The Idea of Justice

The Idea of Justice

by Amartya Sen (Author)

Synopsis

Is justice an ideal, forever beyond our grasp, or something that may actually guide our practical decisions and enhance our lives?In this wide-ranging book, Amartya Sen presents an alternative approach to mainstream theories of justice which, despite their many specific achievements have taken us, he argues, in the wrong direction in general. At the heart of Sen's argument is his insistence on the role of public reason in establishing what can make societies less unjust. But it is in the nature of reasoning about justice, argues Sen, that it does not allow all questions to be settled even in theory; there are choices to be faced between alternative assessments of what is reasonable; several different and competing positions can each be well-defended.Far from rejecting such pluralities or trying to reduce them beyond the limits of reasoning, we should make use of them to construct a theory of justice that can absorb divergent points of view. Sen also shows how concern about the principles of justice in the modern world must avoid parochialism, and further, address questions of global injustice. The breadth of vision, intellectual acuity and striking humanity of one of the world's leading public intellectuals have never been more clearly shown than in this remarkable book.

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More Information

Format: Hardcover
Pages: 496
Edition: First Edition
Publisher: Allen Lane
Published: 30 Jul 2009

ISBN 10: 1846141478
ISBN 13: 9781846141478

Media Reviews
'One of the few world intellectuals on whom we may rely to make sense out of our existential confusion' Nadine Gordimer 'The world's poor and dispossessed could have no more articulate or insightful a champion' Kofi Annan
Author Bio
Amartya Sen is one of the world's leading public intellectuals. He is Professor of Economics and Professor of Philosophy at Harvard. He was Master of Trinity College, Cambridge, from 1998 to 2004, and won the Nobel Prize for Economics in 1998. His many celebrated books include Development as Freedom (1999), The Argumentative Indian (2005) and The Idea of Justice (2010). They have been translated into more than 30 languages.