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The Idea of Justice |  | Author: Professor Amartya Sen
Publisher: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press
Category: Book
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Rating:  9 reviews
Media: Hardcover
Edition: 1
Pages: 496
Number Of Items: 1
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Dimensions (in): 9.5 x 6.4 x 1.7
ISBN: 0674036131
Dewey Decimal Number: 320.011
EAN: 9780674036130
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Product Description
Social justice: an ideal, forever beyond our grasp; or one of many practical possibilities? More than a matter of intellectual discourse, the idea of justice plays a real role in how—and how well—people live. And in this book the distinguished scholar Amartya Sen offers a powerful critique of the theory of social justice that, in its grip on social and political thinking, has long left practical realities far behind. The transcendental theory of justice, the subject of Sen’s analysis, flourished in the Enlightenment and has proponents among some of the most distinguished philosophers of our day; it is concerned with identifying perfectly just social arrangements, defining the nature of the perfectly just society. The approach Sen favors, on the other hand, focuses on the comparative judgments of what is “more” or “less” just, and on the comparative merits of the different societies that actually emerge from certain institutions and social interactions. At the heart of Sen’s argument is a respect for reasoned differences in our understanding of what a “just society” really is. People of different persuasions—for example, utilitarians, economic egalitarians, labor right theorists, no-nonsense libertarians—might each reasonably see a clear and straightforward resolution to questions of justice; and yet, these clear and straightforward resolutions would be completely different. In light of this, Sen argues for a comparative perspective on justice that can guide us in the choice between alternatives that we inevitably face. (20090806)
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Showing reviews 1-5 of 9
 Improving justice by ranking alternatives August 28, 2009
laurens van den muyzenberg (Vallauris France)
32 out of 37 found this review helpful
Amartya Sen presents the remarkable conclusion that justice is a process that never becomes absolutely perfect. He presents very convincingly the view that you need to compare many alternatives "social choice" and discuss them widely with many people from different categories, also considering what other countries have done and rank these alternatives. In ranking you should not fall in the trap of mathematical optimization procedures. It requires common sense.
This does not mean you need ranking for gross injustices like racial discrimination. Sen rejects the Rawls idea of Justice as Fairness as it is one, may be the best one, of the absolute just systems. In fact all thinkers or politicians that claim to have developed an absolutely perfect system are wrong. Very important is to look not only at a system from a theoretical justice point of view but also equally important what is the reality of application at the level of all citizens.
He also makes a very interesting review of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of the United Nations. His view is that the "rights" are not rights in the sense that they are legal rights to be enforced. They are however very important as aspects to be considered in the ranking of alternatives.
Those that might have hoped to find a system of justice that is absolutely right will be disappointed, those are looking ways to improve justice will be very enthusiastic about this book
The Idea of Justice October 19, 2009
Adnan M. S. Fakir
6 out of 7 found this review helpful
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."
Why read this book? September 24, 2009
Ted the Slacker (London, UK)
8 out of 10 found this review helpful
"Identity and Violence" was close to the best book I have ever read, so I did not hesitate to pick up "The Idea of Justice" when it was published.
As a non-philosopher, there were occasions when I battled. I don't have a detailed grip of the various schools of thought on justice, and that meant my readings were going to be strained as I tried to follow Sen's various arguments and counterarguments. And there were times when he lost me.
But recalling this aspect of the book misses a bigger point when you get to read the arguments offered by one of the great thinkers of our time - you don't need to get everything, arguably you don't even need to get most of it, in order for the content to be enriching. That's how those of us who aren't experts in Sen's field need to approach this book. And on this aspect, I saw the structure of the book as quite helpful, in that each of the chapters concludes with a fairly accessible summing up of Sen's ideas. After wading though some dense argumentation, especially dense when you were absorbing the footnotes as well, it was invaluable to have something akin to an overview.
But this still doesn't answer the question of why someone who will find this a difficult read should give it a go. Here's why - Sen will prompt you to challenge your existing prejudices and dogmatism. We all hold particular beliefs about why certain things should be so, and Sen will prompt you to re-analyse them. In this case, it is on ideas of fairness and justice, for which we all hold conscious (and subconscious) preconceptions and biases.
This sounds terribly banal, but the reason to read Sen is that he teaches us to think. And the issue on which he is asking us to think here, could not be more fundamental and far-reaching.
Can we reason our way to justice? September 24, 2009
Jay C. Smith (Portland, OR USA)
14 out of 15 found this review helpful
The Idea of Justice
Amartya Sen is a very smart and distinguished man, a Nobel Prize winner in economics, an eminent political theorist, and an effective advocate of global human rights. I came to this book familiar with just some of his writing, only a small part of it, and I sought to refine my understanding of key contours of his thought. In spite of some shortcomings, I found The Idea of Justice satisfying in that regard. It is reflective of the scope and depth of his interests cultivated over the past 50 plus years. It is one book where the "Acknowledgements" section (a full eight pages) alone is instructive, suggesting how his thinking has been shaped through collaboration with dozens of other intellectual high achievers at the finest of the world's universities.
Here Sen inquires why we need a theory of justice and asks what such a theory might do. He criticizes certain notable theories and outlines his own. His chief target is contract theories, what he calls "arrangement-focused" conceptions of justice. According to Sen such theories are not an especially useful guide to practical reasoning, they do not help much to resolve the claims of competing values, and they focus exclusively on institutions and not on actual behavior.
