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Amartya Sen's “The Idea of Social Justice”: An Alternative Theory of Justice?
Amartya Sen's book “The Idea of Justice”, published in 2009, was overall received with
great enthusiasm by academics and media; even declared by some to be the best contribution in the
field since Rawls's ground-breaking work “A Theory of Justice”. Nevertheless, it has also been
criticized by many others on different grounds; one criticism shared by may of his critics is the way
Amartya Sen interpreted Rawls is at least partially wrong, and accordingly, some of his criticisms
against Rawls are superficial (Riley 2011; Shapiro 2011; Valentini 2011). In this paper, my primary
aim is to assess to what extent Sen has been successful to bring about an alterantive theory of
justice; however, as many of the critics have done I will not focus on Sen's interpretation and
criticisms of Rawls but instead evaluate major strengths and shortcomings of Sen's own theory as a
whole. After a short review of Sen's key arguments in the book, I will concentrate on two major
subjects that appear in the book whose analysis that I find to be crucial for a better understanding of
Sen's theory of justice. These subjects are respectively: Strengths of comparative approach versus
transcendental approach and the role of democracy and public reasoning for making the world a
“less unjust” place.1
Only after, I will try to give a plausible answer to the question of that to what
extent Sen has been successful at creating an alternative theory of justice.
To start with, beginning from the Preface, Sen devotes a significant part of his book to
comparing Rawls's transcendental approach with what he called the comparative approach.
According to Sen, there are two dominant lines of thinking in Western political thought starting
from the age of Enlightenment: First line is what he calls to be contractarian, represented by famous
philosophers such as Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau and Kant; second line is the comparative,
represented by another group of philosophers such as Smith, Bentham, Marx, Mill and Concordet.
The first group is argued to be looking for a theory of a perfectly just society and they tend to use
the method of social contract; while the second one focuses on the possible corrections or
improvements of actual problems and they employ a comparative method which means they
compare the alternative solutions in order to choose the most just among the possible alternatives
instead of looking for the most just per se. While claiming Rawls to be following the tradition of the
first group, Sen positions himself with the second group. He believes the second approach is
1
Capability approach and social choice theory are also undeniably crucial to Sen's formula; however, I don't find a
separate reassessment of Sen's ideas on capabilities and social choice is necessary to make the points that I want to
draw attention to. Nevertheless, I will still allocate them a considerable space in the first part where I will try to
recapitulate the main ideas which appear in Sen's book; also, while arguing on the subjects I have just mentioned, I
will often directly or indirectly make references to these ideas which is inescapable since eventually they are parts of
one big theory.
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superior to the first in terms of answering to the urgent problems of justice in reality, which he
believes that must be the real aim of a theory of justice. Searching for an ideal just world doesn't
help much to advance justice on the earth, because, first, it ignores the plurality of criteria for
justice, second, even a perfect solution is to be found, it is simply often not available in reality.
Closely related with his arguments against the transcendental approach, Sen also argues
against the transcendental institutionalism embedded in Rawls's theory and the other theories of
justice that adapted a similar approach. Sen's argument agianst “transcendental institutionalism” is
that Rawls defines the perfect institutions whose existence is necessary for creating a perfectly just
society, and while doing that, he expects the individuals to automatically behave according to the
rules and institutions that are established; thus, the theory's feasibility depends on behavioral
compliance of the members of the society which doesn't necessarily reflect what would actually
happen in reality. He extends this argument, also by referring to two Indian words which both mean
“justice” nevertheless with a little nuance: “Niti” is “an organizational propriety” and “behavioral
correctness” compared to “nyaya” which is “a more comprehensive concept of realized justice”
(Sen 2009, 20). Sen stands for, as expected, an understanding of justice in the sense of “nyaya”
rather than “niti”, which underlines again the centrality of comprehensive social realizations in his
understanding of social justice.
