The Idea of Justice by Amartya Sen

This is the latest (2009) book written by Amartya Sen (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amartya_Sen), the 1998 Nobel laureate in Economics. Although written by a distinguished welfare economist, it is a book of political philosophy and ethics, much like John Rawls's 'A Theory of Justice.' Through this work, Sen explores the idea of 'justice' from multiple philosophical and political perspectives, and he introduces and criticizes many theories on justice along the way. The book encompasses numerous ethical concepts and theories, such as Transcendentalism and Contractarianism just to name a couple, which are a bit arcane. Nevertheless, Sen uses simple anecdotes and examples to assist readers' understanding and at the same time, provokes some seriously philosophical thoughts.

Sen's signature contribution is his concept of "capability." When we talk of "equality," we never bother to question, "equality of what?" To answer this, he distinguishes between "capability" and "opportunity." If a child who wants to stay inside the house today is restrained from leaving the house, his "opportunity" is unchanged in that he is still staying inside the house whether there is a restriction or not. However his "capability" has been limited because he can no longer exercise his right to stay in the house voluntarily. Therefore, Sen argues that with every right must come "capabilities" that allow citizens to execute their rights.

I was really surprised by how often the theme of justice was linked to epistemology. In fact, a couple of my high school Theory of Knowledge topics were discussed in this book! For example, in his discussion of rationality, he raises the question, "Is altruism rational?," which is very similar to my presentation topic for the course. To tackle this, he first talks about rationality: an act is deemed "rational" when it abides with the social norm. However, a social norm is not always "objective," for the (geographical) location, ethnicity or culture of a particular society affect what is called a "rational" behavior. According to the Rational Choice Theory, an ordinary person makes decisions that will maximize her benefits, in which case she will neglect to make a monetary donation to help her starving neighbor. However, if the person derived utility from an altruistic act, she would sacrifice a little portion of her income, a decision that does not comply with the social norm. In this case, is the person acting rationally?

Towards the end of the book, the focus shifts to democracy and human rights. One thing that struck me (because I couldn't believe that I had never thought about this) was perceptibility of human rights. Who declares that humans have certain rights? How do we know if we are born with them or society mandates them? To paraphrase the question: is human rights a child of law or parents of law? Sen asserts the latter because some legislation was caused by the legislators' belief in human rights. I think otherwise. According to Sen, some legislators believe in human rights; legislators make legislation; therefore human rights affect law. This would be saying that some people who believe in God go to church; God affects people and makes them go to Church; therefore God exists, which is clearly a flawed logic.

'The Idea of Justice' raises so many puzzling inquiries and I could go on forever pondering about them. The ideas of justice, fairness, right, rationality and reasoning are frequently spoken of, but I have been using them without a profound understanding of what they actually mean. In fact, I'm not sure if I'll ever learn to define these concepts accurately. It seems that our current policies and laws are built upon concepts that are fundamentally abstruse and open to multiple interpretations.