Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Abbreviations for Rawls’s texts
- Introduction
- A
- B
- C
- D
- E
- F
- G
- H
- I
- J
- K
- L
- M
- N
- O
- P
- R
- S
- 195 Sandel, Michael
- 196 Scanlon, T. M.
- 197 Self-interest
- 198 Self-respect
- 199 Sen, Amartya
- 200 Sense of justice
- 201 Sidgwick, Henry
- 202 Sin
- 203 Social choice theory
- 204 Social contract
- 205 Social minimum
- 206 Social union
- 207 Socialism
- 208 Society of peoples
- 209 Soper, Philip
- 210 Sovereignty
- 211 Stability
- 212 Statesman and duty of statesmanship
- 213 Strains of commitment
- 214 Supreme Court and judicial review
- T
- U
- W
- Bibliography
- Index
199 - Sen, Amartya
from S
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 February 2015
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Abbreviations for Rawls’s texts
- Introduction
- A
- B
- C
- D
- E
- F
- G
- H
- I
- J
- K
- L
- M
- N
- O
- P
- R
- S
- 195 Sandel, Michael
- 196 Scanlon, T. M.
- 197 Self-interest
- 198 Self-respect
- 199 Sen, Amartya
- 200 Sense of justice
- 201 Sidgwick, Henry
- 202 Sin
- 203 Social choice theory
- 204 Social contract
- 205 Social minimum
- 206 Social union
- 207 Socialism
- 208 Society of peoples
- 209 Soper, Philip
- 210 Sovereignty
- 211 Stability
- 212 Statesman and duty of statesmanship
- 213 Strains of commitment
- 214 Supreme Court and judicial review
- T
- U
- W
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
Amartya Sen (b. 1933) is an economist and philosopher whose work in social choice theory, development economics, and moral and political theory has been very influential. This entry focuses on Sen’s discussion of Rawls’s views. These are summarized in Sen’s recent book The Idea of Justice (2009). Sen endorses several key features of Rawls’s theory of justice, including its focus on fairness, its account of objectivity, its characterization of persons as rational and reasonable, its view of liberty as a separate value, its insistence on the importance of procedural fairness in addition to the achievement of certain social and economic outcomes, its particular attention to the plight of the worst off, and its effort to connect freedom with real opportunities (Sen 2009, 63–64).
However, Sen makes several criticisms. The three most important concern the metric of justice (2009, 234–235, 253–254, 261–263), the site of justice (2009, x–xi, 10, 18–27, 67–69, 85), and the aims and structure of theorizing about justice (2009, 9–18, 56–57, 97–102). First, Sen argues that Rawls’s focus on social primary goods is insufficient for measuring and comparing peoples’ quality of life. Specifically, the difference principle’s focus on income and wealth faces a deficit common in “resourcist” views of justice. This is their blindness to the “conversion problem”: given personal heterogeneities, diversities in physical environment, variations in social climate, and differences in relational (cultural) perspectives, different individuals can have quite different abilities to convert income and other primary goods into valuable forms of life.
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- Information
- The Cambridge Rawls Lexicon , pp. 765 - 767Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2014