An Idea of Justice: A Book Review

Introduction

I endorse what one reviewer says about the author: one of the most influential public thinkers of our time. And I want to add that Prof. Sen is a very modest intellectual figure, a fine human being. One may not always agree with what he says, but it's hard not to admire his honesty and his love for humankind. He's one person I deeply respect and admire! 

 Critique of Rawls
 

The book is a rather thick one – over 400 pages, without the bibliographies. But it's not a deep philosophical treatise that would render the mind of an amateur reader go round and round. But to understand well what he says, I think one needs to have a fair idea of Rawl's idea of justice. It is so because he critiques Rawl's approach to obtaining justice while advancing his view on how a more just society can be obtained. This is how Rawls' idea of justice go about. Let us take a hypothetical condition where members of a certain polity come together to deliberate what kind of principles they would want to govern their collective life. (This is social contract theory). The members don't have ideas about what their ultimate desire in life is or their social and economic status etc. The 'veil of ignorance' has covered their knowledge about their respective social and economic status. This 'veil of ignorance' is applied so that whatever set of principles is obtained by the members in the hypothetical polity, it will be just; no one would be in a position to tailor the principles to suit their individual's interest; all members are equal, and in such equal and ignorant condition, they choose two set of principles:

1. Each person is to have an equal right to the most extensive total system of equal basic liberties compatible with a similar system of liberty for all.
2. Social and economic inequalities are to be arranged so that they are both (a) to the greatest benefit of the least advantage, consistent with the just savings principle, and (b) attached to offices and positions open to all under conditions of fair equality of opportunity. (TJ, 32)

Rawls contention is that if this set of principles, obtained by way of unbiased deliberation of the members, guide political institution then justice would prevail. Sen challenges this approach saying that trying to identify the perfect set of principles is just not possible. People will have difference of opinion about what right principles or just institution are, and therefore Rawl's approach will not succeed, Sen argues. Sen further adds that people in the past did not agree with themselves about what just society looks like before they proceeded to remove injustice. I don't find this point that Sen raises quite convincing. Because one might say that one can work towards removing injustice, say, slavery while at the same time work to identify the perfectly just institution!

There are two more points that Sen raises as critiques of Rawl's approach, and I think the two points are closely related. In Rawlsian method the deliberation to identify the set of principles takes place within a particular political community, a nation-state. ( Rawls tries to refine this process in his later book Political Liberalism to include deliberation across different political units, but I think it is still problematic). Sen argues that when the quest for justice is confined to just one political unit, even if it's just hypothetical principles, then that kind of principle is not applicable across inter-national scenario; when issues of different nation-states intersect. For example, Sen would ask, how will Rawl's approach deal with the issue of international terrorism? A contract theorist might reply – a sovereign global state will deal with inter-national matters. But since there is no sovereign global state, the problem with what a Rawlsian suggests still persists. UN cannot do the job because it's sovereignty is not like the sovereignty of a nation-state!
 

Sen also raises another problem for Rawls. In Rawlsian method the deliberation of the members is assumed to be taking place within a political unit in an impartial and fair manner. Sen calls this as closed impartiality. How much ever impartial we try to be, Sen argues, we have our own parochialism. No peoples group or region or political unit is free from parochialism. So we need interaction with people outside of our own community to tell us our parochialism and our flaws. Sen calls this as open impartiality. Rawls' approach suffers from what is called closed impartiality; but what we really need is open impartiality. The latter is superior, argues Sen!

Capability Approach

In the capability approach, Sen argues, the three points that he raises against Rawl's method are overcome. But what exactly is capability approach? In Rawls' approach the quest for justice is about setting just institutional structure; whereas in Sen's approach the quest for justice is about enhancing the capability of a person – enhancing the freedom of a person to choose the kind of life a person has reason to value. Rawls talks about liberty, but Sen would argue that liberty is not quite the appropriate category wrt a discourse on justice if a person is unable to go to vote because she requires wheelchair to “walk” and she has no wheelchair nor paved road to “walk”. In this case her capability to “walk” is absent; and so seeking justice needs to consist of enhancing her capability. 
 

For Sen the quest is about capability, not functioning. Let me differentiate the two; and this is a very important point. Let us say there are two people who are fasting: A. Gandhi and G. Mogambo. Gandhi is a political activist and he is fasting in order to seek a change in Army Act; whereas Mogambo is fasting because there is famine in his region. In term of 'functioning' both of them are fasting. However, in term of 'capability' the two are different: Gandhi can give up his fasting and choose to eat whereas Mogambo does not have the choice to give up fasting; he is forced to fast because of famine. Let me also give another example. For a proponent of capability approach what is of concern is whether a person has the capability to vote or not, not really whether one is voting or not. Due to religious reason a person from a religious community like Amish Mennonites may not vote. An Amish Mennonite may choose to vote if she wishes to but in order to respect his freedom of religion, the choice is left open to her. If the concern of a proponent of capability approach is 'functioning', one would have to seek that she votes. However the concern is 'capability' and therefore the choice is left open to her.

 A Brief Remark!

 I think Sen is largely successful is filling the lacunae that social contract theorist leave behind. Sen's approach is simple and yet touches the lives of ordinary people. The book has some repetitive points but I take them to be something which the writer is trying to reinforce his thought. And one great thing about the book is that it is made available at a much cheaper rate compared to many other books published by reputed publishers. What the book does not address is the idea of the good. One might say that because of the fact that people of different philosophical and religious persuasion have different opinions about what the good life is, therefore it's best to take just the 'overlapping consensus', the strand of belief that is common to all the social and religious groups. But can a moral and political philosophy really avoid this subject matter of the good life? Didn't some people group take slavery or infanticide to be a good thing? When Sen argues that substantive freedom must extend even the slaves, won't some people in the 19^th century in North America argue back that he must not say anything like that.

The other day Irom Sharmila was produced before the Court saying her fasting amounts to an attempt to commit suicide. Sharmila says that she wants to live, not to die. But she also says that her fasting is against the AFSPA that gives immunity to the army even if the act of the army officer violates the dignity of a human person. As a thinker seeking to influence the public policy, would Sen argue that the Court was mistaken for being concerned with the “functioning” of Sharmila and therefore needs to change its legal position or rather say that it was right for the Court to be concerned with her “functioning”?

But being concerned just about capability, I think, leads a person onto some sort of libertarianism. Should the state ever say this act or way of life of an individual is wrong? If I am allowed to use my capability even to harm my own well-being, where does that lead us onto? So coming back earlier point – Can we really be silent on the idea of the good life in a discourse of moral and political philosophy?

These are some issues I think Sen and his well-wishers must grapple with. Capability approach is still evolving as its proponents admit, and we'll have to wait and see how it evolves further...