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The Idea of Justice
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Disappointing
Having greatly enjoyed Mr Sen's lectures at university 25 years ago, I was disappointed by this. Maybe it's because I now consider myself a 'lay' reader out of practice with the extreme theoretical tone of many philosphical papers.
It would assist his view, with which I concur, that just outcomes are more likley after wide public scrutiny of ideas, if the book was more publicly accessible. He spends too long countering a wide variety of other philosophers' ideas, rather than in seeking to illustrate how the application of his own theories would lead to different actual practical recommendations.
He is rightly critical of approaches that rely on a perfect 'transcendental' idea of just institutions and says we need to focus on actual outcomes. To me the book is at its best when he uses real examples of dilemnas. How much more powerful would it be to set out examples of many more real ethical dilemnas and suggest how the recommendations he believes would emerge from his approaches would differ from competing theories of justice.
Overall, it comes across as a long theoretical discussion of topics related to justice rather than a coherent theory in its own right.
Now 
Now that I've read this book, I think I can start to ask some more detailed questions, and direct them into the locations I want. I now have some foundation upon which to base some of my ideas and arguments, 'words are organons' and I now have a few more organons at my disposal. I don't expect it to come into immediate effect but I believe it has changed my outlook on life and may come into effect in the future.
In this book you are likely to hear about the changing effects of Justice and it's manifestations throughout the years, from 1776 to 2009, from Mary Wallstonecraft, to John Rawls to the Jains, to Iran. I sit with this boko in front of me, and whereas I'm not criticizing it, I think towards the end it began to thin out. I mean at first it was like bobbing and weaving and stuff, it was really punching brothers in the face. BONG you know what I'm saying then, towards the end I was waiting for some of those initial knock out punches, which kinda failed to come. A.S is a master on the subject so I don't know what is good justic and what is not good justice, but mostly, after having ready The Algebra of Infinte Justice in India I think I'm starting to get into it.
Disappointment
I found this much-hyped book a great disappointment. It is mostly waffle. True, Sen's heart is in the right place, and he makes (or repeats) some valid criticisms of Rawls' theory of justice, and of Pareto-optimality as a standard of the right. But the book is very long (and repetitive) and contains insufficient substance to fill more than a fraction of its pages. By and large the intellectual pressure is pretty low.
thanks
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A must for people aspiring to enter public life
This is a must read book for anyone who is aspiring to a place in public life where their actions will impact on other people. It is not easy to read because you have to un-think so many "given truths" about justice and rights. As with other of Amartya Sen's works it is powerfully argued and convincing. I am a Labour Party Parliamentary candidate interested in what we can all do as societies to eliminate poverty. This book finally gives us all the arguments in one place. It also sets out the challenges. One challenge is to think differently. The second challenge is to act differently.
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related blog:
The Oxonian Review » Moment of Sen
ISBN 978-1846141478 … … … Amartya Sen is that rare thing: a genuine polymath. Like the Bengali poet Rabindranath Tagore he so reveres, Sen's excursions outside his specialty — economics, in which he won the 1998 Nobel Prize — have ...
http://www.oxonianreview.org/wp/moment-of-sen/
the idea of justice
the idea of justice, by amartya sen. £25.00 30 jul 2009 hardback penguin books ltd. is justice an ideal, forever beyond our grasp, or something that may actually guide our practical decisions and enhance our lives? ...
http://bookshop.blackwell.co.uk/jsp/welcome.jsp?source=rss&isbn=1846141478
