Amartya Sen: The Idea of Justice

Very good. Thank you. Actually, for many years I did not know when I first became familiar with wearing a tie as to what the usefulness of that thing might be, but I now know it. It's the best way of clipping on the heads of microphones. In fact, it's about the only use that I can think of to which a tie is put ever. But, anyway, um um I should apologize because I'm recovering from um pair of eye surgeries, which is only un- the unglamorous cataract replacement, but actually they also replaced the lens.

And with a long past history of mine being called in also oral cancer and so on. They're they're going back 50, 8 years. I'm not in any great danger at this moment, I think, from that. Uh but, um it takes some time. So, occasionally you might see me I mean, the this one is um without um remedy on this side. This one is a a reading and a middle distance glass. And if there's somebody, since it's a quite a healthy gathering, I may not be able to see everybody's faces and I could change and try my left eye.

I'll do all those things. Thank you. Well, I think uh the I was called rather unimaginatively, I think we agreed on the same title as the title of my book, The Idea of Justice. So, I would have my fault. I should have suggested something different, but anyway, there we are. So, I'll get on with it. During the very severe drought in England in the summer of 1816 James Mill the utilitarian philosopher uh and father of John Stuart Mill wrote to David Ricardo the great political economist of his time about the effects of the drought on agricultural output and the likely hunger and starvation that would result from it.

Mill was worried about the misery that would unavoidably result, he thought, from the drought. The thought of which make the flesh creep on one's bone. 1/3 of the people must die, unquote. If James Mill's fatalism was striking so was his faith in the demands of a rather simple version of utilitarian justice unquote. Geared only to reducing suffering. I quote from Mill. It would be a blessing to take them, the starving population into the streets and highways and cut their throats as we do with the pigs.

Unquote. Quite a strong utilitarian remedy there. Um Ricardo expressed great sympathy for Mill's line of exasperated thought. And like Mill expressed his disdain for agitators who tried to sow discontent about the established order by telling people wrongly that the government can help them. Ricardo wrote to Mill that he was, and I'm quoting from David Ricardo now he was sorry to see a disposition to inflame the minds of the lower orders by persuading them that legislation can afford them any relief. Unquote.

There was a remarkable exchange of letters between two of the leading intellectuals of 19th century Britain. Not just for the language chosen and fatalism displayed by the two stalwarts of British intellectual elite talking about the lower orders but also for deeper reasons. Even though David Ricardo was almost certainly the most distinguished economist in Britain of his time the arguments of those whom he took to be mere instigators were actually quite strong. Indeed, those who encouraged those who were encouraging the people threatened by starvation to believe that government legislation and policy can mitigate hunger were actually more right than was Ricardo in his pessimism about the possibility of effective social relief.

Indeed, as subsequent economic analysis and public policy making have made absolutely clear, good public policy can eliminate the in- incidental famines and starvation altogether. It's not a very hard thing to do, either. The big issue is the big issue here is the need for public reasoning rather than prompt rejection of contrary beliefs. No matter how implausible those beliefs might initially look and how voluble the crude and rough protest might appear one still has to examine these arguments both because they're held by people who feel aggrieved and also because they might well be right, as in this case.

Open-minded engagement in public reasoning is central to the pursuit of justice. Resistance to injustice typically draws both on indignation and on argument. Frustration and ire can help to motivate us and ultimately we still have to rely both for assessment and for effectiveness on reasoned scrutiny of what lies at the basis of uh indignation to get a plausible and a sustainable understanding of what can be done, if any at all, to reduce the basis of those complaints. The dual functions of indignation and reasoning are well illustrated by the attempts of Mary Wollstonecraft the pio- pioneering feminist to feminist thinker to achieve uh what she called a vindication um of the rights. Vindication, her first book, 1790, Vindication of the Rights of Men. Second book, Vindication of the Rights of Women.

Rights of Woman, in fact, in singular there in 1792. In both these books, there's plentiful expression of anger, exasperation um and and and really some bitterness in Mary Wollstonecraft's discussion of the need for the radical rejection of the subjugation of women in particular. The first book, which is about the Rights of Man, is mainly about um those subjugations that apply to um men and women together. And here Mary Wollstonecraft discusses um um uh the issue of slavery. And indeed um it's quite remarkable that um while um Mary Wollstonecraft in the second book chastises Edmund Burke Burke for not supporting the French Revolution in the first book she chastises Edmund Burke for supporting the Declaration of Independence.

Uh on grounds that you couldn't do that without bringing the slaves into the orbit of discussion. And that's quite a I mean, she was quite a remarkable thinker of her time and I must say, even though feminists of often do give her credit for originating the subject, she often receives more respect and reading uh and indeed, it's not just feminism. It's one of the persons I draw on in my book quite a lot and try to show there why her understanding of the idea of justice was very deep. Um she's often remembered mainly as wife of William Godwin and mother of Mary Shelley both of which are true, but she was also quite a considerable thinker in her own right.

