# Amartya Sen's approach of justice and the world: a situated but influential approach

Muriel Gilardone

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Muriel Gilardone. Amartya Sen's approach of justice and the world: a situated but influential approach. Indigo. Humanities Magazine for young people, 2011, 4, pp.36-47. halshs-00565143

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# Amartya Sen's Approach to Justice and the World

## : A Situated but Influential Approach

Muriel Gilardone

Whatever is the degree of determination of science—the questions it asks, the methods it uses—by its state of advancement, the choice of investigation cannot, according to Sen, be divorced from the values of the investigator, which means that the choice of problems might be affected by ethics. In other words, each intellectual production conveys a representation of the world, an ideology; the orientation and the style of the enquiries are marked by the character of the authors, their personal affinities and beliefs and the fortunes of life.

" (...) among the great variety of developments that have occurred in the twentieth century, I did not, ultimately, have any difficulty in choosing one as the preeminent development of the period: the rise of democracy." -Amartya Kumar Sen¹)

Indeed, two priorities can be identified in Sen's career, both connected to the idea that only enlightened democracy can achieve justice: upstream, developing his scientific com-

petence and making his discipline evolve in a direction which corresponds better to his conception of the world; downstream, informing public opinion about his analyses and results. His faith in democracy motivated him to challenge Arrow's "impossibility theorem"(2), and has been a guiding line in his research in social choice theory as well as in his empirical analyses. He also wanted to change the perception that philosophy was "too remote from economics"(3), while economics had emerged as a part of moral science. This explains why Sen decided to study philosophy—including logic, epistemology as well as moral and political philosophy—in parallel with his research on social choice theory. Both related closely to his older concerns about democracy and equity⁴.

And one cannot but be amazed by the large scope of his work. His contributions intend not only to renew normative economics but political philosophy as well, proposing another way than the Rawlsian way to apprehend justice. Calling economic orthodoxy into

<figure><img src="image_2.png" /><figcaption>Muriel Gilardone
Lecturer in Economics
at the University of Caen
Basse-Normandie, France</figcaption></figure>
question is not enough; Sen envisages calling
philosophical orthodoxy into question too.
But more basically, his obsession for enlarging
the accessibility of his work must be under-
stood as the will to sustain public debates and
to create a dialogue between scientists and
the population at large.

Sen is thus situated in a general per-
spective of history, but he could also act on
this history and particularly on the history of
thought. Sen considers that:

Researching is an action and, like any other action,
there is ultimately a question of its justification. The
questions "how should I act? What should I do?" are
critically evaluative ones in the choice of research
actions, in the same way they are in other types of
choices.⁵

He questions the meaning and motivations
of scientific reasoning and the choice of prob-
lems to study. For him, these choices cannot
be "value free", or divorced from the values
of the investigator. This idea offers a clue to
answer commentators who—disconcerted by
the heterogeneity of Sen's contributions either
in social choice theory, in moral or political
philosophy, or in development economics—
have contended that is was possible to ana-
lyze Sen's approach while ruling out one or
another aspect of his work.

Two Traditions

Amartya Sen's philosophical approach is, as
every political and scientific thought, a situ-
ated approach. His idea of justice, which is a
proposition for a renewed theory of justice,

emerges clearly from the debates provoked by
the publication in 1971 of John Rawls' *Theory
of Justice*⁶. While Rawls is a philosopher, his
book has triggered the big comeback of the so-
cial justice issue in economics—an issue that
had been somehow outshone by the domina-
tion, since the 1940s, of Paretian approaches
in normative economics and the “taboo” of
interpersonal utility comparisons⁷. Debates
have centered on the measurement system
to judge individual advantage and have con-
cerned, on the one hand, the way to aggregate
the information relative to this advantage
and, on the other, the priority to give to some
aspects of individual advantage. Sen has
largely contributed to these debates, particu-
larly by proposing the concept of “capability”
that centers on individual life potentialities
rather than incomes or resources. The idea is
to estimate what individuals can do or be in
society rather than what they have. He came
to that concept as he was seeking a morally
relevant dimension for normative exercises,
which would go beyond utility and primary
goods, which were both unsatisfactory. Utility
was seen as a too subjective criterion on one’s
own welfare, and primary goods as too good-
centered. Nevertheless, from Sen’s first and
well-known presentation of his capability ap-
proach, one could easily understand that the
concept of “basic capabilities” was conceived
as an extension of the Rawlsian concept of
primary goods in a non-fetishist direction:

The focus on basic capabilities can be seen as a natu-
ral extension of Rawls's concern with primary goods,
shifting attention from goods to what goods do to
human beings. [...] There are, of course, many diffi-
culties with the notion of "basic capability equality."
In particular, the problem of indexing the basic ca-
pability bundles is a serious one. It is, in many ways,
a problem comparable with the indexing of primary
good bundles in the context of Rawlsian equality.
[...] Indeed, basic capability equality can be seen as
essentially an extension of the Rawlsian approach in
a non-fetishist direction.⁸)

realization-focused
comparative approaches

Since, Sen has been investigating on the im-
plications and the demands of such a concept,
but he has gone further. In his last book, *The
Idea of Justice*, Sen advocates a comparative ap-
proach of justice that is a radical departure
from a theory of justice in its accepted mean-
ing. Indeed a theory of justice would sup-
posedly propose aggregative or prescriptive
principles, which Sen has always refused to
specify—considering it as a matter of social
choice to be constantly renewed. It is thus a
radical departure from John Rawls’ theory
of justice. According to Sen, Rawls belongs
to a tradition he calls “transcendental insti-
tutionalism” while Sen himself belongs to a
tradition of “realization-focused comparative
approaches”. Both traditions have emerged
in the Enlightenment period, but radically
differ in their way of reasoning and in their
object of reasoning. The first one was led by
Hobbes and particularly developed by Locke,
Rousseau and Kant; the other was pursued in
various ways by Smith, Condorcet, Wollstone-
craft, Bentham, Marx and Mill, among others.

The first examines the nature of "the just" in order to find the perfect institutions; the other compares different social realizations and tries to find some criteria for one alternative being 'less unjust' than another. The first one is pure abstraction; the other is grounded in experience and observation. While the comparative approaches to which Sen refers are considerably more modest, they are thought to be more efficient to reduce injustice.

For Sen "transcendental institutionalism" overlooks some serious points. He identifies two problematic aspects of *transcendentalism: feasibility and redundancy*. This means that it is neither possible (*feasibility* aspect), nor useful (*redundancy* aspect) to reach a reasonable agreement on the nature of a "just society". It is more relevant to choose among the feasible alternatives, on the basis of practical reason. Moreover *institutionalism* is also problematic; an arrangement-focused view of justice is neither necessary nor sufficient to ensure justice. What is important is the impact of arrangements on individual behaviors and capabilities, on the lives people can lead. What is needed for the comparative approach that Sen promotes is a comprehensive search for social agreements through rankings of alternatives that can be realized, based on public reasoning.

In fact, procedures are crucial in Sen's thought. What must particularly be held under scrutiny in his view is the reasoning on which an ethical proposition is based and the acceptability of that way of reasoning. It relates closely to the issue of objectivity that, for Sen, refers to the ability to stand up to
open public reasoning, as it will reflect the impartial nature of the proposed positions and the arguments in their support. In this regard, Sen draws inspiration from Rawls: "a conception of objectivity must establish a public framework of thought sufficient for the concept of judgment to apply and for conclusions to be reached on the basis of reasons and evidence after discussion and due reflection."⁹) This point cannot but strengthen Sen's idea since the 1960s according to which value judgments not only can be discussed but can evolve through discussion. And as the discussion also evolves with time, context or people involved in it, Sen opts for the social choice approach rather than that of the social contract. This way of thinking is at the heart of social choice theory which Sen traces back to Condorcet, while the formal discipline has emerged with Arrow (1951).

## Sen's Loyalty to Social Choice Theory

Sen's philosophy is indeed also situated in a particular discipline: economics, and more precisely social choice theory, to which Sen dedicated his research since the early 1960s. Arrow's "possibility theorem" sparked off this particular and active field of investigation. It became quickly known as the "impossibility theorem" because of his devastating result: "If we exclude the possibility of interpersonal comparisons of utility, then the only methods of passing from individual tastes to social preferences [...] which will be defined for a wide range of sets of individual orderings are either imposed or dictatorial"¹⁰). In other words, it showed the difficulty of renouncing to interpersonal util-

ity comparisons while aggregating individual preferences to reach a complete and consistent collective choice. According to Sen, this result involved: (1) in politics, an extreme sacrifice of participatory decisions, and (2) in welfare economics, a gross inability to be sensitive to the heterogeneous interests of a diverse population"¹¹). And Sen's resoluteness to contribute to social choice theory, and more generally to normative economics, seems to have originated from those implications.