At this point, I would like to clarify that even though in many moments throughout reading
the book, Sen's ideas may appear to the reader to be in constant opposition with Rawls's, there is an
important shared argument that both of the authors' theories are built on: The priority of reason.
Like Rawls, Sen also accepts the basic assumption that all individuals have the capacity for reason;
even though it is possible that there may be times that they use some primitive, inferior ways of
reasoning for different reasons, this is still not enough to reject the premise that if they openly and
impartially reasoned, they would agree on a specific idea (Sen 2009, xix). However, Sen draws
attention to the difference between the way objective reason was employed in Rawls's theory with
the help of intellectual tools of “veil of ignorance” and “original position” and the way how he
suggests to make a use of it, inspired by Smith's “impartial spectator”. Contrary to Rawls's scenario
of “veil of ignorance”, where there are citizens who are hypothetically brought to an initial situation
of equality, without knowing which identity they will have and in which particular situation they
will end up on earth and expected to make a social contract based on rules they unanimously accept;
in “the impartial spectator” scenario, as Adam Smith puts it in his The Theory of Moral Sentiments,
a reasonable person who doesn't necessarily belong to that particular society is expected to make a
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fair and impartial judgment. Sen thinks at least in certain situations “impartial spectator” may be a
better judge to decide what is more just than the citizens under the veil of ignorance, so including
“impartial spectator” in the public reasoning -which he believes can be the only legitimate ground
of judgments regarding the social justice- may be preferable to a Rawlsian type of social contract.
“Impartial spectator” should be a part of the process of public reasoning, first, because in today's
globalized world, the effects of the political, economic and social actions go beyond the national
borders and have impacts on lives of other people living in different corners of the world, second,
because it is a good way to not to fall into the trap of parochialism and get blinded by some socially
accepted norms and values which may lead us to make an “unreasonable” judgment, and lastly, one
individual doesn't belong only to one particular group based on the national borders she was borned
into, as it's presumed in such social contract theories but belong to many different identity groups at
the same time and should be able to have her own say on the issues regarding these different
identity groups besides the issues which interest her country. The idea of importance of listening to
what “impartial spectator” says, leads, in the real world, to the idea of taking into account of what
those who live across the national borders think and want.
Furthermore, Sen also suggests that the social choice theory, being in line with the
comparative approach as well as with his acceptance of diversity of perceptions and important role
he gave to the public reasoning, may contribute greatly to the construction of an alternative theory
of social justice. Social choice theory, very simply put, is a complex mathematical calculation of
“what is best for the society” on the basis of assessment of all individual preferences; thus, it is
based on reason, democratic, practical to use and it treats all individuals equally by giving equal
importance to the liberties and priorities of all. It's an imprortant point that in Sen's version of the
social choice theory, there are partial orderings of preferences made by informed individuals rather
than complete ordering of preferences or achievements or the determination of the most preferred.
