In the book “Idea of Justice”, Amartya Sen argues that traditional political philosophy which talks about the just, or a set of principles which can be used to define perfectly just institutions for governing the society reveals little about injustice and how we can identify and reduce injustices. He describes the Enlightenment thinkers who wrote the dominant theories of justice as “transcendental institutionalists in search of perfectly just institutions” and seeks to understand justice as propagated by writers such as Smith, Bentham, Mill and Marx, Wollstonecraft who took a variety of approaches to advance the cause of social justice by focussing on the actual behaviour of people, rather than presuming compliance by all with “ideal” behaviour. In his book, Sen talks about Niti and Nyay, where Niti refers to rules and Nyay refers to realisation. Niti cannot be implemented individually as enforcement of rules and regulations is important to maintain adherence to the rules. Both, implemented together would result in maximum public welfare and justice.
Sen’s idea of justice is an extension as well as a critic of John Rawl’s work which has the foundational idea that justice has to be seen in demand of fairness. In this paper, I will be going through the dominant approach led by Hobbes, Rousseau, Kant etc, Rawl’s theory of Justice and Sen’s idea of justice and it’s contemporary relevance.
Transcendental Institutionalism – The Dominant Approach
The transcendental Institutionalist approach aims to identify an ideal of justice and then, on that basis, to define the nature of just institutions. Being based on the social contract model, it aims to frame a unique set of principles of justice and so make absolutist judgments of the form ‘society x is just.
Sen, however says that the transcendental institutionalism approach fails to attain the fundamental goal of any theory of justice which is creation of tools which allow us to achieve greater social justice. He argues that possessing an overall conception of the idea of justice is neither necessary nor sufficient in order to formulate comparative judgments regarding social justice.
According to him, the dominant approach has two central problems –
The problem of feasibility – Where there is difficulty and maybe even impossibility of arriving at a single set of principles that can help us to select just institutions through a process of impartial reasoning.
The problem of redundancy – Where the identification of fully just social arrangements is neither a necessary nor sufficient guide to reasoned choice of just policies, strategies or institutions.
The first problem relates to the fact that many principles can pass the test of impartiality. An illustration of this would be – competing claims over a single flute. A children can contest that they should receive the flute because a) They are an expert at playing the flute, b) They are the poorest of the lot and c) They made the flute without anyone else’s help. Each argument is compelling and just in this scenario.
The second problem relates to the fact that identification of just social principles is neither necessary nor sufficient. It is insufficient because ‘the characterisation of spotless justice, even if such a characterisation were to emerge clearly, would not entail any delineation whatsoever of how diverse departures from spotlessness would be compared and ranked’An illustration for the same would be comparing an art piece. Someone may like one art piece more than the other and there is also no way for them to rank the art pieces since it is based on individual taste and cannot be quantified in terms of ranking. It is also unnecessary to ascertain the “best art piece in the world” as there is no reason to do the same.
Rawl’s Theory of Justice
John Bradley Rawls is known as the philosopher of liberal tradition, whose theory goes parallel to Kant’s theory of Social Contract. Kant says that just laws arise out of social contracts. When different people gather to make constitutional conventions, all of them have different interests and demands. They also have different bargaining power, thus the one with more power has more say in the contract. Therefore, the actual social contracts are not necessarily just laws. These contracts only highlight differences and would only be special to them who have more knowledge of law and politics. Thus, even though Kant is a contractarian, he does not trace the origin of any social contract that gives rise to just laws.
Veil of Ignorance
Rawls uses and explains this idea of a hypothetical social contract by the way of “veil of ignorance”.
In a given social convention, all kinds of people would affect this “just law”. Poor, rich, strong, weak etc, all of them would have different interests which would reflect in this idea thus, this discussion would lead to choosing a compromised idea of justice which may not necessarily serve the purpose. To counter this, Rawls proposes this veil of ignorance, wherein if we gather everyone where everyone is equal, this equality will be assured through the veil of ignorance. The idea of the veil of ignorance is that people are behind a kind of veil and do not know certain facts about each other. And due to this, nobody would have superior bargaining power in the collective idea of justice.
Sen argues that even if veil of ignorance would hypothetically be a way of reaching an impartial social choice which is free of various vested interests, it does not ensure the open scrutiny of the values of the people within the original position. The vast alternative views held by outsiders and their morals and ranking of social realisations that can reveal hidden biases in our choice of basic principles are beyond the scope of Rawls’ theory. Furthermore, he was of the view that by limiting moral claims of outsiders, we may be doing an injustice to those that fall outside the artificially closed circle of the original position.