One can wonder with Desai¹²) why, when there were urgent problems of poverty, hunger and unemployment, was Sen so concerned about mathematical logic—including transitivity and symmetry—and utilitarianism's problems. But his interest in social choice theory would better be defined as a research for democratic procedures to ground just collective choices. The problem with this particular and active field of investigation is that its results and methods are hardly accessible to non-specialists. Sen is one of the few who has tried to show that the underlying reasoning is very close to the one of political philosophers who develop a comparative approach for justice. In fact, what he was really battling to establish was that social choice was of greater relevance to economics than some welfare economists seemed to think, as well as the necessity in modern economic theory for looking at moral and political philosophy. It is only forty years later that the ambitious architecture of Sen's economic thought has become clearly visible.

While Sen does not remain faithful to the Arrowian letter, he nevertheless follows
its spirit. The corollary of this "roundabout
inspiration" is that one cannot understand
some of Sen's theoretical choices without
coming back to their Arrovian origins,
which are sometimes well-hidden. A sign of
Arrow's influence shows in Sen's particular
reiteration of a collective choice approach
outside social choice theory in a less system-
atic perspective, leaving room for indetermi-
nate horizons.

In fact, Sen takes a united stand against
two kinds of usual approach in economics:
1.against methodological individualism, he
underlines the reality of individuals as so-
sial human beings; 2.against positivism and
mechanist approaches, he stresses that hu-
man being exists, and more precisely co-ex-
ists, and that this co-existence is irreducible to
a purely economical or mechanist reasoning.
Far from a naïve view of human generosity,
which would be that human beings would
spontaneously act for the good of others, Sen's
thought is on the contrary very influenced by
powerful traces in his memory of conflicts
between Hindu and Moslem communities¹³.
The experience seems to have been devastat-
ing for the young Sen, and suddenly made
him aware of the dangers of narrowly defined
identities. In this regard, it is important to re-
mark that he does not reduce individuals to
their place or function within a given society,
neither to a given culture or community. In-
dividuals, in his view, transcend the sum of
their social belongings. Ignoring the fact that
people are always complex, multi-faceted
individuals with plural social identity is, ac-
cording to Sen, an interference with people's

freedom to make their own choices and, thus,
an obstacle to democracy.

So it is right to say that, in Sen's ap-
proach, the individual remains in the fore-
front as in any western philosophy. Howev-
er it appears that the Sennian subject is not
defined by a true understanding of what he
or she is, but by an opening to what is not
him or her. The individuals' consciousness
does not come so much from introspective
thinking, but deliberation with the other,
which supposes taking into account the oth-
er's views and situations. At the same time,
deliberation is not reduced to a discussion be-
tween "the I" and "the other", but consists also
of a questioning of each one's environment-
tending to make objective his own position
in the world—and a discussion between "the
I" and himself, intensified by the discussion
with the other.

The possibility of choice, whether in-
dividual or collective, does exist only on the
basis of this kind of deliberation, and with an
acknowledgement of value and interest con-
flicts. Deliberation does not indeed necessari-
ly entail a coincidence of interests or priorities,
but it can highlight a disproportion of advan-
tages according to some shared values. This
statement requires surmounting divisions of
class, gender, rank, location, religion, com-
munity, and other established barriers with
which injustices are often linked. And from
this statement, along with "an objective analy-
sis of the contrast between what is happening
and what could have happened" (Sen, 2010, p.
389), can emerge "responsibility". Undeniably,
when disadvantage is clearly stated within a
public and open framework of though, it is
then very hard to act as if one doesn't know.

Ultimately Sen's background in social
choice theory has played a critical part in his
way of considering social decisions, but he
champions an ethics of democracy that goes
far beyond a mere possibility for vote. Indi-
vidual preferences still have some interest—
unsurprisingly given Sen's attachment to
democracy—but the only preferences to count
are those which consider the other and are
built with the other, through deliberation.
He refuses the “disengaged tolerance” that
has dominated normative economics in the
twentieth century and has permitted avoid-
ing reasoning and discussion about conflic-
tive positions. He would rather refer to John
Stuart Mill's idea of “a government by discus-
sion”, according to which democracy's success
depends of the extent to which people's voices
can be heard.