Another criticism that Sen brings against Rawls is his focus on distribution of primary goods
in order to judge distributional equality (Sen 2009, 254). Alternatively, he proposes assessing
“capabilities” which he argues to be a better indicator of liberties and a happy life in general since
possession of goods and income don't necessarily lead to a satisfactory life due to the reasons of
physical heterogeneities, diversities in the physical environment, varieties in the social climate and
differences of characteristics of social relations in societies one lives in (Sen 2009, 255). Capability
approach's focus is on what Sen calls “comprehensive opportunities”, it evaluates advantages or
disadvantages of an individual for reaching a self-determined aim or desire in terms of opportunities
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(Sen 2009, 231) It is important to recognize here, first, that Sen gives priority to distribution of
capabilities over distribution of happiness and welfare or income as a criteria, and second, that he
prefers assessing capabilities instead of actual achievements2
. Another dimension of capability
approach that needs to be underlined is, maybe unexpectedly, Sen doesn't stand for an equality of
capabilities. In fact, if he had argued for an equality, this would amount to an apparent inner
contradiction in his theory since it would mean ignoring other criteria that would be possibly
favored by others for distributional justice and also understating the importance of freedom of
action in terms of lack of dependence, lack of interference which are factors that are not covered by
the term of “capabilities”, which Sen is not voluntary to do.3
A last aspect that needs to be added, before beginning a more detailed analysis of some
arguments made in Sen's “The Idea of Justice” is the role of democracy. After explaining the
necessity of public reasoning, it is no surprise that democracy has a special place in Sen's theory
since it is supposed to be the best developed political model so far which would make a public
reasoning like Sen imagines to be possible. Again in line with his previous arguments regarding
institutionalism, he stresses on the fact that what needs to be understood from the concept of
democracy is not a set of institutions such as ballot boxes, free elections and parliaments, but
“government by discussion” (Sen 2009, 324). Besides, it is important to note that he insists that
democracy is not an idea of the West as it is often suggested, but an idea and practice that was
thought and implemented in different times and geographies in different shapes throughout the
history, leaving no room for arguments of that showing culture as an excuse for being non-
democratic.4
In this framework, the media is also given an important role whose freedom and
independence considered to be crucial for a better democracy and so for a better public reasoning.
After clarifying some important dimensions of Sen's theory of justice, now I would like to
discuss some of the arguments that are already identified in more detail . In this respect, the first
issue that I would like to have a closer look at is the preferability of a comparative approach over
2
Although Sen enumerates different reasons for preferring opportunities instead of achievements, the emphasis is on
the importance of freedom of choice. Freedom of choice is seen to be not only instrumentally important but also
valuable in itself. In thsi regard, I find Sen's allegory of comparison of a starving person and a person who is fasting
voluntarily to be quite sound almost common sense.
3
The priority given to liberties also remain as an important similarity between Sen and Rawls. Also, if we look at
Sen's argument from the perspective of positive vs. negative freedom distinction, we would realize that although his
capability approach seems to be an extended understanding of positive freedom; he is also careful about
guaranteeing a full negative freedom to the individuals which I find to be a good syntheses of two approaches.
4
Amartya Sen generally rejects such divisions made between East and West and criticizes Euro-centricism in theory
and politics. Although to what extent he is successful at doing this is another matter of debate, these attempts are
also apparent in “The Idea of Justice” where he refers to many stories, examples and ideas not only from the West,
but also from the East, more specifically from his own country India.
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transcendental approach for a better theory of justice and for remedying the current injustices in the
world in a more efficient way. In this framework, first, I would like to inquire possible
shortcomings of the comparative approach, then, I will turn back to the transcendental approach and
try to demonstrate how -in some ways that Sen is unaware of or ignores- the transcendental
approach may contribute to the cause of justice.
Sen claims in the Introduction of “The Idea of Justice” that comparative approach is
“interested primarily in the removal of manifest injustice from the world that they saw” (Sen 2009,
7). It is easy to recognize one of Sen's major motivations for adapting a comparative approach is his
belief in the suitability of comparative approach to deal with the current injustices in the world
“here and now” - as it is expressed by many contemporary social movements. Even though this
explanation seems to be plausible at the first sight, I see two significant problems with this
approach. First one is regarding Sen's statement that comparative approach aims to get rid of the
“manifest” injustices instead of looking for “the just”; the question here is simply how to
understand or how to decide which injustices are “manifest”. The examples Sen uses for manifest
injustices throughout the book such as famine are quite easy to distinguish as manifest problems of
injustice; however, it would be a mistake to think all injustices reveal themselves that openly
(Shapiro 2011, 1255). “Being manifest” is such a vague criterion for choosing which problems of
injustice to deal with, what is to be considered as “manifest”? There are different ways of answering
this question, first, it can be said the problems such as famine, that are so striking and supposed to
be unacceptable for any reasonable person, can be singled out and the focus can be on the question
of how to cope with them. Second, the social movements, demonstrations, protests and the news
can show the theorist the way; to pay attention to what people are currently asking and fighting for
can lighten the way of the theorist. However, to defend any of these solutions is highly problematic,
first, because the issue of injustice becomes highly subjective in the sense that the final selection of
manifest injustices will depend on many personal factors from the personality of the philosopher to
the country he lives in and the news channels he follows.
