The Idea of Justice

The Idea of Justice is a 2009 book by Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen. The book has been described by The Economist as "commanding summation of Mr Sen’s own work on economic reasoning and on the elements and measurement of human well-being". Sen delivered a lecture based on the book (The Penguin Annual Lecture) in Kolkata on August 5 which was followed by a discussion with Barkha Dutt. Sen's book is principally a critique and revision of John Rawls' basic ideas in A Theory of Justice. Sen was a student of Rawls and the book is dedicated to his memory. One of Sen's main arguments throughout the book is that the project of social justice should not be evaluated in binary terms, as either achieved or not. Rather, he claims that justice should be understood as existing to a matter of degree, and should correspondingly be evaluated along a continuum. Furthermore, he argues that we do not need a fully established abstract ideal of justice to evaluate the fairness of different institutions.

In The Idea of Justice Sen orchestrates his many contributions and achievements into a distinctive position on justice...How the current revival of political philosophy will influence future generations is impossible to predict. But it's a safe bet that the debates will be of world-historical importance, and that Sen's ideas about justice, social choice theory, and the capabilities approach to assessing well-being will make a crucial contribution to them.