Philosophy in the Service of Humanity

Abstract

From this account of my theory of justice it is possible to get a sense of why philosophy matters in the development debate. Our critique of dominant models was informed by our immersion in philosophical arguments, including those of Aristotle, Adam Smith, and John Stuart Mill. But justice is not the only philosophical issue development practitioners need to consider. They need, as well, to develop sophisticated and philosophically informed accounts of other key notions well treated by philosophers, such as the nature of freedom; the meaning and significance of ethnic and religious pluralism; the nature of human welfare and happiness; the concepts of desire, preference, and emotion. There is also the overarching meta-question about how one ought to attempt to justify an ethical or political theory (for example, whether by seeking some indubitable foundation, as Plato thought, or by seeking the greatest fit and coherence among all the contending concerns, as John Rawls thought). We will not make progress unless we continually wrestle with all of these large questions, and economics, as I have said, has an unfortunate tendency to seek premature closure so that mathematical sophistication can take its happy course.