From Primary Goods to Capabilities to Well-Being

(not quite the final printed version) Amartya Sen's book The Idea of Justice provides a magisterial and accessible survey of many of the themes he has explored and the insights he has developed since his first contributions to moral philosophy and the theory of justice in the 1960s. In this area of thought (just one of several fields to which he has been a major contributor) his career has been impressive, so not surprisingly his summary here is impressive. The main new idea in Sen's recent writings grows from his elaboration of the differences between transcendental and comparative approaches in theories of justice. In this review essay I look at this new idea and suggest there is maybe less here than meets the eye. I then turn to an overview assessment of Sen's distinctive approach to the theory of justice. 1. Transcendental and comparative In recent writings Amartya Sen usefully contrasts what he calls a " transcendental " and a " comparative approach " to the theory of justice and champions the latter approach. This contrast bears some examination. Led by Sen, the examination takes us deep into the question, what should we seek in a theory of justice. A transcendental account of justice is one that identifies a perfectly or fully just state of affairs, one whose social arrangements or regulative rules are perfect from the standpoint of justice, and so cannot be transcended by a more just alternative. Sen identifies the dominant recent tradition of work in political philosophy to be seeking a transcendental account in this sense. He cites John Rawls and Robert Nozick and Ronald Dworkin (Rawls 1999, Nozick 1974, Dworkin 2000) as estimable exemplars of the transcendental approach. One could add that a theory of morally required action could also be focused on developing a transcendental account, an account that aims to provide a standard that identifies the perfectly just or morally required action in any decision problem an individual might face. The contrast here would presumably be with nontranscendental accounts that do not strive to identify the transcendentally perfect from the standpoint of justice. Sen contrasts transcendental approaches with comparative approaches. A comparative account of justice provides a theoretical standard that evaluates alternative feasible choices, ranking some as better or superior to others, and perhaps identifying a best alternative. Sen notes that a comparative approach could also be transcendental; to this extent the alternatives …