Order The Idea of Justice

This is an accessible yet dense book. Sen essentially argues that it is extremely difficult and likely past the ability of people to start axiomatically about how a justice system should be formed and deduce the practical results. This stems from the fact that the elements that people define as the parameters of their freedom are multidimensional versus something reducible to say utility, or even a ranking system of priorities that Rawls prioritized on. The repurcussion of this lack of strict relationships between the various degrees of "freedom" that people live under he reasons (along the lines of mathematical economists) there dont exist strict "optimal" solutions. He makes the point clear by referring to self referential utility and the fact that in such systems and especially the real world, our freedoms are all interconnected and thus there are sometimes no way to go about ranking justice from a bottom up perspective.

I think its hard to not agree with that as a thesis. An obvious example of an incredibly difficult practical problem to solve via ranking individual freedoms would be something like the environment and global warming. Another current example is solving moral hazard problems, especially within finance- there are a MASS of perspectives of right and wrong depending on how one weighs aggregate policy repurcussions against the need to promote lesson learning. Sen argues that problems which involve large systems need to be looked at as a complex system and judged by the repurcussions of the social architecture and then the "wisdom of crowds" both local and global shed light on the greatest injustices which should then be dealt with. Sen takes a very practical approach to justice as the complexities of trying to actually define a system of justice in a philosophical axiomatic way is unlikely to yield the results that are hoped for due to the multitude of priorities and competing interests. He doubts the philosophical exercises that give weight to the conclusion that our measures of right and wrong are all on the same side of the scale that we define as right and wrong (ie right is right wrong is wrong under veil of ignorance) and articulates this with one of his opening example of the kids and what their rights/entitlements are. To be honest, i would doubt that justice philosophers dont readily acknowledge a lot of what Sen says, but defer to the fact that one cannot define justice in a philophical sense from the top down. That is what things like common law and political lawmaking have evolved from (one can debate whether this is effective but our institutions allow for bottom up modification based off top down repurcussions), our inherint understanding that as things evolve, so does the justice system. Things that shape judges and political opinions are often intellectual movements that originated via people doing thought experiments of how we might be biased and what are ways to remove that (veil of ignorance).

Im surprised at the dissillusionment in the theory of rawls. It has served an extremely valuable service, and i think those people who work on describing new social contract ideas have the potential to be very influential on institutional arragnement. Similarly so will social choice theorists as they will counterbalance some of the over deduction used from foundational exploration by philosophers. Its hard not to see how both are necessary places for people to be working. One reviewer critiques the lack of embracing behavioral economics and the leaning on more walrusian style actors. I personally dont get that at all, and see the whole thesis as evidence that people cant be reduced to agents operating under utility maximization. One cant start from a framework of behavioural finance because it has no assumption basis from which results follow, its primarily a results based field for which results are used to work out internal dynamics- which is what Sen is saying we need to adopt.

All in all, the book has a LOT of material and ideas, it gets you interested in more, but is really far from complete. I didnt get a sense of chapters following one another particularly, but perhaps there is no real way of doing that well either given the amount Sen was trying to cover. I plan on reading more on the subject. The mental prodding the book does is reason enough to buy it, but this book definately wont leave one feeling like, ah, this is the final chapter, not even close. This sort of book really should open up debate, in a constructive way, but is unable to make one feel like we have the tools to measure justice in a more fair way.Get more detail about The Idea of Justice.