Can the problem of subjectivity be answered with the concept of “positional objectivity” that
Sen proposes, positional objectivity meaning a person-invariant but position-relative objectivity
(Sen 2009, 157)? I don't think this is a satisfactory answer since the problem is caused not only by a
positional bias (as in the case of the country one lives in) but also a personal one (how much one
feels affiliated with animals for example, may bias the person and make her believe that the most
manifest injustices today are the ones against the animals). It can be still argued that the same
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problem would exist even if we don't look only at the manifest injustices but attempt to see all
injustices; however, I think there is a big difference between two because defending necessity of
coping only with manifest injustices indirectly means also not looking for injustices which are not
that apparent; however, if such an inquiry was to be done that would help to overcome at least some
of the biases which exist in the beginning. For example, a philosopher who lives in Switzerland,
who watches only his Swiss news channel that releases news from Switzerland eight percent of the
time and who lives with five cats and is a member of Cat-Lovers Association may initially feel that
the most manifest injustice is the one against street cats in Switzerland, construct a theory and act
accordingly for her cause. Nevertheless, if as a philosopher she is not satisfied with only what
appears to be unjust in the first place and knows that she needs to go beyond in her inquiry to
understand the sources of injustice in the world, she is very likely to realize some other injustices
around the world which hadn't appeared that manifest to her in the first place.
Continuing the same discussion from another perspective, this time not from the
philosopher's but the people who are directly affected by injustices, in real life, it is a fact that
voices of many people who still deal with serious injustices in their daily lives are not heard of for
different reasons such as the tendency of the media organizations to look for and pick “the most
attractive” news instead of the most important ones (which is a problem that Sen also acknowledges
in his book and an issue that I will come back again later on), the weakness of the people which
suffer from injustices with regards to many aspects and also because they are simply not aware of
whether their experience is due to an injustice no matter how manifest it is to the observers from
outside -which may often be the case injustices due to the subjugation of women. Thus, while many
women are beaten up at their homes silently and millions of people are killed in a relatively non-
strategic part of the world, I may simply not see these injustices as a philosopher, and at the same
time, on the contrary -even if I don't necessarily put them in the category of manifest injustices- I
may be very well aware of complaints of injustices of the Republican Party in the United States
thanks to their widespread demonstrations that were covered extensively in the media and received
a lot of attention.
On the other hand, looking for only manifest injustices is to overlook the fact that many
current injustices in the world are more systematic and not easy to inspect at the first sight, which is
a criticism also brought by Shapiro (2011) and Valentini (2011). In Shapiro's words:
“Most problems of injustice are not like this. They tend to be chronic rather than catastrophic, systemic rather
than episodic, and rooted in enduring conflicts of interest and ideology. Responses to them are less
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spontaneous than is the case with disasters, and inevitably more contentious as they become embroiled in
disagreements about causal and moral responsibility and the likely efficacy of alternative courses of action.”
