Tlv Readings 3.docx

Summary of Amartya Sen’s Idea of Justice Summary of Amartya Sen’s Idea of Justice

The opening sentence of Amartya Sen’s lecture titled ‘The possibility of social choice’ which he delivered while receiving Nobel Prize in 1998 reads ’ ‘A camel’ it has been said, ‘is a horse designed by the Committee’’. Sen was at his sarcastic best noting that this is ‘too mild an indictment’ to bring out the terrible deficiencies of Committee decisions as ‘ ..Camel is useful and harmonious animal ‘( for substitute to the horse). But the point he was trying to make was, even in a small group such as a committee, while accommodating views of all its members, it may not be possible to reach to a decision that can be termed as ‘best’. The difficulties grow larger and complex when it comes to decisions of a sizable society, reflecting the choices of ‘of the people, by the people and for the people’, which is the subject matter of the discipline of social choice. In his book, ‘The Idea of Justice’, most of the ideas Sen articulated earlier in his books and speeches, including the one stated above, have been examined to the fuller extent. The central question that inspires the social choice theory is, how can it be possible to arrive at cogent aggregative judgments about the society (such as public welfare, public interest, aggregate poverty) given the diversity of preferences, concerns, and predicaments of different individuals within the society? In Idea of Justice, Sen makes an attempt to use basic tenets of the theory of social choice to suggest possibilities that could be adopted in identification and minimization of social injustice. For Sen it is more important to focus on the manifest instances of injustice and minimize them rather than to speculate on the ideal form of a just society that has no room for injustice. Book, therefore contains following broad arguments: 1.

To emphasize the important role played by objective reasoning in arriving at the appropriate social choices for enhancement of justice.

2.

Evaluate and bring out the inadequacy of prevailing theories of justice in reducing the social injustice, specifically of John Rawls’ ‘Theory of Justice’ (1971).

3.

Discuss Social Choice theory and capability approach as an alternative approach for enhancement of justice.

4.

Discuss different aspects of social justice, which Sen Calls as materials of Justice. The greatest contribution Sen makes to the area of social justice is by underscoring the importance of the objective reasoning. As Sen observes ‘avoidance of reasoned justification often comes not from indignant protestors but from placid guardians of order and justice. Reticence has appealed throughout the history to those who are unsure of the grounds for action or unwilling to scrutinize the basis of their policy.’ Quoting examples of Akbar’s rules, he argues how Akbar was engaged in far reaching scrutiny of social and political

values and legal and cultural practices. Akbar tells his friend Abu Fazl ‘ –persuit of reason and rejection of traditionalism are so brilliantly parent as to be above the need of argument.. Path of reason or ‘rahi aql’ must be the basic determinant of good and just behavior as well as of an acceptable framework of legal duties and entitlements. Delving upon the question of objective reasoning, Sen discusses the demands of impartiality in dealing with the questions of social justice and praises the contribution made by John Rawl for his analysis of moral and political objectivity and for firmly establishing the concept of ‘Justice as fairness’. However, as far as instruments of objective reasoning are concerned, Sen is most impressed with Adam Smith’s concept of Impartial Spectator. Adam Smith insisted that we must inter alia view our sentiments from a certain distance from us which is motivated by the object of scrutinizing not only the influence of vested interest but also the impact of entrenched traditions and customs. Interestingly, while dealing with the issue of Social Justice, which also fall under the tradition of ethics and morality more than the political economy, Sen extensively quotes Adam Smith’s ‘Theory of Moral Sentiments’ but refrains from quoting Friedrich Nietzsche, another philosopher whose work was also concerned with ethics and morality( Genealogy of Morals). The only reference he makes to Nietzsche is as under: W. B. Yeats wrote on the margin of his copy of Nietzsche’s The Genealogy of Morals, ‘But why does Nietzsche think the night has no stars, nothing but bats and owls and the insane moon?’Nietzsche’s skepticism about humanity and his chilling vision of the future were presented just before the beginning of the twentieth century (he died in 1900). The events of the century that followed, including world wars, holocausts, genocides and other atrocities, give us reason enough to worry whether Nietzsche’s skepticism about humankind might not have been just right.* Indeed, in investigating Nietzsche’s concerns at the end of the twentieth century, Jonathan Glover concludes that we ‘need to look hard and clearly at some monsters inside us’, and consider ways and means of ‘caging and taming them’ After having established the importance of objective reasoning in the idea of justice, Sen turns guns towards John Rawls’s theory of Justice but not before acknowledging its historical value. Sen writes how he felt ‘over the top’ when he first read the final text of A Theory of Justice written by John Rawls in 1971 and describes the feeling by citing Wordsworth’s poem: ‘Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive / but to be young was very heaven.’ It is essential for adequate understanding of justice is John Rawls’s foundational idea that justice has to be seen in terms of demands of fairness. Fairness is to avoid bias in our evaluations, taking note of interests and concerns of others as well and in particular need to avoid being influenced by our respective vested interests or by personal priorities or by eccentriality. This essentially means demands for impartiality. To achieve this impartiality, Rawls proposes an imaginary position called ‘original position’, which is a imagined situation of primordial equality, in which parties involved have no knowledge of their personal identities or vested interests. Under this ‘veil of ignorance’ group of people have to select their representative who in that state of ignorance chose the principles of justice unanimously. So chosen principles of justice become then the foundation for social institutions for the basic structure of the society. Rawls argues that under the original position following principles would emerge unanimously:

a.