This view is maybe not disconnected
from a shift in his work in the middle of the
1970s, orienting his research more and more
toward empirical studies. At this time Sen
was theoretically inspired by the critical con-
tributions of Rawls on equity and Nozick on
liberty(14), although he was already doubtful
towards their “contractualist” approach and
their way of seeing individual advantage. But
his interest in equality and freedom has also
been deeply influenced by his Indian experi-
ence and the lessons he has drawn from his
analysis of famines and gender inequalities.

Sen's Influential Indian Background

One cannot forget that Sen is the son and

grand-son of Indian intellectuals, close to the
poet and philosopher Rabindranath Tagore.
He chose to live and work in the most pres-
tigious western university, certainly because
it was the best way to obtain social and scien-
tific recognition, but he keeps including in his
writings references to his culture, and more
lately to his Indian experience. For instance,
while he claims his belonging to a tradition
inherited from the European Enlightenment,
Sen also emphasizes the similarity between
his approach and "the long Indian tradition of
seeing justice as nyaya (concentrating on com-
prehensive outcomes), rather than as niti (fo-
cusing on arrangements and institutions)"(15).
Indeed, to explain his partition of the differ-
ent approaches of justice into two traditions
which both have emerged in the Enlighten-
ment period, Sen finds useful to invoke an
old distinction from the Sanskrit literature on
ethics and jurisprudence:

niti and nyaya

Consider two different words—niti and nya-
ya—both of which stand for justice in classi-
cal Sanskrit. Among the principal uses of the
term niti are organizational propriety and
behavioural correctness. In contrast with niti,
the term nyaya stands for a comprehensive
concept of realized justice. In that line of vi-
sion, the roles of institutions, rules and orga-
nization, important as they are, have to be as-
sessed in the broader and more inclusive per-
spective of nyaya, which is inescapably linked
with the world that actually emerges, not just
the institutions or rules we happen to have.¹⁶
Thus Sen belongs to the international community of economists which implies his conforming to specific conventions and rules, but he seems to be aware that his origins have partly shaped his world vision. In what drives him, there is also a strong component of awareness of his privileged condition in a world with much poverty and inequality as well as the feeling that he owes something to others<sup>17</sup>. His education has persuaded him that it would be irrelevant to tackle those crucial issues directly without paying sufficient attention to the role of theorization.

In this regard, Sen outlines the influence Amiya Dasgupta<sup>18</sup>, a colleague of his father, in his choice to study economic theory whereas he was quite sceptical of its impact and much more concerned with things that look immediately applicable and conspicuous in their relevance to the real world. Dasgupta made him aware that "one could make a terrible mistake, even in terms of any relevance for practical concerns, by going too directly at it". Sen was very concerned with politics, but he learnt from Dasgupta the crucial role that theorizing inevitably has to play in setting the problem right and in preparing for facing practical problems. In turn, economic theory has to be very concerned with the kind of problems that ultimately are important to people. He had also learnt from Dasgupta that being interested in practical Indian problems shouldn't mean rejecting western economic theory, but rather looking for what in any theory is relevant to the real world.

This perspective entails avoiding a double pitfall: 1. considering the world as "ly-

ing at his feet", that leads to the belief that one can grow away from the world, or govern it (philosophically speaking); 2. Intending to change the world immediately, which would be an ill-founded philosophical abstraction. Many years later, Sen's gratitude to Dasgupta appeared clearly in his essay *Poverty and Famines* as he dedicated it "to Amiya Dasgupta who introduced me to economics and taught me what it is about"<sup>19</sup>. There are two reasons for his gratitude to appear precisely in that book. First, there is a concentration on the kind of problems that really affect people in Asia or Africa, and that are neglected by standard economic theory. Second, Sen presents and uses there a theoretical approach that is different from the prevalent approach of hunger and famine and, according to him, more relevant.<sup>20</sup>