(Shapiro 2011, 1260)
So, also in this sense, the comparative approach is not very suitable for answering chronic
and systemic problems of injustice. In fact, only fighting against what are supposedly manifest
injustices may not only result with neglecting systemic injustices, furthermore, it may create an
even better environment for the chronic injustices to remain as they are and escalate even further by
giving the impression that all injustices are being fought against and there is nothing further to do,
while actually the systemic injustices are getting worse. I will take the example of disability (rather
than the example of famine which I find to be more straight-forward than the example of disability)
what Sen gives a source of manifest injustice in the society since in many occasions it doesn't allow
people to turn their life opportunities into a fully satisfactory life. What needs to be noticed here is
that even though Sen's initial judgment appears to be right (injustice due to the disabilities), he
doesn't pay attention to the fact that the major negative impact on the lives of the disabled people is
not a direct outcome of their physical handicap, but how the society treats the disabled people and
how disabled bodies are devalued in an economic system is based solely on financial interests and
able-bodiedness. The solution Sen suggests for remedying the problem of disability is to ameliorate
the effects of disability and take preventive measures against its further occurrence (Sen 2009, 259);
nevertheless, neither technological developments nor a decrease in the number of disabilities would
be enough to overcome the problem of social discrimination against disabled in almost every area
of life and their marginalization in the economic system (in fact although it may sound
controversial, the decrease in amounts of disabled people is likely to cause even further
marginalization of disabled both socially and economically). It is clear the deeper reasons of why
disabled have troubles to have a satisfactory life needs to be paid attention to, both to be able to
understand better the sources of injustice and to bring better and more comprehensive solutions.
Lastly on this issue, I want to draw attention to a small but what I believe to be an important
point. Sen claims that Marx is also among the philosophers who adopted the comparative approach
and this is comprehensible in the sense that Marx has also indeed defended the importance of the
starting its inquiry for the theory from the actual world instead of an ideal one, which constituted at
that time an important rupture from Hegel's idealist philosophy and the tradition of German
idealism in general. “The German Ideology”, it was Marx who said that:
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“In direct contrast to German philosophy which descends from heaven to earth, here we ascend from earth to
heaven. That is to say, we do not set out from what men say, imagine, conceive, nor from men as narrated,
thought of, imagined, conceived, in order to arrive at men in the flesh.” (Marx 1845, Ch.1)
I agree that Sen and Marx share in common the priority they give to the actual social
realizations, nevertheless, I still find their general approaches to the philosophy in general to be
quite different to be put in the same category.5
The major difference, probably besides many minor
ones, is that even though both of them are taking the actual world as their starting point, Marx
doesn't find it sufficient to tackle with only the social and economic problems which are manifest
but tracks them until he finds what he claims to be the roots of injustices. The social critique of
Marx doesn't stop at defining the problems such alienation of the worker from the products of his
own labor which he would probably claim to be manifest, but try to understand the root reasons of
the manifest problems in the economic and political system. Although Marxian theory's advantages
or disadvantages over Sen's theory is another matter of debate, I think in this respect, Marx's
comparative approach is preferable to Sen's since it overcomes the last criticism of incapacity in
front of systemic injustices that I have just posed against Sen's comparative approach to a great
extent.
Now, after discussing shortcomings of Sen's comparative approach, I would also like to
discuss on the possible advantages of the transcendental approach that Sen seems to disregard. In
short, I think there are two advantages of a transcendental approach: 1- To broaden and facilitate the
process of public reasoning, 2- To come up with creative, transcendental solutions. The first
argument is partially answered by Sen, who asks himself isn't knowing, supposing that it is possible,
what is “the best” would help us to evaluate if A or B is better and answers with “no”, primarily on
the basis that knowing “the best” in order to make comparative judgments is both unnecessary and
insufficient. The argument is that when the social phenomenons of A and B want to be compared,
often it will soon be realized the differences are not only in one dimension but many, so it is
ambiguous which of “the best”s in different dimensions need to be chosen to assess A or B is better,
as in the example of that I don't need to know Mona Lisa is the best painting, to decide if Dali or
Picasso is better (Sen 2009, 17) Besides, descriptive closeness of A or B wouldn't always also mean
a valuational proximity; the fact that I prefer red wine over white doesn't mean that I would prefer a
mixture of red and white wine over white wine) (Sen 2009, 17). Furthermore, even my comparison
5
It is not my claim though that Sen thought his philosophical approach is identical with Marx or others whom he
placed in the category of comparative approach. Nevertheless, I would like to discuss this issue further since I
believe it may bring some extra insights to the approach Sen adapted.
