 Cover of the first edition | |
| Author | Amartya Sen |
|---|---|
| Country | India |
| Language | English |
| Subject | A Theory of Justice |
| Publisher | Allen Lane & Harvard University Press |
Publication date | 2009 |
| Media type | Print (Hardcover and Paperback) |
| Pages | 304 |
| ISBN | 978-1-84614-147-8 |
| OCLC | 368046398 |
The Idea of Justice is a 2009 book by the economist Amartya Sen. The work is a critique and revision of the philosopher John Rawls's A Theory of Justice (1971).
The book is principally a critique and revision of John Rawls's basic ideas in A Theory of Justice (1971). Sen drew extensively upon Rawls's work, mostly composed while the former was a professor in India. Sen was not a student of Rawls. Rather, Rawls—who was not an economist—drew upon the work of Harsanyi and Sen. Sen dedicated The Idea of Justice to the memory of Rawls. In summarizing the work, S.R. Osmani writes;
Do we need a theory of justice at all? if the answer is yes, How should we develop such a theory that could help practical people to move towards a more just world? These are main concerns of Amartya Sen in this book. [1]
In the book, Sen makes a radical break with the traditional notion of homo economicus , or 'rational economic man' as motivated mainly by self-interest. He points out that children have strong notions of fairness and acute aversion to manifest injustice. In his introduction to The Idea of Justice, Sen states that "the strong perception of manifest injustice applies to adult human beings as well (as children). What moves us, reasonably enough, is not the realization that the world falls short of being completely just – which few of us expect – but that there are clearly remediable injustices around us which we want to eliminate."
Thus, Sen asserts that Human Beings are as concerned with eliminating remediable injustice as they are with pursuing their own self-interest.
This assertion has a natural corollary. Since human beings have an innate desire to eliminate injustice where possible, institutions are not that important. Ideal institutions are not required to inculcate a sense of fairness or to persuade people to act fairly or to very strictly police them so as to prevent transgressive behaviour. Since ideal institutions aren't necessary and since people have an innate desire to eliminate remediable injustice, it follows that 'Public Reason'—i.e., open discussion and rational argument—can enable what Sen calls 'plural grounding', this being an 'overlapping consensus' (in Rawls's terminology) between people of different ideologies or belief or value systems such that people can agree upon comparative evaluations regarding justice without having to agree about all their values and beliefs.
One of Sen's main arguments is that the project of social justice should not be evaluated in binary terms, as either achieved or not. Rather, he claims that justice should be understood as existing to a matter of degree, and should correspondingly be evaluated along a continuum. Furthermore, he argues that we do not need a fully established abstract ideal of justice to evaluate the fairness of different institutions. He claims that we can meaningfully compare the level of justice in two institutions without positing an ideal, transcendental idea of justice. He names the opposite position transcendental institutionalism.
Sen defends one of Rawls's most fundamental theoretical concepts: justice as fairness. Although this is a vague notion fraught with difficulties in any particular case, he nevertheless views it as one of Rawls's strongest insights while rejecting the necessity of Rawls's two principles of justice emerging from the original position thought experiment in A Theory of Justice.
He credits Rawls for revitalizing the interest in the ideas of what justice means and the stress put on fairness, objectivity, equality of opportunity, removal of poverty, and freedom. However, Sen, as part of his general critique of the contractarian tradition, states that ideas about a perfectly just world do not help redress actual existing inequality. Sen faults Rawls for overemphasizing institutions as guarantors of justice and not considering the effects of human behaviour on the institutions' ability to maintain a just society. Sen believes Rawls understates the difficulty in getting everyone in society to adhere to the norms of a just society. He also claims that Rawls' position that there be only one possible outcome of the reflective equilibrium behind the veil of ignorance is misguided. In contrast to Rawls, Sen believes that multiple conflicting, yet just, principles may arise and that this undermines the multistep processes that Rawls laid out as leading to a perfectly just society. [2]
Sen also draws heavily on Adam Smith and his first major work The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759), arguing that it is Smith's most important and unduly overlooked work.
The Idea of Justice has been described by The Economist as a "commanding summation of Mr Sen’s own work on economic reasoning and on the elements and measurement of human well-being". [3]
Jurisprudence is the philosophy and theory of law. It is concerned primarily with what the law is and what it ought to be. That includes questions of how persons and social relations are understood in legal terms, and of the values in and of law. Work that is counted as jurisprudence is mostly philosophical, but it includes work that also belongs to other disciplines, such as sociology, history, politics and economics.
Justice, in its broadest sense, is the concept that individuals are to be treated in a manner that is equitable and fair.