He faults John Rawls' theory of justice as fairness for these and other reasons. He considers Rawls' ideal to be "transcendental," the specification of a perfect world based on a fiction. In contrast, Sen argues that we do not need an answer to the question of "what is a just society" in order to have a systematic theory of comparative justice.
He advocates a "realization-focused" approach to justice, one which stresses actual behavior and comparative choices among ways to live. He relies on certain core concepts drawn from his lifetime body of work, notably social choice theory and the human capabilities perspective on desired outcomes.
The capabilities perspective, as Sen frames it, differs from utilitarianism because it considers people's freedoms and obligations, not just the utilities they enjoy. People have agency interests and values, he says -- the ability to reason, appraise, choose, participate, and act -- not just needs for well-being.
While Sen describes these and other features of his desired theory of justice, he does not pull them together here into a rigorous comprehensive statement in the manner that we find in Rawls, for example. Instead, he seems to suggest that the details in any given circumstance might be worked out through reasoned discussion. Human rights are ethical claims that hold up to unobstructed public scrutiny, he contends. He recognizes that in many cases conflicts among competing values will remain after considering all of the arguments, but proposes that many cases will also lead to resolution.
I was left with the sense that Sen has spent too many years in seminar rooms too little exposed to the level of public policy debates portrayed in the popular media, that he himself has a transcendental expectation. It may be revealing of his unfounded confidence in open public debate that he offers universal health care as the example of where we can make progress even though there is disagreement on the means to achieve it.
So, while many elements of Sen's ideas about justice have appeal, do not expect a tidy and fully persuasive theory of his own to emerge. You will also need to tolerate repetition (introduction of an idea, later development of it, and then further references back to it) and either have some willingness to be side-tracked by substantive footnotes or possess the ability to remain oblivious to them.
seeds of further work to be done October 20, 2009
A. Menon (Hong Kong)
5 out of 5 found this review helpful
This is an accessible yet dense book. Sen essentially argues that it is extremely difficult and likely past the ability of people to start axiomatically about how a justice system should be formed and deduce the practical results. This stems from the fact that the elements that people define as the parameters of their freedom are multidimensional versus something reducible to say utility, or even a ranking system of priorities that Rawls prioritized on. The repurcussion of this lack of strict relationships between the various degrees of "freedom" that people live under he reasons (along the lines of mathematical economists) there dont exist strict "optimal" solutions. He makes the point clear by referring to self referential utility and the fact that in such systems and especially the real world, our freedoms are all interconnected and thus there are sometimes no way to go about ranking justice from a bottom up perspective.
I think its hard to not agree with that as a thesis. An obvious example of an incredibly difficult practical problem to solve via ranking individual freedoms would be something like the environment and global warming. Another current example is solving moral hazard problems, especially within finance- there are a MASS of perspectives of right and wrong depending on how one weighs aggregate policy repurcussions against the need to promote lesson learning. Sen argues that problems which involve large systems need to be looked at as a complex system and judged by the repurcussions of the social architecture and then the "wisdom of crowds" both local and global shed light on the greatest injustices which should then be dealt with. Sen takes a very practical approach to justice as the complexities of trying to actually define a system of justice in a philosophical axiomatic way is unlikely to yield the results that are hoped for due to the multitude of priorities and competing interests. He doubts the philosophical exercises that give weight to the conclusion that our measures of right and wrong are all on the same side of the scale that we define as right and wrong (ie right is right wrong is wrong under veil of ignorance) and articulates this with one of his opening example of the kids and what their rights/entitlements are. To be honest, i would doubt that justice philosophers dont readily acknowledge a lot of what Sen says, but defer to the fact that one cannot define justice in a philophical sense from the top down. That is what things like common law and political lawmaking have evolved from (one can debate whether this is effective but our institutions allow for bottom up modification based off top down repurcussions), our inherint understanding that as things evolve, so does the justice system. Things that shape judges and political opinions are often intellectual movements that originated via people doing thought experiments of how we might be biased and what are ways to remove that (veil of ignorance).
Im surprised at the dissillusionment in the theory of rawls. It has served an extremely valuable service, and i think those people who work on describing new social contract ideas have the potential to be very influential on institutional arragnement. Similarly so will social choice theorists as they will counterbalance some of the over deduction used from foundational exploration by philosophers. Its hard not to see how both are necessary places for people to be working. One reviewer critiques the lack of embracing behavioral economics and the leaning on more walrusian style actors. I personally dont get that at all, and see the whole thesis as evidence that people cant be reduced to agents operating under utility maximization. One cant start from a framework of behavioural finance because it has no assumption basis from which results follow, its primarily a results based field for which results are used to work out internal dynamics- which is what Sen is saying we need to adopt.
All in all, the book has a LOT of material and ideas, it gets you interested in more, but is really far from complete. I didnt get a sense of chapters following one another particularly, but perhaps there is no real way of doing that well either given the amount Sen was trying to cover. I plan on reading more on the subject. The mental prodding the book does is reason enough to buy it, but this book definately wont leave one feeling like, ah, this is the final chapter, not even close. This sort of book really should open up debate, in a constructive way, but is unable to make one feel like we have the tools to measure justice in a more fair way.
Showing reviews 1-5 of 9
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