| Details | | Publication Date: | 2009-09-30 |
| Size | | Length: | 467 pages | | Height: | 9.8 in | | Width: | 6.5 in | | Thickness: | 1.5 in | | Weight: | 29.6 oz |
Publisher's Note
Social justice: an ideal, forever beyond our grasp; or one of many practical possibilities? More than a matter of intellectual discourse, the idea of justice plays a real role in how--and how well--people live. And in this book the distinguished scholar Amartya Sen offers a powerful critique of the theory of social justice that, in its grip on social and political thinking, has long left practical realities far behind.
At the heart of Sen's argument is a respect for reasoned differences in our understanding of what a "just society" really is. People of different persuasions--for example, utilitarians, economic egalitarians, labor right theorists, no-nonsense libertarians--might each reasonably see a clear and straightforward resolution to questions of justice; and yet, these clear and straightforward resolutions would be completely different. In light of this, Sen argues for a comparative perspective on justice that can guide us in the choice between alternatives that we inevitably face.
Industry Reviews
"Amartya Sen offers a theoretical argument so richly and lovingly detailed that its central objective has to be teased out of a tangle of specialist debates and engrossing digressions....[H]e blends an expansion of geographical scope with a theory that insists on a more realist brand of reform, in which political theory is not about drafting blueprints for castles in the air but comparing feasible next steps for improving the world as it stands."
(12/07/2009)
"John Rawls's A THEORY OF JUSTICE...has cast a long shadow over modern political philosophy. Sen's stimulating and eloquent new work is in some ways a commentary on Rawls, but its refinements give his arguments greater applicability."
(12/07/2009)
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