The Idea of Justice

Amartya Sen

    In the courtliest of tones, Mr. Sen charges John Rawls, an American philosopher who died in 2002, with sending political thinkers up a tortuous blind alley. The Rawlsian project of trying to describe ideally just institutions is a distracting and ultimately fruitless way to think about social injustice, Mr. Sen complains. Such a spirited attack against possibly the most influential English-speaking political philosopher of the past 100 years will alone excite attention. The Idea of Justice serves also as a commanding summation of Mr. Sen's own work on economic reasoning and on the elements and measurement of human well-being...Mr. Sen writes with dry wit, a feel for history and a relaxed cosmopolitanism...The Idea of Justice is a feast...Nobody can reasonably complain any longer that they do not see how the parts of Mr. Sen's grand enterprise fit together...Mr. Sen ends, suitably, with democracy. It can take many institutional forms, he says. But none succeeds without open debate about values and principles. To that vital element in public reason, as he calls it, The Idea of Justice is a contribution of the highest rank.
       --The Economist

    [Sen's] magnum opus on a line of work he's long addressed and now thoroughly re-examines: justice theory...In repeatedly bringing back into the discussion Adam Smith's Theory of Moral Sentiments, Sen signals the need for justice theory to reconnect to realistic human psychology, not the phony formal rationalism that infects modern economics or the for-sake-of-argument altruism that anchors Rawls's project.
       --Carlin Romano, Chronicle of Higher Education

    An original contribution to political philosophy.
       --Adam Kirsch, City Journal

    Sen's whole book is a cornucopia of commonsense humane advice combined with analytical insight, and far wiser than those thinkers who try to derive all their recommendations from one usually questionable overriding value.
       --Samuel Brittan, Financial Times

    In this intricate, endlessly thought-provoking book, Sen brings the full force of his formidable mind and his moral sense to show how specific questions--of chronic malnourishment, ill-health, demographic gender imbalance--must be analysed in terms of justice. Doing something about them is not a discretionary matter--it is a requirement of being human. Sen is the most sophisticated intellectual campaigner of our times--his arguments have shaped not just academic disciplines but the policies of governments and of global institutions like the World Bank.
       --Sunil Khilnani, ft.com

    Polymathic brilliance among scholars is now generally agreed to be a thing of the past. The advance of knowledge means that providing intellectual leadership in economics, political theory and philosophy, as John Stuart Mill did, is not possible...But someone forgot to tell all this to Amartya Sen.
       --Richard Reeves, Sunday Times

    [A] majestic book... Reading The Idea of Justice is like attending a master class in practical reasoning. You can't help noticing you are engaging with a great, deeply pluralistic, mind...This is a monumental work.
       --Ziauddin Sardar, The Independent

    Sen has given us a magisterial treatment of a moral and philosophical problem which touches us from the cradle to the grave. The work bids to replace John Rawls and his predecessors back to Hobbes and Locke as the model and paragon of theoretical analysis on the idea of justice...A compelling read.
       --Bill McSweeney, Irish Times

    I depart feeling challenged, invigorated, and questioning after my encounter with one of the most remarkable thinkers alive today.
       --Sholto Byrnes, The Independent

    This is an essential book; it sums up and extends the contributions of one of the world's leading thinkers about justice.
       --David Gordon, Library Journal

    Sen is one of the great thinkers of our era, and his writings range from discursive and luminous interventions on great modern questions, such as identity and famine, to major complex works on political philosophy. At a moment when many are wondering whether there couldn't be a better world than that preceding the credit crunch, and better lives to be led, Sen is publishing...The Idea of Justice, an attempt to construct a new way of understanding what a more just world might be like...If a public intellectual is defined by his or her capacity to bridge the worlds of pure ideas and the most far-reaching policies, Sen has few rivals... Sen's revolutionary idea is that of capability, the capacity that people have for living and choosing how to live a good life. A good idea of justice concerns enhancing capability.
       --David Aaronovitch, The Times

    Characteristically clear and powerful...This book is a distillation of so much that has come to be associated with Sen, and reading these new formulations is truly humbling. The intellectual clarity, the ability to create conceptually innovative distinctions, the broad range of historical learning from sources across the world, the powerful use of examples, but perhaps most importantly, the deep humanity and faith in a certain form of non-utopian progress all vividly shine through.
       --Pratap Bhanu Mehta, Outlook

    The most important contribution to the subject since John Rawls' A Theory of Justice. Sen argues that what we urgently need in our troubled world is not a theory of an ideally just state, but a theory that can yield judgments as to comparative justice, judgments that tell us when and why we are moving closer to or farther away from realizing justice in the present globalized world.
       --Hilary Putnam, Harvard University

    In lucid and vigorous prose, The Idea of Justice gives us a political philosophy that is dedicated to the reduction of injustice on Earth rather than to the creation of ideally just castles in the air. Amartya Sen brings political philosophy face to face with human aspiration and human deprivation in the real world, to whose improvement he has devoted his intellectual life.
       --G. A. Cohen, University of Oxford

    A major critical analysis and synthesis. Sen's inclusive approach transcends the many important scholars and viewpoints that he analyzes. The Idea of Justice presents a set of considerations on justice of importance to both the academic community and to the world of policy formation.
       --Kenneth Arrow, Nobel Laureate in Economics, Stanford University

    Few contemporary thinkers have had as much direct impact on world affairs as Amartya Sen    --Philippe Van Parijs, Louvain University

  • Cover: The Idea of Justice
  • A photo of the author

University of Glasgow

Amartya Sen, winner of the 1998 Nobel Prize in Economics, is Lamont University Professor, Harvard University.