The Idea of Justice

Aug 14, 2009 Editorial

During the 18th century in Europe, the labours of towering intellects such as Locke, Hobbes, Kant etc. that insisted on the use of reason as the tool that would liberate mankind conferred the label “the Age of Enlightenment” on the era.
By and large, to an ever increasing degree, mankind has stuck to the path of reason, but we are still struggling to realize the seminal bold Enlightenment promise of liberty in the full gamut our activities. One reason for our lapse could be that since that time our knowledge base has exploded so astoundingly that the polymaths as of yore that could have synthesised insights from diverse fields have been few and far between.
Amaryta Sen, however, is widely acknowledged as being one of the few in the modern age. As a young man who made seminal contributions to the field of economics (he won the Nobel in 1998), grounded in mathematics; the author of overbooks who teaches philosophy and economics at Cambridge and Harvard, he spends his weekends, in the wry comment of his publisher, collecting honorary doctorates from universities across the globe.
In his recently released latest book – The idea of Justice – in the finest tradition of the Enlightenment, Sen attempts to push the envelope in one of the most contested concepts that it bequeathed to us.
In a comment that should be of interest to the political classes of Guyana, Sen notes the connection between justice and democracy and cautions that democracy is not, in essence, a set of institutions and rules. “The working of democratic institutions, like that of all other institutions,” he writes, “depends on the activities of human agents.” The same could be said for justice.
From that seemingly simple observation, Sen’s illustrates the Enlightenment tradition of diversity by taking on one of its most entrenched methodologies of dealing with the concept justice – the contractual/institutionalist one – by extending another – the comparative one.
Sen’s colleague at Harvard for many years, John Rawls, (he died in 2002) was the latest exponent in a long and illustrious line stretching from Hobbes to Rousseau to Kant, that sought to find the right rules, institutions and social contracts for a just society. Sen feels that this hunt for “spotless justice” is self defeating for the simple reason that we inevitably spend most of our time arguing over the perfection of the rules rather than what is actually needed – the improvement of justice for the oppressed in the society in the here and now.
Even though he was too polite to bring it up, he could have asked how much was the actual delivery of justice furthered by the debate of Rawls’ unanimously acclaimed “Theory of Justice” published in 1971.
Sen suggests that what we should simply ask is, in the tradition of say, Mill, “what kind of lives people can actually lead?” – just reduce the present inequalities – without necessarily creating the perfect society.
As Sen observes, ‘a theory of justice must have something to say about the choices that are actually on offer, and not just keep us engrossed in an imagined and implausible world of unbeatable magnificence.’
The point, however, is not to simply insist that people be “free” to do what they want to do. Even Kant, from the other side of the debate had pointed out that “ought” implied “can”. Sen insists that the “capabilities” of people, their “power to do something”, have to be improved so that they have necessary resources to lead lives that they themselves consider to be good ones. The element of choice is paramount.
Sen is interested in outcomes. But unlike utilitarians, who are interested in little else, he is also interested in how those outcomes are brought about – especially the extent to which they are brought about through the free choices of individuals.
The advancement of justice, therefore relies, Sen concludes, on democracy, understood in Bagehot’s phrase as “government by discussion” – a process of collective reasoning that injects more information, more perspectives and more voices into debate.

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The Idea of Justice

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