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The conventional approach to justice, argues Nobel laureate economist Sen (Harvard U.), is for academics to imagine a perfectly just society, then shake their head at the impossibility of creating it. Drawing on a different strand of Enlightenment thought, he advocates reducing injustice at every opportunity. There will be disagreement of course, but he says that the ensuing debates over what is and is not unjust can lead to a functional theory of justice, while on the ground, injustice is being eliminated. His overall themes are the demands of justice, forms of reasoning, the materials of justice, and public reasoning and democracy. The work is sure to increase his reputation as a leading intellectual of the time. Belknap Press is an imprint of Harvard University Press. Annotation ©2010 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)
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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.
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