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Amartya Sen's story of Justice
Rashmee Roshan Lall, TNN 26 July 2009, 10:14am ISTIn an exclusive interview with The Times of India, the Nobel laureate speaks about his most ambitious book yet.
Who is this book for? Academics who study justice? Philosophers who explore justice? Legislators who create the system that doles out justice? The layperson who thinks about justice?
It is a book on philosophy, but it is meant for everyone. I agree with Antonio Gramsci, the great Italian political leader, that philosophy is not "a strange and difficult thing", but all the things we reason about. Of course I hope there will be some academic interest from professional philosophers, and that those concerned with policy issues will also take an interest. But the idea of justice interests us all.
The Idea of Justice has been described as your most ambitious book yet, but will you accept that its length, subject and style could limit its reach?
The reach of our ideas is always limited to some extent, and if there is some ambition in the book, it lies in my refusal to give up, without a serious effort, trying to communicate with others. In writing about any difficult but important problem, we have to try to catch the complexities involved without making our arguments obtuse, perplexing or inaccessible. I believe it is easy to underestimate the breadth and reach of the interests of the general public. There is a kind of vanity of the self-defined "intellectuals" who bend down to talk to "common people". (It is, by the way, very bad for the intellectual's back to do so much bending down!) Since some of the most insightful comments I have received throughout my long life have come from very young students and sometimes even from unknown neighbours in a train (mostly in India â€" British passengers don't like talking to strangers), I have reason to be optimistic about the interest, involvement and engagement of others.
Has the concept of justice in this century come only to mean human rights?
This is a very interesting question. The idea of human rights is much used in practice, and is very powerfully invoked by activists these days, often with admirable effect. However, the critics of the approach of human rights argue that the idea of such non-legal rights is lacking in foundation. A frequently asked question is: where do human rights come from and what gives them force? One of the aims of the book is to show in what sense - and in what way - human rights have a strong foundation through public reasoning, and how that foundation relates also to the basic analysis of social justice, which too is very dependent on the opportunity of public discussion. It is not so much that the concept of justice "has come only to mean human rights," but that the two related ideas have to be considered together.
It is also important to remember that the idea of human rights has been in use, often in very informal ways and frequently without being called human rights, for a very long time in world history - not just in the 20th and 21st centuries. For example, Ashoka's discussion of everyone's right to speak and to be heard by others, or Akbar's championing of the right to religious freedom, belongs to the subject matter of what is now called human rights. And they also relate to Ashoka's and Akbar's conceptions of social justice.
At the risk of forcing you to reduce 496 pages to a few sentences, what is justice? What should it be for us here?
Justice is a complex idea (I was not surprised that it took me 496 pages to discuss it), but it is very important to understand that justice has much to do with everyone being treated fairly. Even though that connection has been well discussed by the leading political philosopher of our time, John Rawls, I have argued that he neglects a couple of important connections. One neglect is the central recognition that a theory of justice has to be deeply concerned with systematic assessment of how to reduce injustice in the world, rather than only with the identification of what a hypothetical "perfectly just society" would look like.
There may be no agreement on the shape of perfect justice (and also perfect justice will hardly be achievable even if people did agree about what would be immaculately just), but we can still have reasoned agreement on many removable cases of manifest injustice, for example, slavery, or subjugation of women, or widespread hunger and deprivation, or the lack of schooling of children, or absence of available and affordable health care. Second, analysis of justice has to pay attention to the lives that people are actually able to lead, rather than exclusively concentrating only on the nature of "just institutions". In India, as anywhere else, we have to concentrate on removing injustices that are identifiable and that can be remedied.
Is justice essential for democracy to flourish?
One of the main arguments of the book is the role of open public discussion for our understanding of the demands of justice, and particularly of the removal of injustice. Indeed, democracy can be seen as "government by discussion" (an approach made famous by John Stuart Mill), and the pursuit of justice can be much enhanced by good democratic practice - not just well-fought elections but also open and well-aimed public discussion, with a free and vigorous media. In an earlier book, I discussed a remark of a very poor and nearly illiterate peasant, who lived in a village close to Santiniketan (where I come from). "It is not difficult to silence us," he said, "but this is not because we cannot speak." In that quiet confidence there are reasons of hope for the future of justice and democracy in India.