His work on famines—as well as his work on social identity or gender inequality—attests to another characteristic of Sen's thought: it is influenced by his life experience and Indian background. In a way, Sen is very close to Merleau Ponty, for whom "to the test of events, we acquaint ourselves with what is for us unacceptable and it is this interpreted experience which becomes thesis and policy"<sup>21</sup>. Sen's thought is indeed deeply rooted in the world as he knows it; in his books he faces events which made him feel a strong sense of injustice. And as an economist and philosopher he must go beyond a mere factual analysis, which led him to propose new frameworks of thought to analyze facts. In *Poverty and Famines*, he showed that famines were not due to a food shortage *per se*, but to
failures of entitlements to food for a part of a population. He could change the analysis of famines and the way of acting on it because of his working out of an *entitlement approach*—opposed to a *food-based approach* to starvation.

What is clear is that he still was driven by an instinctive sentiment of injustice experienced in his youth. It is now well known that he had been deeply shaken by the agony and outrage caused by the Great Bengal famine of 1943. Although he was a witness, and not a victim, this event really made an impression on him. When the Bengal famine occurred, Sen was a nine-year-old boy. He remembers he was allowed by his grand-father to give a cigarette tin of rice to anyone that came for help. But the main memory he has and prefers to focus on is, on the contrary, his feeling of helplessness and "bewilderment"²². Anyway, he then realized that no one in his family, nor any of his friends' families, were affected by the famine. And this quite transparent and brutal class-division has long sensitized him bitterly to the issue of inequality. Secondly, he knew from his parents that "the crop hadn't been bad in any sense so it was surprising that there would be a famine,"²³ which maybe later oriented him to postulate that the problem was not just about food. It can be presumed with some plausibility that the memories of that period did play a part in his enquiry, as well as the experience of feeling helpless in his choice to work on famines thirty years after. Analysis does not dispel nor cancel what "shaked" the thinker, but emotional shocks prompt him to think and to reason. This is the perfect illustration of Sen's will to reconcile

sentiments and reason.

Here one can identify another Indian influence on Sen's way of thinking: Rabin-dranath Tagore. Sen has sometimes acknowledged this intellectual filiation and contrasted the common perception about Tagore in the West—a perception that overemphasized his mystical side. Though he didn't deny the immediate role of raw sentiments and unexamined affection, Tagore considered that reasoning had to be prior in every decision and action; as Sen described it:

> You ask yourself why you are doing it, what do you get out of it... Am I being sufficiently self-critical? Am I asking the right questions? Is this right for me? What will it do to other people, because we also belong to a world community? What do we owe to others and what do others owe to us? How do we relate to each other? One could say that Tagore's... techniques of analysis are more relevant than Gandhi, who was less concerned with reason in a very broad sense. To take into account affection and sentiments and emotions but at the same time subject them all to reasoned scrutiny. That is quintessential Tagore territory.²⁴

This way of thinking inevitably brings to mind the outlook that Sen then developed concerning economic methodology, as it was presented in introduction. Tagore's reputation as a poet or mystic has often eclipsed his contributions to other fields, particularly to educational methods. He wanted his students to become universal men and women like himself and to overcome feelings of narrow nationalism. Whereas faith was more important
to Gandhi, reason and freedom were essential to Tagore. "Being free to determine what you want to do rather than being guided by tradition, received wisdom, was much more important to Tagore than it was for Gandhi."<sup>25</sup> He was also uncompromising in his belief that human beings could absorb quite different cultures in constructive ways:

> Whatever we understand and enjoy in human products instantly becomes ours, wherever they might have their origin. I am proud of my humanity when I can acknowledge the poets and artists of other countries as my own. Let me feel with unalloyed gladness that all the great glories of man are mine...<sup>26</sup>

## Taking Sentiments Seriously: Return to the Smithian Tradition

It is right to say that Sen emphasizes the importance of reason and public debate in contrast to faith and unreasoned convictions—stressing that the value of reason is not quintessentially European or Western. Nevertheless, he does not ignore the role played by emotions, psychology or instincts in decision-making. Furthermore he considers it necessary to take them into account in our evaluations of justice or injustice. To strengthen his view of sentiments, Sen finds another fundamental support in Adam Smith's philosophical writings. Indeed, it is not from his *Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations* that Sen draws his arguments, but from his *Theory of Moral Sentiments*. Sen sees there a proof that sentiments are important, and that it is possible to examine them in order to