Social justice is justice in relation to a fair balance in the distribution of wealth, opportunities, and privileges within a society where individuals' rights are recognized and protected. In Western and Asian cultures, the concept of social justice has often referred to the process of ensuring that individuals fulfill their societal roles and receive their due from society. In the current movements for social justice, the emphasis has been on the breaking of barriers for social mobility, the creation of safety nets, and economic justice. Social justice assigns rights and duties in the institutions of society, which enables people to receive the basic benefits and burdens of cooperation. The relevant institutions often include taxation, social insurance, public health, public school, public services, labor law and regulation of markets, to ensure distribution of wealth, and equal opportunity.
Amartya Kumar Sen is an Indian economist and philosopher, who has taught and worked in the United Kingdom and the United States since 1972. Sen has made contributions to welfare economics, social choice theory, economic and social justice, economic theories of famines, decision theory, development economics, public health, and measures of well-being of countries.
John Bordley Rawls was an American moral, legal and political philosopher in the modern liberal tradition. Rawls has been described as one of the most influential political philosophers of the 20th century.
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A Theory of Justice is a 1971 work of political philosophy and ethics by the philosopher John Rawls (1921–2002) in which the author attempts to provide a moral theory alternative to utilitarianism and that addresses the problem of distributive justice . The theory uses an updated form of Kantian philosophy and a variant form of conventional social contract theory. Rawls's theory of justice is fully a political theory of justice as opposed to other forms of justice discussed in other disciplines and contexts.
Equality of outcome, equality of condition, or equality of results is a political concept which is central to some political ideologies and is used in some political discourse, often in contrast to the term equality of opportunity. It describes a state in which all people have approximately the same material wealth and income, or in which the general economic conditions of everyone's lives are alike.
Transcendental idealism is a philosophical system founded by German philosopher Immanuel Kant in the 18th century. Kant's epistemological program is found throughout his Critique of Pure Reason (1781). By transcendental Kant means that his philosophical approach to knowledge transcends mere consideration of sensory evidence and requires an understanding of the mind's innate modes of processing that sensory evidence.
Robert Paul Wolff is an American political philosopher and professor emeritus at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.
Philosophy and economics studies topics such as public economics, behavioural economics, rationality, justice, history of economic thought, rational choice, the appraisal of economic outcomes, institutions and processes, the status of highly idealized economic models, the ontology of economic phenomena and the possibilities of acquiring knowledge of them.
The Law of Peoples is American philosopher John Rawls' work on international relations. First published in 1993 as a short article, in 1999 it was expanded and joined with another essay, "The Idea of Public Reason Revisited" to form a full-length book. Rawls's basic distinction in international politics is that his preferred emphasis on a society of peoples is separate from the more conventional discussion of international politics as based upon relationships between states. It is an attempt to show "how the content of a Law of Peoples might be developed out of a liberal idea of justice similar to, but more general than, the idea I call justice as fairness".
Global justice is an issue in political philosophy arising from the concern about unfairness. It is sometimes understood as a form of internationalism.
"Instrumental" and "value rationality" are terms scholars use to identify two ways individuals act in order to optimize their behavior. Instrumental rationality recognizes means that "work" efficiently to achieve ends. Value rationality recognizes ends that are "right," legitimate in themselves.
The capability approach is a normative approach to human welfare that concentrates on the actual capability of persons to achieve lives they value rather than solely having a right or freedom to do so. It was conceived in the 1980s as an alternative approach to welfare economics.
Justice as Fairness: A Restatement is a 2001 book of political philosophy by the philosopher John Rawls, published as a restatement of his 1971 classic A Theory of Justice (1971). The restatement was made largely in response to the significant number of critiques and essays written about Rawls's 1971 book on this subject. The released book was edited by Erin Kelly while Rawls was in declining health during his final years.
Social equality is a state of affairs in which all individuals within a specific society have equal rights, liberties, and status, possibly including civil rights, freedom of expression, autonomy, and equal access to certain public goods and social services.
In political philosophy, an ideal theory is a theory which specifies the optimal societal structure based on idealised assumptions and normative theory. It stems from the assumption that citizens are fully compliant to a state which enjoys favorable social conditions, which makes it unrealistic in character. Ideal theories do not offer solutions to real world problems, instead the aim of ideal theory is to provide a guide for improvements based on what society should normatively appear to be. Another interpretation of ideal theories is that they are end-state theories.
Creating Capabilities is a book, first published by economist Martha Nussbaum in 2011, which outlines a unique theory regarding the Capability approach or the Human development approach. Nussbaum draws on theories of other notable advocates of the Capability approach like Amartya Sen, but makes specific distinctions. One distinct idea she proposes is to choose a list of capabilities based on some aspects of John Rawls' concept of "central human capabilities." These ten capabilities encompass everything Nussbaum considers essential to living a life that one values. Martha Nussbaum and Amartya Sen are considered to be the main scholars of this approach, but have distinctions in their approach to capabilities. Sen disagrees with Nussbaum's list of values on the grounds that it does not fully encompass the range of capabilities one would consider to live a fulfilling life, which inherently differs by person.
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