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will be only in one dimension which can be clearly defined, knowing “the best” won't be necessary;
for that argument, he gives the example of knowing the Mount Everest is the highest mountain on
Earth is not necessary to compare two other mountains, Mountain Kilimanjaro and Mount
McKinley (Sen 2009, 102).
Many critics of Sen before have already argued about the unsuitability of especially the
painting example and stated his overall argument stays to be unconvincing.6
My aim is now not to
evaluate those criticisms since I think although they are partially right, Sen's point still couldn't to
be completely refuted by these criticisms. Instead, I would like raise two other points which I
believe will form another counter-argument against Sen's argument for limits of usefulness of
transcendental theory.
It is very important to remember that Sen's main reasons for rejecting the transcendental
approach in the first place was its incapacity of including plural ways of reasoning and perceptions
and unavailability of those solutions in the real life, which we have already mentioned in the first
part of this paper. Last arguments accompanied with many different allegories are, on the other
hand, to explain why transcendental approach can't be useful and support comparative approach.
Thus, I believe it is important to reassess Sen's first argument before criticizing the second. First,
regarding the plurality argument, I think a transcendental approach is not necessarily an anti-plural
approach if it has been placed in the framework of public reasoning. In fact, any comparative
approach which won't be placed into a democratic public reasoning would be equally anti-pluralist
in this sense. There is no difference between saying A is better than B in this particular context and
imposing this idea on others and saying that A is the best and imposing that idea. In my opinion, as
long as the transcendental solutions are discussed in the framework of public reasoning, they don't
pose any problem of plurality. In fact, it may be even bring good insights for those who take part in
democratic decision-making process. Take the example of three children who couldn't share the
flute; I am completely agreeing with Sen on his argument that there doesn't need to be only one
reasonable criteria for deciding to whom to give the flute. However, in real world, there will be
occasions that one criterion needs to be chosen and following Sen, ideally this will be decided
democratically by public discussion. My argument is that knowing different arguments stemming
from different theories of which criteria must be the basis of distribution would be greatly helpful
for those citizens who are likely to not give much of a thought on these issues of political theory in
their daily life, or also for those who already has a clear idea of what is the best, by opening their
minds to different possibilities what is instead the essence of the idea of public reasoning. As long
6
For one of these arguments, see Shapiro (2011).
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as the world is not a place where “the ideals” of a philosopher king are directly being implemented,
but philosophers are a part of public reasoning process like all other individuals, I don't see an
reason for refusing to discuss on the ideals.7
Second, a transcendental approach can go even further and create new possibilities.
Possibility of creating different possibilities seems to be missing in Sen's entire theory which I find
unfortunate. It is well acknowledged that in reality there are often no limited numbers of solutions
but a limitless number of possible solutions bounded by only by the limits of human imagination. In
my opinion, in many cases, the solutions are beyond what can we thought of in the beginning; I
think Galtung's -one of the founders of the sub-field of Peace Studies- idea of “transcendent”
solutions that he suggests for peace-making between two parties in conflict, in the sense that taking
into account of desires and fears of the actors, but going beyond the possible “manifest” solutions
and create a new solution which will be acceptable to both parties (Galtung 1973), can be applied
to many social problems that are faced now or will be faced in near future and for this purpose of
creating new alternatives and solutions transcendental approach may be more suaitable than the
comparative approach.
All of this long discussion regarding respective advantages and disadvantages of
transcendental and comparative approaches is not to come to the conclusion of that Sen is mistaken
about the importance of the comparative approach but to say that they are both necessary and useful
in different terms. That's why I argued against Sen's claims of unsuitability of a transcendental
approach for a theory instead of why it can't support the comparative approach, because I believe
neither a hierarchy of importance nor a relationship of one helping each other to accomplish its aim
is necessary.
