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Objectivity ... is now conceived as inter-subjectivity. Inter-subjective norms are not agreed to by the members of a society because they are objective, but, in effect, become objective because they are jointly accepted.
- Henry D. Aiken, The Age of Ideology
On its book jacket, we find Amartya Sen's The Idea of Justice (2009) described by Hilary Putnam as "the most important contribution to the subject since John Rawls' A Theory of Justice." We also learn there that Kenneth Arrow regards it as "a major critical analysis and synthesis." And although it may be news to some that a Nobel Laureate in economics is dealing with a basic issue of philosophy, it is no surprise to those who have followed the vast array of articles and books that Sen has produced over the years. He has dealt with questions of justice, inequality, and freedom for a long time.
Although we cannot provide here a comprehensive analysis and evaluation of this work, we ask three probing questions about it. First, why is justice among the necessary principles for organizing society? Indeed, there is much evidence that social cooperation and coordination can be based on advantage -based reasoning and relationships of mutual benefit without having to use the scarce resource of justice. Second, if in response to the first question, it is claimed that the issue is neither one of merely organizing society or invoking personal morality but instead of determining if the structure of society is just overall, this claim seems to raise questions regarding the multiple senses of "justice." In particular, it raises the question of whether the norms of justice are all of the same type and have the same function. For example, are the norms that determine a just political-legal order the same as those for personal and social life? Which justice? Finally, these questions raise the issue of determining philosophy's role in "social choice" and so-called public reasoning. Can Sen's account of "public reasoning," which he links closely with deliberative democracy, supply answers to these questions? Is impartiality the central determinant of reasonableness? Does Sen confuse impartiality with objectivity, and does he therefore fail to come to grips with the problem of finding a just structural order for a regime of integrated...