uncover local prejudices and preconceptions at their source. Smith has shown that instinctive reactions toward a specific conduct rely, more often implicitly, on our understanding of what leads to this conduct. First perceptions may indeed change "in response to critical examination, for example on the basis of causal empirical investigation that may show, Smith notes, that a certain 'object is the means of obtaining some other'."<sup>27</sup> Smith aimed at revealing the hypocrisy of the « good moral », or simply the absence of thinking about our sentiments, highlighting that wealth and greatness, abstracted from merit and virtue, almost constantly obtain our respect. « Self-love » takes then the form of « self-interest », economic motivation, materialist desires, but not without serious social cost. Bringing to light this fool's bargain concerning the virtues attributed to fortune was for Smith the means to bring about an evolution in mentalities, and thereby behaviors.

## reason and public debate

In Sen's work, there is no particular theory regarding moral sentiments, but a will to examine their influence on our reasoning, and conversely to examine the influence—often implicit—of our reasoning on them. There is no "sentimentalism" here, but the idea of a reasoning that is not synonymous with "cold calculation", which is an indirect criticism of decision theories that see rationality as a mere maximization of utility. In other words, Sen urges us to acknowledge the complex relationship between reason and emotions, par-
ticularly in giving an important role to the
Smithian notion of "sympathy". In contrast to
his common image, Smith was not a defender
of selfishness, as was Bernard Mandeville at
that time. Far from what we now call "meth-
odological individualism" (which tends to see
individuals as *homo oeconomicus*), the Smith-
ian subject desperately needs other people to
forge his identity, given his desire to be ap-
proved in the sentiments and passions that
motivate his acts.

Moreover, Sen sees in the "impartial
spectator" imagined by Smith the means for
each one to think about his own sentiments
and actions' motives, by removing himself
from his own natural station and endeavour-
ing to view them at a certain distance from
him. The longer the distance, the more "the
most complete lesson of self-command"²⁸ will
be learnt. But the longer the distance, the more
it is difficult to put oneself in the position of
other people and imagine how they are likely
to view our sentiments and motives. Here
comes the decisive part of discussion and
confrontation of points of view. Sen goes even
as far as considering that the Smithian rea-
soning requires taking interest in outsiders'
point of view in order to go beyond the con-
straint of local conventions: "in the approach
advanced by Adam Smith, invoking 'impar-
tial spectators', distant voices may be given a
very important place for their enlightenment
relevance, for example to avoid parochial-
ism of local perspectives."²⁹ Smith's "opened
impartiality"—involving taking note of what
is seen by 'the eyes of the rest of mankind'—
is certainly even more necessary today in

our present globalized world. At least, this is
a useful argument for Sen to consider global
justice, including issues like stopping terror-
ism across borders or thinking about human
rights or economic crisis. In his opinion, sym-
pathy can have significant scope and power
in such debates, forcing one to think seriously
about what can be done, rather than proceed-
ing as if societies did not owe anything to each
other. Here is a good starting point for a more
comprehensive ethical reasoning—creating
above all a moral obligation for thinking—but
sympathy alone cannot replace practical rea-
soning.

Consequently Sen belongs to a tradi-
tion of economists largely described by Emma
Rothschild, his wife, in *Economic Sentiments*,
including particularly Adam Smith and Con-
dorcet. For Rothschild, the indefinite idea of a
sentiment—as a feeling of which one is con-
scious and on which one reflects—was at the
heart of Smith's and Condorcet's political and
moral theory. For these authors, sentiments
were "events that connected the individual
to the larger relationships in which he or she
lived (the society, or the family, or the state)."³⁰
While Sen keeps away from David Hume for
whom passion was probably more powerful
than reason, he nonetheless criticizes the au-
thors who based their theories exclusively on
reason among whom he seems to put Kant
and Diderot, addressing without doubt indi-
rectly his contemporaries.

Within the framework of an approach
to justice that does not confine itself to institu-
tions, but gives an equally important role to
behavioral characteristics and social interac-
tions, it is thus necessary to take interest in
emotions because they are often at the source
of behaviors. Sen stresses, quoting Charles
Dickens, "there is nothing so finely perceived
and finely felt, as injustice."<sup>31</sup> Instinctive reac-
tions have something to say, while it is cru-
cial that they do not have the last word. The
importance of emotions can be appreciated
within the reach of reason, in particular by
deliberating on the motives involved.