This closed impartiality can be contrasted with the open impartiality of Adam Smith’s ‘impartial spectator’ wherein he asks us to observe our actions and institutions from the standpoint of an outsider, which specifically refrains from limiting the extent to which the views of others can be considered, refusing to confine moral discussion within the boundaries of a nation-state or any other locality. As in social choice theory, such openness to, and critical reflection upon, alternative views and different ways of approaching social problems, Sen believes it can provide a solid ground for ranking the ‘just-ness’ or just manifest injustice of certain social realisations.
The Principles of Justice
Rawls talks about which principles of justice should not be chosen, rather than talking clearly about which ones should be chosen. Rawls argues that we should not choose the principle of utilitarianism. He says, that we should support individual rights and should not want the majority to tyrannise the minority. We should have a system of equal rights and hence would choose a principle of equal basic liberty. He further arguers for equal distribution of wealth and income. This, Rawls says, can be done by agreeing to the qualified principle of equality. Rawls called this principle as the “difference principle”.
Rawls talks about the liberty principle in a form of guarantee of fair value of the political liberties. It requires that “citizens similarly gifted and motivated have roughly an equal chance of influencing the government’s policy and of attaining positions of authority irrespective of their economic and social class”. Thus ensuring that members of a social group are able to participate in the political process which conforms to the principle of equality.
Rawls also talks about the “difference principle” where social and economic inequalities should be so arranged so that they are for the greatest benefit of the least advantaged persons. The people under the veil of ignorance don’t know that under what system are they going to be placed in, if the veil is lifted, whether they will be healthy or unhealthy, rich or poor. Thus, it is advisable to have an arrangement, whereby there is an equal distribution of wealth so as to ensure that each member is on a safe side. Or the members can go for a different setup, on a qualified principle of equality (difference principle), according to which, only those social and economic inequalities will be permitted that work to the benefit or advantage of the least worst off.
To remove the possibility wherein the two principles – difference and liberty, do not come in conflict of each other, Rawls also proposed a third principle “principles of priority”. It means that the first principle of justice takes priority over the second and the principle of fair equality of opportunity takes priority over the difference principle. This implies that the equality of basic liberties and rights, including the fair value of the political liberties, is not to be overridden by other considerations.
Sen argues that transcendental institutionalism is just a moral conjecture, a hypothesis, on which he progresses his theory and also has certain limitations. Sen’s first objection is to the fact that the original position only creates a hypothetical situation and it may never be able to take in view the plurality of genuine demands. He argues that resources are limited and thus we may not be able to meet the plurality of genuine voices airing their genuine demands.
Furthermore, Sen argues that liberty is a sacrosanct principle which people will not like to compromise about even if it is related to better distribution of wealth or even if it facilitates furtherance of wealth. Rawls deals with the ‘primary goods’ which includes things such as rights, liberties and opportunities, income and wealth, and the social bases of self respect but in reality, liberty cannot be given utmost priority over hunger, medical neglect etc. thus putting liberty at a sacrosanct spot wrong.
Rawls also talked about incentives where incentives can be given so that it instils amongst the member a new vigour which motivates them to do their work efficiently. But at the same time, Sen argues that the principles adopted at the original position eliminate the need for incentives. Thus it is contradictory to lay down incentives.
Sen’s Idea of Justice and its Contemporary Relevance
While Sen’s idea of justice is influenced by Rawls work, most of the idea of justice is based on welfare economics. As he argues that transcendental institutionalism fails to attain the fundamental goal of any theory of justice: namely, the creation of tools which allow us to achieve greater social justice in the real world, realisation-focused comparison, which aims to give practical tools to discriminate between real situations, focusing on the outcomes realised by actual social institutions, is found to be a better approach in his idea of justice. According to him, social choice theory, which is concerned with the ranking of social states, then emerges as a better framework for reflection on social justice issues than the social contract model. Niti and Nyay is a concept which Sen talks about in his idea of justice where Niti refers to rules and Nyay refers to realisation. According to him, a realisation based perspective is necessary as it deals with the impossibility of searching for the perfectly just and focusses on eliminating the injustice in the world. He further gave an example that the agitation against slavery in the eighteenth and the nineteenth century was not successful because they were labouring under the belief that abolition of slavery will lead to a perfectly just society. It was intolerably nauseating injustice that made abolition of slavery a priority.
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