behind. But still there are many clear cases of injustice that we can all agree on. We can agree on the idea that where clear injustice exists, those with the power to correct it have a duty to do so. And I like Sen's idea of public discussion as way for people to identify and agree on what is or isn't just and then to act on it. More than anything else, what I like about Sen is his heart. This is a deeply good man who cares about people. Sometimes he strays off into jargon and philosophical flim flam, but never for long, and he always returns to the problem of how to identify and address real problems of injustice for real people. In some ways his answer is that we just have to muddle through, acting under uncertainty, making mistakes and accepting imperfect solutions, but I'm good with that. If this is done by good people who truly care about others, we will get to a more just world.

[Britt Andie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thanks Dr. Schur for introducing me to this book!
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With a glance, social justice can be simply viewed as a basic concept of being
holistically just to all individuals within a society. Upon closer speculation, it becomes evident
that social justice is not as clear-cut like it may seem. There are numerous key issues within the
discussion of social justice, a few being the role of reasoning, the role of emotions, and the
effect of parochial interests. In relation to these key issues, many theorists of social justice such
as Amartya Sen and John Rawls have opposing perspectives on not only what social justice
encompasses but how to implement social justice tangibly and the principles needed to
ultimately create a perfectly just society. In retrospect, a theory of social justice entails
reasoning, diversified perspectives, freedom of choice in regards to opportunities, as well as
perpetual improvement upon society as a whole.

One important element for a theory of social justice is objectivity. To be as objective as
rationally possible when it comes to social justice, it is imperative that reason is utilized as it is
the most reliable way to achieve such goal. It continuously allows for consistent scrutiny of
various perceptions and beliefs. However, emotions should not be disregarded.
Historically, many European Enlightenment philosophers blatantly ignored the role of emotions.
This automatically prevents the analysis of how emotions can affect the conclusions of reasonings. In a theory for social justice, reasoning should be utilized and the power of emotions
recognized. The use of emotions are thoroughly reflected not only in the justice system but in
decision-making, as they help interpret what is right and wrong through simple feeling.

Another issue to note is parochialism. Because of human nature, the world is succumb to
self-interest. When formulating a theory of social justice, it is crucial to understand the role of
parochial interests. It impacts reasoning as well as overarching perceptions of the surrounding
world. These interests, based upon culture, values, and knowledge, inhibit the perception of
other perspectives and ideologies separate from one’s own. To combat a narrow perspective in
regards to social justice, solutions from Rawls and Adam Smith have been theorized. Rawls
contends for the “veil of ignorance” which insures impartiality by stripping all knowledge of
physical characteristics as well as social and historical circumstances. This would prevent
biases or prejudices to come to fruition. Sadly, this would still allow accustomed values to affect
reasonings for conclusions. Adam Smith, however, brings the concept of the ‘impartial
spectator’. Smith devised a plan to create distance from one’s interests and ideals by the
interaction and collaboration with another individual completely different in regards to vested
interests, locale, customs, and traditions. This concept allows for expanded knowledge
within reasoning as well as diversification of interests. The ‘impartial spectator’ ultimately leads
to a knowledgeable and broader perspective when processing a conclusion in regards to social
justice.

When examining theorists of social justice, there are two main approaches utilized as a
basis for the theories. John Rawls as well as many European Enlightenment philosophers like Thomas Hobbes reasoned that a theory of social justice needs to be based upon a solidified
model of a perfectly just institution. This approach, termed as ‘transcendental institutionalism’,
has two unique facets: the identification of perfect justice and the focus on perfecting the
institutions as opposed to the societies. The ‘transcendental’ approach establishes the perfect
ideal rather than relatively comparing justice and injustice within a given society, seen in
Amartya Sen’s ‘comparative’ approach. Within Sen’s approach, it focuses on uncovering
solutions that will either improve social justice or lessen injustice based upon actualities in
society. It allows for continual improvement rather than lengthy speculations on what a
perfectly just institution would resemble. The ‘comparative’ approach welcomes plurality and
partial resolutions, permitting the use of multiple perspectives.

Lastly, Sen and Rawls had opposing views in regards to the principles that set up what
constitutes as a social injustice. Rawls contends for two primary principles of justice: equal
rights and liberties as well as fairness in regards to educational and employment opportunities.
Another proposal by Rawls is the ‘difference’ principle (the second portion of one primary
principle), involving the idea that unequally distributed wealth can only be truly justified if the
poor benefited. He also identified ‘primary goods’. These can be defined as basic needs
that every rational person is presumed to want. This includes mental and bodily abilities such as
health and memory as well as “liberty, opportunity, income, and bases of social self-respect”. He proposes that these ‘primary goods’ be used as an aspect of the justice system in which
all must be met to achieve a perfectly just society.

Sen goes beyond the accessibility of opportunities straight to the equality of resources to
attain said opportunities with the ‘capability’ approach. Its focus is on what people are
effectively able to do, or their capabilities. Contrasting the focus on basic needs, this approach
compares one’s ability to achieve with the opportunities given. Instead of having the simple
availability to an opportunity, it allows for the evaluation of the resources needed to succeed and
reach the opportunity. These resources can be money, transportation, location, age, and gender. What is ultimately important is freedom of choice for each opportunity presented,
regardless of the individual. The ‘capability’ approach focuses on the freedom to choose, unlike
Rawls’ principles of justice.

When evaluating the key issues and various approaches to social justice, it is clear that
social justice is not concretely black-and-white. While Rawls ultimately gave a great basis for a
social justice theory, Sen’s theory overall paints a clearer picture of the actualization of social
justice and how to sensibly incorporate it universally. There are many key issues that must be
addressed and evaluated thoroughly to create a seemingly just theory of social justice.
Fundamentally, social justice is equality and the basic rights to liberty, primary necessities,
opportunities, and the capability to achieve said opportunities, including diversified insights and
perspectives on a global scale that incorporate plurality and partial resolutions for one purpose
only: the betterment of the world.