Comparative Assessments of Justice, Political Feasibility, and Ideal Theory |
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Authors: | Pablo Gilabert |
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Institution: | (1) Department of Philosophy, Concordia University, 1455 de Maisonneuve Blvd. West, PR 305, Montreal, Quebec, Canada, H3G 1M8 |
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Abstract: | What should our theorizing about social justice aim at? Many political philosophers think that a crucial goal is to identify
a perfectly just society. Amartya Sen disagrees. In The Idea of Justice, he argues that the proper goal of an inquiry about justice is to undertake comparative assessments of feasible social scenarios
in order to identify reforms that involve justice-enhancement, or injustice-reduction, even if the results fall short of perfect
justice. Sen calls this the “comparative approach” to the theory of justice. He urges its adoption on the basis of a sustained
critique of the former approach, which he calls “transcendental.” In this paper I pursue two tasks, one critical and the other
constructive. First, I argue that Sen’s account of the contrast between the transcendental and the comparative approaches
is not convincing, and second, I suggest what I take to be a broader and more plausible account of comparative assessments
of justice. The core claim is that political philosophers should not shy away from the pursuit of ambitious theories of justice
(including, for example, ideal theories of perfect justice), although they should engage in careful consideration of issues
of political feasibility bearing on their practical implementation. |
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