The Idea of Justice1

Abstract

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Notes 1. Text of the first Mahbub ul Haq Memorial Lecture of the Human Development and Capability Association, given at the New School in New York on 19 September 2007. 2. Underlying the approach is the major issue of what Hilary Putnam calls the denial of a “fact\value dichotomy.” I shall not have the chance to address that methodological question here (although I do discuss it in the book; Sen, A. (forthcoming) The Idea of Justice, Penguin, London and Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass.); but see Hilary Putnam's contribution to this issue. See also Putnam, H. (2002) The Collapse of the Fact/Value Dichotomy and Other Essays, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass.; and Vivian Walsh (2004) ‘Sen after Putnam’, Review of Political Economy, 16, pp. 315–394. 3. This relates to the central focus of the work of the Human Development and Capability Association. Indeed, I would imagine they are getting much attention in the wonderful conference of the Human Development and Capability Association, imaginatively arranged by Sakiko Fukuda Parr, working with Martha Nussbaum, President of the Human Development and Capability Association, and others (including the dynamic Sabina Alkire). 4. I have discussed this issue in my essay ‘Elements of a theory of human rights’, Philosophy and Public Affairs, 32 (2004), pp. 315–356. 5. I tried to go into these issues in my 1984 Dewey Lectures at the Columbia University, which were published in the form of three papers, under the general title of ‘Well‐being, agency and freedom’, Journal of Philosophy, 82 (1985), pp. 169–221. The connections are more fully explored in The Idea of Justice. 6. On this see my article ‘What do we want from a theory of justice?’, The Journal of Philosophy, 103 (2006), pp. 215–238. 7. On this see my essays ‘Maximization and the act of choice’, Econometrica, 65 (1997), pp. 745–779; and ‘Consequential evaluation and practical reason’, Journal of Philosophy, 97 (2000), pp. 477–502. 8. Nagel, T. (2005) ‘The problem of global justice’, Philosophy and Public Affairs, 33, p. 115.