JUSTICE

What real freedom means

The Idea of Justice
Amartya Sen
Allen Lane, £25Tablet bookshop price £22.50 Tel 01420 592974
This is an optimistic and cheering book. We humans could have been incapable of sympathy, indifferent to the pain and degradation of others and unable to deliberate, reason and agree. As it happens, we are moved by the misery of others and able both to discuss common concerns and come to agreements about them. Amartya Sen, Nobel Laureate in economics, believes that the search for a theory of justice is an activity intimately linked to our nature as caring and argumentative beings. What is more, he takes comfort in the view that for all the differences between theories of justice (Sen does not limit himself to Western moral and political thought, but draws extensively on Indian moral philosophy), their commonality resides not only in the shared pursuit of the idea of justice, but also in not too dissimilar views of human nature. All value some kind of freedom and all endorse a form of egalitarianism, whether equality under the law or of rights or opportunities.But The Idea of Justice is anchored in a strong disagreement. The quarrel is with John Rawls, whose ground-breaking A Theory of Justice appeared in 1971 and sought to ground a centre-left liberalism in an understanding of justice as fairness. Regarded as one of the leading political philosophers of the twentieth century, Rawls’ writings gave rise to a veritable production line of works on justice and cognate subjects in the English-speaking world. As Marxism loosened its grip on the intellectual classes elsewhere, his influence spread yet further. The Idea of Justice offers a lucid engagement with Rawls’ evolving views on justice and would be worth reading for this alone. As Rawls is not the only friend or critic Sen engages with in this book, what is on offer is a vista into 50 years of debates within political philosophy. Part of the attraction of Rawls’ theory resided in his invitation to imagine a situation in which self-interested individuals, entirely ignorant as to who they might prove to be in a future society – for example what sex and race they might belong to and what natural abilities they might have – are asked to choose its rules. From behind this veil of ignorance, Rawls thought we would be driven to secure the protection of our personal and political liberty (the liberty principle), but crucially would want social and economic inequalities to be attached only to offices and positions open to all, and these inequalities tolerated only to the extent that they benefited the least advantaged (the difference principle).The imaginative exercise that made Rawls alluring is precisely what Sen wants us to resist. What we need, according to him, are ideas of justice for the here and now, not theories about ideal institutions chosen in a vacuum for reasonable people to live under. “Institutional fundamentalism”, as Sen calls it, “may not only ride roughshod over the complexity of societies, but quite often the self-satisfaction that goes with alleged institutional wisdom even prevents critical examination of the actual consequences of having the recommended institutions.” On this view the pursuit of justice is a relentless activity, one that constantly looks to “how things are going and whether they can be improved”. We need to look at real effects in the real world.For this, Sen urges us to consider social choice theory, as revived by Kenneth Arrow around 1950. The most appealing feature of social choice theory is that, in contrast to Rawls, its approach to the question of justice is comparative. We need to know what our choices are in relation to justice before making a judgement as to which system to adopt. He lists six other attractive features of social-choice theory: its recognition of the plurality of reasons behind social choices, its openness to reassessment and further scrutiny, its countenance of partial resolutions, its interest in diversity of perspectives and priorities, its emphasis on precise articulation and reasoning, and finally, its championing of public reasoning. These features require as well as promote widespread education and democratic participation.As the book progresses, Sen emerges as a universalist, confident in human natural capacities, including mutual understanding. Drawing inspiration from Adam Smith and Mary Wollstonecraft, he provides arguments for inclusiveness and impartiality, which are directed at overcoming all species of parochialism. We do, he reminds us, identify with others across national borders, through, say, a common religion and we certainly live in a world of global consequences. With mounting optimism, Sen wants us to reject the assumption that we are necessarily partial, and to realise that “no theory of justice today can ignore the whole world except our own country, and fail to take into account our pervasive neighbourhood in the world today”. Drawing on Indian political history and Nelson Mandela’s childhood recollections among other diverse examples, Sen also wants us to shed the common assumption that democratic practice, public reasoning and deliberation are uniquely Western phenomena.Stripped of facile but baneful beliefs, Sen encourages us to enter into a global public debate about justice that is concerned not only with actual outcomes, especially when narrowly conceived as wealth, but crucially also with capabilities: the substantive ability or opportunities a person has to do the different things he or she values. In other words, the quest for justice does not end with ascertaining, for example, that someone is legally free to leave his or her home, but needs to enquire whether he or she is physically able to do so, and thanks to what or whom. Sen’s objective is not to lead us into adopting a different conception of equality (of capabilities instead of, say, income) or to have us adopt an alternative understanding of freedom. Plurality is what he insists on, so that with respect to freedom, we need to think in terms of capability, lack of dependence as well as lack of interference. The unending global public reasoning that Sen calls for must be open to competing views of liberty as well as ways of measuring equality. The Idea of Justice is not a manual. It does not tell us what justice is, but prepares us to discuss it in ways Sen believes more likely to produce concrete results rather than theories grounded in narrower conceptions of equality and freedom. Its more arduous philosophical sections will grip specialists, but can be skipped by other readers. All will be taken by its imaginative examples. Although it will not engender agreement all the way, it is a humane and edifying work.