Lord Meghnad Desai once said that you "prefer to be subversive in a technical way". Might he have meant that you are not a 'doer' but seek change through technical argument? Do you see yourself as an activist?
I see myself as an activist - through writing, speaking and arguing. I've done my share of demonstrations when I was young, when I was a student in Calcutta. Do I believe that causes that activists take up could be helped by reasoning? Yes. But perhaps Meghnad's comment about my being subversive in a technical way relates to the fact that I don't take the view that technical or mathematical arguments are useless and distractive. I still don't know why I was given the Nobel Prize, but whether that was deserved or not, the works of mine they cited were all quite technical - many of them also mathematical.
If I could just get you to comment on an unfolding matter here. Would it be just to give Ajmal Kasab the death penalty? We're often criticized for continuing with capital punishment.
I'm opposed to the death penalty in general and wouldn't want it given to Ajmal Kasab or anyone else. But this, of course, is not a subject matter of my book - it is not an engineer's handbook. I do discuss the need for prevailing practices, including capital punishment, to be scrutinized by public reasoning, and note the fact that capital punishment is most used in countries with relatively little public discussion, the three biggest users being China, Saudi Arabia and Iran. Next comes the US, and I discuss why I disagree with those judges in the US Supreme Court who think that arguments coming from elsewhere (like Europe) are of no relevance in America.
Is justice culturally specific?
No, because there is an obligation to engage in argument no matter where it comes from - far or near.
Who is this book for? Academics who study justice? Philosophers who explore justice? Legislators who create the system that doles out justice? The layperson who thinks about justice?
It is a book on philosophy, but it is meant for everyone. I agree with Antonio Gramsci, the great Italian political leader, that philosophy is not "a strange and difficult thing", but all the things we reason about. Of course I hope there will be some academic interest from professional philosophers, and that those concerned with policy issues will also take an interest. But the idea of justice interests us all.
The Idea of Justice has been described as your most ambitious book yet, but will you accept that its length, subject and style could limit its reach?
The reach of our ideas is always limited to some extent, and if there is some ambition in the book, it lies in my refusal to give up, without a serious effort, trying to communicate with others. In writing about any difficult but important problem, we have to try to catch the complexities involved without making our arguments obtuse, perplexing or inaccessible. I believe it is easy to underestimate the breadth and reach of the interests of the general public. There is a kind of vanity of the self-defined "intellectuals" who bend down to talk to "common people". (It is, by the way, very bad for the intellectual's back to do so much bending down!) Since some of the most insightful comments I have received throughout my long life have come from very young students and sometimes even from unknown neighbours in a train (mostly in India â€" British passengers don't like talking to strangers), I have reason to be optimistic about the interest, involvement and engagement of others.
Has the concept of justice in this century come only to mean human rights?
This is a very interesting question. The idea of human rights is much used in practice, and is very powerfully invoked by activists these days, often with admirable effect. However, the critics of the approach of human rights argue that the idea of such non-legal rights is lacking in foundation. A frequently asked question is: where do human rights come from and what gives them force? One of the aims of the book is to show in what sense - and in what way - human rights have a strong foundation through public reasoning, and how that foundation relates also to the basic analysis of social justice, which too is very dependent on the opportunity of public discussion. It is not so much that the concept of justice "has come only to mean human rights," but that the two related ideas have to be considered together.
It is also important to remember that the idea of human rights has been in use, often in very informal ways and frequently without being called human rights, for a very long time in world history - not just in the 20th and 21st centuries. For example, Ashoka's discussion of everyone's right to speak and to be heard by others, or Akbar's championing of the right to religious freedom, belongs to the subject matter of what is now called human rights. And they also relate to Ashoka's and Akbar's conceptions of social justice.