The second topic, I would like to have a closer look at now is the role of democracy and
public reasoning in Sen's theory. Although, in principle, I also find democracy's role very crucial for
a just world, I have three general criticisms regarding some specific remarks he makes about
democracy and public reasoning; these criticisms actually very well connected to each other and can
apply also to the whole philosophical approach adapted in the book. First of these criticisms is that
his conceptualization of democracy remains to be quite vague, limited to the definition of
7
I believe my argument here reminds somewhat of Chomsky's argument on the role of intellectuals. In his famous
essay on Vietnam War and responsibility of intellectuals, he says “when we consider the responsibility of
intellectuals, our basic concern must be their role in the creation and analysis of ideology”, ideology to be
understood as “a set of beliefs, infused with passion,…[which] …seeks to transform the whole of a way of life”
(Chomsky 1967). Although the discussion of that if the “ideology” here can be replaced with “theory” is a matter of
discussion, his emphasis on creation and analysis is interesting enough to take note of its parallelity with my
argument.
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“government by discussion”; there is no detailed description of what kind of democracy formed by
what kind of institutions is needed for a less unjust world. Nevertheless, it is important to realize in
today's world, although 116 out of 195 countries in the world today are officially electoral
democracies today (Freedom House 2013), roughly only 15% of world countries are considered to
be full democracies (EIU 2012). So, only calling a regime democracy doesn't give much clue and
hope regarding how the public reasoning and justice will be like in that particular society. It also
needs to be remembered that, as Shapiro (2011) also puts it, in today's democracies what happens in
reality is an attempt to resolve a clash of interests, which is a situation quite different than Sen
imagines to be, where well-informed individuals give their positionally objective and reasoned
opinions and attentively listening to others including those who don't belong to their societies.
However, differently from Shapiro, I don't interpret this as Sen being not realistic and my guess is
that the democracy Sen imagines to be is more like it was thought by Habermas and even by
Arendt. Nevertheless, it still doesn't change the fact that democracy has such a crucial role in Sen's
theory that what he means by democracy as well as how to construct these type of democracies in
practice need to be specified, and if I am wrong and Shapiro is right, meaning that what Sen
imagines as democracy is an approximate of one of current democratic regimes in the West, then,
Shapiro's criticism would be a quite appropriate one acknowledging many flaws of current Western
democratic regimes and how different they are than what democracy is supposed to be in theory.
From the last point we made, I would like to come to another observation and criticism:
Sen's refraining from criticizing the problems with the institutions and practices in the developed
world unless they are causing a very manifest injustice in another part of the world. I think his
motivation for doing that is very much related with my previous discussion regarding his choice of
focusing on only manifest injustices; however, it is still worth to have a look at the role he gives to
the media to have a better understanding of how this choice has impacts on his theory which may
seem to the reader not that obvious at the first sight. As it is already mentioned, Sen thinks media
has a very crucial role in the society as a means for communication, distributing and receiving
information and opinions, but even further, it protects the weaker segments of the society by giving
them voice, it facilitates formation of values and of course the public reasoning (Sen 2009, 335)
Again, I am in agreement with Sen on the importance of the media; however, I find his perception
of the media to be a quite idealistic and naive one, which ignores what today's media really is. Even
leaving aside the media in non-democratic or semi-democratic 85% of the world and only looking
at what happens with the media in the West, it is easy to see the selection of the news for the media
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is based on the criteria of attractiveness to the readers or viewers and which is of course based on
calculations of short-run and long-run financial interests while still being partially interfered by
governments in some controversial cases as it have been just seen in last cases of whistleblowers. I
will argue that media as it is today, doesn't have a good communicative and informational value as it
ignores many events and opinions around the world without any objective, reasonable rationality
behind. Eventually, in many cases, it can't protect the more vulnerable neither, and consequently, it
creates biases in the process of creation of values and public reasoning in favor of the politically
and economically stronger parts of the world society.8
For all these reasons, I think pointing at the
importance of the media for a more just society doesn't worth much again without specifying what
kind of media is desired of, how can it be created or improved from what it is like today9
together
with sound criticisms of actual state of the media today even in the parts of the world where it
seems to be free and independent.