Conclusion

Sen's idea of justice invites us to speak another
language than the language of mere self-inter-
est, to revive the grammar of our moral senti-
ments, in order to give way to the theoretical
dignity of solidarity, social commitment and
impartiality understood as disinterestedness.
This suggestion contrasts with James Buchan-
an's proposal of "A Politics without romance",
a rational choice theory in which value judg-
ments and, worse, sentiments would be ir-
relevant<sup>32</sup>. On the contrary, Sen considers
that politics needs some romance because the
pursuit of justice, or more modestly the will to
reduce injustice in the world, requires a com-
bination of indignation and reasoning. His
interest for Mary Wollstonecraft's fight for the
rights of women and other deprived groups
of people in the eighteenth century is very
characteristic of this view:

The role and reach of reason are not undermined by
the indignation that leads us to an investigation of
the ideas underlying the nature and basis of the per-
sistent inequalities [...] While Wollstonecraft is quite
remarkable in combining wrath and reasoning in

the same work (indeed, alongside each other), even
pure expressions of discontent or disappointment
can make their own contributions to public reason-
ing if they are followed by investigation (perhaps
undertaken by others) of whatever reasonable basis
there might be for the indignation.33)

democracy, ethics and justice

Naivety is not always where one might think
it is and, sometimes, reality takes its revenge
for being so badly seized. Democracy, ethics
and justice cannot be a mere question of indi-
vidual utility or rationality. Collective rules or
norms are necessary in the world we live in,
not only because they are useful for the satis-
faction of individual preferences or for mutu-
ally profitable cooperation.

The social contract tradition has, ac-
cording to Sen, such serious limitations in
providing an underpinning for a theory of
justice that it ultimately serves as a barrier to
practical reason on matters of justice. In con-
trast, his social choice approach is, in its deep-
est ambitions, incomplete so that it forbids
any doctrinal closure. And for good reason: it
is influenced by a political philosophy of de-
liberation, a moral philosophy based on needs
and an empirical approach of social and eco-
nomic facts. In other words, Sen denies the
possibility for an issue to be totally and defini-
tively understood and the idea of a policy that
could make the future fully mastered. But he
believes that we have to acknowledge our hu-
man aptitudes for reason, argue, sympathize
and cooperate to strengthen the general pur-
suit of justice. **INDIGO**
<footnote n="1">1) Sen A. K. (1999b), "Democracy as a Universal Value", *Journal of Democracy*, July, 10 (3), p. 3.</footnote>

<footnote n="2">2) Arrow K. J. (1950), "A Difficulty in the Concept of Social Welfare", *Journal of Political Economy*, August, Vol. 58, N° 4, pp. 328-46.</footnote>

<footnote n="3">3) Swedberg R. (1990), "Amartya Sen", in Swedberg R., *Economics and Sociology: Redefining their Boundaries – Conversations with Economists and Sociologists*, Princeton, New Jersey, Princeton University Press, p. 254.</footnote>

<footnote n="4">4) Sen A. K. (1999a), "Autobiography", *The Nobel Prizes 1998*, Tore Frängsmyr, Nobel Foundation, Stockholm, http://www.nobel.se/economics/laureates/1998/sen-autobio.html, p. 6.</footnote>

<footnote n="5">5) Sen A. K. (1989), "Economic Methodology: Heterogeneity and Relevance", *Social Research*, 56 (2), p. 315.</footnote>

<footnote n="6">6) Rawls J (1971), *A Theory of Justice*, The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.</footnote>

<footnote n="7">7) To simplify matters, let's say that the foundation of welfare economics on classical utilitarianism and its concern for the maximization of total utility had been severely undermined by the influence of positivism in the Thirties. Lionel Robbins' proposition (1938, p. 637) particularly made economists consider interpersonal utility comparisons as non-scientific: "every mind is inscrutable to every other mind and no common denominator of feeling is possible". Unsurprisingly then economists turned to Vilfredo Pareto's notion of optimum (1929, p. 636): Optimum is reached when it is no more possible to increase one individual's well-being without, at the same time, decreasing another one's.</footnote>

<footnote n="8">8) Sen A.K. (1980), "Equality of What?", in McMurrin (ed.), *The Tanner Lectures on Human Values*, vol. 1, S. Salt Lake City, University of Utah Press et Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, pp. 218-219.</footnote>