At the risk of forcing you to reduce 496 pages to a few sentences, what is justice? What should it be for us here?
Justice is a complex idea (I was not surprised that it took me 496 pages to discuss it), but it is very important to understand that justice has much to do with everyone being treated fairly. Even though that connection has been well discussed by the leading political philosopher of our time, John Rawls, I have argued that he neglects a couple of important connections. One neglect is the central recognition that a theory of justice has to be deeply concerned with systematic assessment of how to reduce injustice in the world, rather than only with the identification of what a hypothetical "perfectly just society" would look like.
There may be no agreement on the shape of perfect justice (and also perfect justice will hardly be achievable even if people did agree about what would be immaculately just), but we can still have reasoned agreement on many removable cases of manifest injustice, for example, slavery, or subjugation of women, or widespread hunger and deprivation, or the lack of schooling of children, or absence of available and affordable health care. Second, analysis of justice has to pay attention to the lives that people are actually able to lead, rather than exclusively concentrating only on the nature of "just institutions". In India, as anywhere else, we have to concentrate on removing injustices that are identifiable and that can be remedied.
Is justice essential for democracy to flourish?
One of the main arguments of the book is the role of open public discussion for our understanding of the demands of justice, and particularly of the removal of injustice. Indeed, democracy can be seen as "government by discussion" (an approach made famous by John Stuart Mill), and the pursuit of justice can be much enhanced by good democratic practice - not just well-fought elections but also open and well-aimed public discussion, with a free and vigorous media. In an earlier book, I discussed a remark of a very poor and nearly illiterate peasant, who lived in a village close to Santiniketan (where I come from). "It is not difficult to silence us," he said, "but this is not because we cannot speak." In that quiet confidence there are reasons of hope for the future of justice and democracy in India.
Lord Meghnad Desai once said that you "prefer to be subversive in a technical way". Might he have meant that you are not a 'doer' but seek change through technical argument? Do you see yourself as an activist?
I see myself as an activist - through writing, speaking and arguing. I've done my share of demonstrations when I was young, when I was a student in Calcutta. Do I believe that causes that activists take up could be helped by reasoning? Yes. But perhaps Meghnad's comment about my being subversive in a technical way relates to the fact that I don't take the view that technical or mathematical arguments are useless and distractive. I still don't know why I was given the Nobel Prize, but whether that was deserved or not, the works of mine they cited were all quite technical - many of them also mathematical.
If I could just get you to comment on an unfolding matter here. Would it be just to give Ajmal Kasab the death penalty? We're often criticized for continuing with capital punishment.
I'm opposed to the death penalty in general and wouldn't want it given to Ajmal Kasab or anyone else. But this, of course, is not a subject matter of my book - it is not an engineer's handbook. I do discuss the need for prevailing practices, including capital punishment, to be scrutinized by public reasoning, and note the fact that capital punishment is most used in countries with relatively little public discussion, the three biggest users being China, Saudi Arabia and Iran. Next comes the US, and I discuss why I disagree with those judges in the US Supreme Court who think that arguments coming from elsewhere (like Europe) are of no relevance in America.
Is justice culturally specific?
No, because there is an obligation to engage in argument no matter where it comes from - far or near.
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PRASHANT (A Centre for Human Rights, Justice and Peace)
Street Address : Hill Nagar, Near Kamdhenu Hall, Drive-in Road, Ahmedabad - 380052, Gujarat, India
Postal Address : P B 4050, Navrangpura PO, Ahmedabad - 380 009, Gujarat, India
PRASHANT (A Centre for Human Rights, Justice and Peace)
Street Address : Hill Nagar, Near Kamdhenu Hall, Drive-in Road, Ahmedabad - 380052, Gujarat, India
Postal Address : P B 4050, Navrangpura PO, Ahmedabad - 380 009, Gujarat, India
Phone : 91 79 27455913, 66522333
Fax : 91 79 27489018
Email: sjprashant@gmail.com www.humanrightsindia.in
Fax : 91 79 27489018
Email: sjprashant@gmail.com www.humanrightsindia.in
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