Lastly, what I want to discuss regarding the role of democracy and public reasoning is
Amartya Sen's acceptance of impossibility of constructing a global governing mechanism, thus, not
extending his idea of democracy and public reasoning to the world but accepts the limits that are put
by national boundaries with the exception of the use of the tool of “impartial spectator” whose
opinions are supposed to be considered in the process of public reasoning. It is clear that he is not
demanding a global democratic system not because he thinks it is not necessary but it is not feasible
and he also refers to Rawls and Nagel who made the same point before (Sen 2009, 408). However,
as Valentini (2011) reminds us, what he doesn't acknowledge is the fact that Rawls and Nagel argue
for a global governance system for the reasons of moral appropriateness, not because they believe it
is not feasible (Amartya Sen also successfully clarifies in the beginning of the book feasibility of
their ideas is not a concern of Rawls and Nagel). Therefore, their position is different from Sen's on
this issue, who believes its moral appropriateness but doesn't think it is possible to realize in the
near future, so doesn't find the idea worthy to discuss about. Regarding this point, I completely
agree with Valentini's criticism of that “if the scope of the principles of justice are indeed global,
then it would seem entirely arbitrary to restrict the scope of reasoning about justice to a particular
society” (Valentini 2011, 311).
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Surely, the criticisms of today's media are not limited to what I presented here. For example, I find Galtung's
criticisms against media including that the media is only looking for catastrophes and conflicts around the world,
while bringing no solutions or even clues for solutions which are already embedded in the event itself to be quite
relevant here (Galtung 2003).
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Increasing and extending use of social media with some other alternative uses of Internet as a more democratic way
of sharing news, information and opinions can be inspiring for this purpose (even though their own shortcomings
also need to be paid attention to.
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13. Mine Ekinci 100047584
A counter-argument to the last criticism may be that Sen doesn't defend for a complete
abandonment of the idea of global public reasoning, but in contrary, he attaches importance to
hearing voices of those in abroad through media and other official or unoffical channels of
communication, in line with his idea of “impartial spectator”. To reply this counter-argument, it
may be useful to suppose his suggestion was applied to the national level, meaning that there was
no demand at all for a democratic system of governance and the public reasoning was left to be
done only through media and other non-institutionalized ways of communication. Clearly, such an
argument would be, in the best case, criticized as being extremely vague and rejected since it
doesn't foresee any institutional basis for public reasoning; so, I don't see any reason how it can be
acceptable in the global level knowing that what the theory aims is global justice instead of
constructing some just societies. Regarding the same point, I find Shapiro's (2011) criticism of that
in the absence of a global governance system there is “no reason to think that impartial spectators
are listened to” to be also very relevant here.
In conclusion, my conviction is that even though many aspects of Amartya Sen's theory of
justice such as its concern for the practicality of the theory and its emphasis on plurality and on
importance of preferences and capabilities are worth to be praised; I think the theory has still some
major shortcomings. I think Sen's theory can be useful only for a limited cases of injustices,
however it would remain very weak for the purpose of overcoming more underneath, systematic
injustices and for imroving today's global order towards a more just one mainly due to its insistence
on paying attention to only manifest injustices and its lack of proposing any institution where a just
world order can be based on, except vague arguments for democracy and importance of the media.
Therefore, I think it would be wrong to call Amartya Sen's “The Idea of Justice” as a new
alternative theory of justice because of these serious shortcomings; however, it must be still
considered as an important contibution to the discussions in the field of theory of justice.
REFERENCES
Brown, Chris. 2010. “On Amartya Sen and The idea of justice”. Ethics & international affairs, 24
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Economic Intelligence Unit. 2012. Democracy Index 2012: Democracy at A Standstill. Retrieved
from: <https://portoncv.gov.cv/dhub/porton.por_global.open_file?p_doc_id=1034>
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