<footnote n="9">9) Rawls J. (1993), *Political liberalism*, New York: Colombia University Press, p. 146.</footnote>

<footnote n="10">10) Arrow, *Op. Cit.*, p. 342.</footnote>

<footnote n="11">11) Sen A. K. (1999a), p. 351.</footnote>

<footnote n="12">12) Desai M., (2000), "Portrait: Amartya Sen", *Prospect Magazine*, 54, July, http://www.prospect-magazine.co.uk/article_details.php?id=3643, p. 2.</footnote>

<footnote n="13">13) Until independence and the partition of India on August 15, 1947, violent confrontations took place between Hindus and Moslems despite Gandhi's efforts to build a friendship between these religious communities. A specific episode shocked the young Sen. While he was still living in Dhaka, in a largely Hindu area, a Muslim daily labourer came through the gate screaming pitifully and bleeding profusely, after being</footnote>

<footnote>knifed on the street by some communal thugs. It is a story that he has often retold since the 1990s: see for example Sen (1999a, p. 2); Barsamian (2001, pp. 4-5). In fact, the partition of India did not resolve at all the problem of religious violence, which still remains today.</footnote>

<footnote n="14">14) Nozick R. (1974), *Anarchy, State and Utopia*, Oxford, Blackwell.</footnote>

<footnote n="15">15) Sen A. K. (2009), *The Idea of Justice*, The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, Cambridge Massachusetts, p. 411.</footnote>

<footnote n="16">16) Sen A. K., *Op. Cit.*, p. 20.</footnote>

<footnote n="17">17) See Barsamian D. (2001), "Reflections of an economist", Alternative Radio, USA, http://indiatogether.org/interviews/sen.htm, p. 13.</footnote>

<footnote n="18">18) Dasgupta was teacher of Economics at Dakha University for twenty year, from 1926 to 1946. Except a brief passing through London School of Economics, during 1934-1936, to earn a PhD, working with Lionel Robbins, and a Visiting Fellowship at the University of Cambridge in 1963-64, Dasgupta was firmly based in India that prevent him to receive any real recognition abroad. Nevertheless, he was considered in his country as "the economists' economist". Sen has never been taught by him, but as Dasgupta was a close family friend, he is the one who introduced him to economics. See Swedberg (1990, p. 251).</footnote>

<footnote n="19">19) Sen A. K. (1981), (1981), *Poverty and Famines: An Essay on Entitlement and Depravation*, Oxford, Clarendon Press.</footnote>

<footnote n="20">20) See Swedberg (1990, pp. 251-252).</footnote>

<footnote n="21">21) Merleau-Ponty Maurice (2000), *Les Aventures de la dialectique*, Gallimard, Folio Essais.</footnote>

<footnote n="22">22) See Barsamian (2001, p. 5).</footnote>

<footnote n="23">23) *Ibid.*, p. 6.</footnote>

<footnote n="24">24) *Ibid.*, pp. 3-4.</footnote>

<footnote n="25">25) *Ibid.*, p. 2.</footnote>

<footnote n="26">26) This is an excerpt from a letter that Tagore wrote to a friend and it is certainly the most quoted by Sen. See for instance Sen (2001), "Tagore and his India", *The New York Review*, August, 28, http://www.nobel.se/literature/articles/sen/index.html.</footnote>

<footnote n="27">27) Sen A. K. (2009), p. 50.</footnote>

<footnote n="28">28) Sen A. K. (2009), p. 125.</footnote>

<footnote n="29">29) *Ibid.*, pp. 108-109.</footnote>

<footnote n="30">30) Rothschild E. (2001), *Economic Sentiments*. Adam Smith, Condorcet and the Enlightenment, Cambridge, Massachusetts, and London, England: Harvard University Press, p. 9.</footnote>

<footnote n="31">31) Sen A. K. (2009), p. vii.</footnote>

<footnote n="32">32) Buchanan J. M. (1984), "A Politics without romance: a sketch of positive public choice theory and its normative implications", in Buchanan J. M. and Tollison R. D. (eds), *The Theory of public choice II*, Ann Arbor, University of Michigan Press, pp. 11-22.</footnote>

<footnote n="33">33) Sen A. K. (2009), p. 392.</footnote>