The Idea of Justice

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; and, 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.

ISBN 1846141478   Pages 496 ISBN13 9781846141478 (What's this?)   Weight (grammes) 786 Publisher Penguin Books Ltd   Published in London Imprint Allen Lane   Height (mm) 240 Format Hardback   Width (mm) 162 Publication date 30 Jul 2009   Spine width (mm) 43 DEWEY 340.11   Academic level Postgraduate DEWEY edition DC22

		Introduction An Approach to Justice
Pt. I		The Demands of Justice
1		Reason and Objectivity
2		Rawls and Beyond
3		Institutions and Persons
4		Voice and Social Choice
5		Impartiality and Objectivity
6		Closed and Open Impartiality
Pt. II		Forms of Reasoning
7		Position, Relevance and Illusion
8		Rationality and Other People
9		Plurality of Impartial Reasons
10		Realizations, Consequences and Agency
Pt. III		The Materials of Justice
11		Lives, Freedoms and Capabilities
12		Capabilities and Resources
13		Happiness, Well-being and Capabilities
14		Equality and Liberty
Pt. IV		Public Reasoning and Democracy
15		Democracy as Public Reason
16		The Practice of Democracy
17		Human Rights and Global Imperatives
18		Justice and the World
		Notes
		Name Index
		Subject Index

'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

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