Amartya Sen & George Anastaplo on Literature, Law, and the Idea of Justice

Abstract

Both Professor Anastaplo and Professor Sen would agree that a crisis regarding justice exists in the contemporary world. Each of these scholars has endeavored in their work to address this crisis, in one way or another. For Professor Sen, the crisis is global in scope, and its solution also needs to be global. For Professor Anastaplo, the crisis of justice is local, and situatied in the West, and is a consequence of the break from the Western classical tradition of political philosophy and the way it treated justice, a break for which Niccolò Machiavelli can be considered initially responsible. This essay contrasts the thought of these preeminent scholars on justice, without attempting to prefer one's view over the other.