Both Richard Reeves and James Purnell selected and lauded Amartya Sen's _The Idea of Justice_. Perhaps against the grain, I would like to express why Sen's comparative or relational justice might not be the panacea which a consensus appears to be suggesting. It is, indeed, surprising that the propositions should be advanced during this torrid twelve months which have exhibited the extent of selfishness and amour-propre within society. So, despite claims to practical reason, it seems in contrast that that reasoning will fall on deaf ears which are governed by an emotion of selfishness. Although Sen allows for the inseparability of reason and emotion, he fails, it would seem, to take sufficient account of the latter. What has happened to charitable donations during the recession? What does that imply about relational justice? Just when the poor needed greater assistance, that resource is diminished. Simultaneously, we read, dealers have entered into the second-hand garment trade which has further depleted the resources of charities. What proportion of our population make benefactions to charity? So those are the issues of practical reason.//
Sen's argument is against the necessity to have institutional structures. Of course, his particular contention is that Rawls's idea of a search for a perfect institutional structure is erroneous. That may well be, but it is precisely during the last thirty years of denigration and diminution of institutional structures that the gap between rich and poor has widened. There is a direct correlation between the dissolution of those institutions and the intensity of the complex problems of the world.//
The other plank of Rawls which Sen wishes to remove is the idea of an original social contract. Well, perhaps we need to consider that concept of the social contract as no more than a metaphor which reminds us of our obligations to each other as well as our rights. The predominant sentiment in society at the moment seems to be on rights and privileges.//
By assenting to Sen's ideas, we are, I feel, missing an opportunity to refine Rawls in a more practical way, by taking his ideas of a social contract, institutional intervention, and so forth. It is essentially throwing out the baby with the bathwater. I would personally have little confidence in Sen's administrations - there are too many deaf ears out there. It is interesting that these admonitions for personal responsibility derive (like Rawls too, of course) from a bastion of privilege.

The other point about Sen's proposals is the rather vacuous and mysterious nature of the 'impartial observer' of Adam Smith: sorry, but how exactly does this work?

My books are: Leon Tolstoy - War and Peace; Paulo Lins - Cidade de Deus; Emily Bronte - Wuthering Heights