Each person has an equal right to fully adequate scheme of equal basic liberties which is compatible with a similar scheme of liberties for all.

b.

Social and economic inequalities are to satisfy two conditions. First, they must be attached to offices and positions open to all under conditions of fair equality of opportunity and second, they must be to the greatest benefits of the least advantaged members of society. Sen discusses many positives of Rawls’s theory of justice such as establishing the foundational priority to the idea of fairness in the idea of justice, importance of objectivity in practical reasoning, pointing out and underscoring the importance of moral power people have which bestows them with capacity for sense of justice and for conception of the good, and finally, establishing pre-eminence of liberty above all welfare in person’s life. However, Sen severely attacks Rawls’s theory of justice by bringing out its inadequacies to deliver the actual justice. At the same time, he also proposes the usefulness of Social Choice Theory for propagation and enhancement of social justice. The subject matter of social choice was pioneered by French mathematicians, Jean – Charles de Borda and the Marquis de Condercet while addressing the problem of arriving at aggregate assessment based on individual priorities. Their work focused on the development of a framework for rational and democratic decisions for a group paying attention to preferences and interests of all its members. However, as Sen points out, their theoretical investigations yielded rather pessimistic results, resulting in loss of interests by the intellectuals in the subject. It was again revived in modern form by Kenneth Arrow who provided social choice theory a structured and analytical form demanding that social decisions satisfy certain minimal conditions of reasonableness from which appropriate social ranking and choices of social states would emerge. However, his research too yielded pessimistic results and were called as Arrow’s impossibility theorem, which showed that even a very mild conditions of reasonable sensitivity of social decisions wanted by all members of society cannot be simultaneously satisfied through rational and democratic procedures. Having stated this, however, Sen beautifully described how these impossibilities and impasses arising out of Arrow’s work could be resolved through widening of information net. Rest of the book focuses on the inadequacy of John Rawls theory of justice and usefulness of Social Choice theory as an alternative approach for enhancing the social justice. Sen calls Rawls’ theory as a transcendental approach while the approach under social choice theory as comparative approach. Sen argues that transcendental approach of John Rawls is neither sufficient nor necessary to arrive at social decisions that would be necessary to address the problems of social justice. He writes, the question ‘What is just society?’( as is being done by Rawls’ theory) is not a good starting point for the useful theory of justice. A systematic theory of comparative justice does not need, nor does necessarily yield an answer to this question. What is important in the idea of justice is emergence of various social alternative ( not just one) which can be ranked based on priorities and from among those alternatives, based on the public reasoning, some alternative could be selected. Sen thus gives importance to the plurality of approaches, role of public reasoning and availability of democratic institutions.

Sen also argues that thus ranked and selected approaches also must be re-examined if need be for their effectiveness and actual delivery of justice. While making point that there may not be consensus on a single approach towards justice that can be called ‘best’, Sen provides a classical illustration. Suppose three children—Anne, Bob, and Carla—quarrel over a flute. Anne says it's hers because she's the only one who knows how to play it. Bob counters that he's the poorest and has no toys, so the flute would at least give him something to play with. Carla reminds Anne and Bob that she built the darn thing, and no sooner did she finish it than the other two started trying to take it away. All these arguments, Anne’s from utilitarian perspective, Bob’s from egalitarian perspective and Carla from libertarian point of view are correct. From among those, no single decision could be termed as best or worst. As regards, focus and measure of actual delivery of justice, Sen argues in favour of using capability approach. Capability Approach, Sen argues, is a general approach focusing on information of individual advantage judged in terms of opportunities rather than specific design on how society should function. It points to the central relevance of inequalities of capabilities in assessing social disparities but on its own does not propose any formula for policy decisions. The famous outcome of capability approach is development of Human Development Index as a measure of human welfare, in place of earlier static indicators such as per capita income, GDP etc. Sen also writes passionately about global justice, democracy and public reasoning, human rights, as extended concepts of social justice. In all, it is a great intellectual contribution to the theory and practice of modern political philosophy. ----Sharad Jambhrunkar (Copy Right)