Nevertheless, from anger Mary Wollstonecraft moved to powerful reasoning which characterized both her books. Um and I rate rhetoric is consistently followed by reasoned arguments which Wollstonecraft wants her opponent to consider. In her letter letter to uh Talleyrand Périgord, the one of the leaders of the French political society to whom Mary's book, A Vindication of the Rights of Women, is addressed Wollstonecraft concludes by reaffirming her strong confidence on relying on reason despite all that anger. The anger is quite strong. She advises, or when she's talking about the inequality that from which women suffer that given where we are, that maybe Britain should revive the trade of getting whips from Russia in order to for the male order to be executed with greater authority. She's very tough on that.

And um um um uh but it never stopped there. And and the book ends with, and I quote, after consistent reasoning over a number of pages I wish, sir, to set some investigation of this kind afloat in France. And should they lead to a confirmation of my principles when your French constitution is revised, he was disappointed that there was little room made for equality of women in the in the original Declaration of Rights of Man, is revised the rights of women may be respected if it be fully proved if it be fully proved that reason calls for disrespect and loudly demands that justice for one half of the human race.

End quote. The role and nature of reason are not undermined by the indication that leads to the investigation of the ideas underlying the nature and basis of inequity. And that relates to the point that Brian very kindly well rather I should have thanked him for his very very kind over kind introduction. But in the process he also made me think that the idea of justice and the the concept of justice comes up in so many different contexts. And that's also why it's also generated so much indignation because many of the contexts are the one of injustice. Which that make a big difference.

Um So the even though the investigation um leads to even though the initial talk leads to indignation because of the inequities that characterized the world in which Wil- Wollstonecraft lived in the 18th century and also the world in which we live today. And there's something to complain about and here I'm straying from my subject matter as it were about the intellectual basis of the Tea Party movements that are so active in America today. This is not cannot be based on the fact that they express anger that the activists display.

There can be good reason for anger in many situations. But must relate to the lack of reasoning that seems to follow that anger. And in particular the distance between the empirical reality and the perceived facts that animate the anger without the fears what appears to be reason scrutiny of the arguments presented and the alleged facts that put forward. But that there the excursion ends. I come back to the paper. Uh And a first to justice that gives such a central role to reasoning in general and to public reasoning in particular which is what also I tried to do in my book cannot but be seen as belonging in some broad sense to an outlook that was particularly cultivated during with what is called European Enlightenment which tended to see clear headed reasoning as a major ally of making societies decent and acceptable.

That diagnosis is indeed correct. But the diagnosis leaves a major issue unaddressed. The leaders of thought in the Enlightenment European Enlightenment I'm talking about here even those who were very committed to relying on reasoning did not speak in one voice. In fact there is a substantial dichotomy which had not received I argue sufficient attention between two different lines of reasoning about justice that can be seen among two groups of leading philosophers associated with the radical thought of the Enlightenment period.

By the way if I knew what Brian was going to say I would have put in a little bit of reference from corresponding distinction of the two of Indian thought and Niti I did do a paper on that that was asked by the by asked by the American Bar Council which had a discussion on global just global rule of law in Vienna and it was presented and it's still getting since it's incorporated but it's also available online as well as other places in the American Bar Council thing. One approach concentrated on identifying perfectly just This is the European Enlightenment back again not the Nat Niti and Naya distinction in Sanskrit.

One approach in the European Enlightenment concentrated on identifying perfectly just social arrangements and took the characterization of perfectly just institutions to be the principle and often the only identified task of the theory of justice. This way of seeing justice is woven in different ways around the idea of a hypothetical social contract. An imagined contract that the population of a sovereign state are supposed to be a party to. Major contributions were made in this line of thinking by Thomas Hobbes in the 17th century and later by John Locke Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Immanuel Kant in particular.

The contractarian approach had become the dominant influence in contemporary political philosophy more than a quarter of a millennium later led by the most prominent political philosopher and indeed the finest political philosopher of our time namely John Rawls whose classic book A Theory of Justice published in 1971 presented a definitive statement on the social contract approach to justice. The principal theories of justice in contemporary political philosophy draw in one way or another on the social contract approach and concentrate on the search for ideal social institution. And this applies not just to Rawls but also to Ronald Dworkin Robert Nozick David Gauthier to the extent you can hear see a theory of justice and Thomas Nagel Thomas Nagel too.

They differ from each other radically but they agree that that's what the theory of justice is about. In contrast to the social contract approach a number of other Enlightenment theories right at the same time took a variety of approaches that were quite different from each other but which nevertheless shared a common interest in making comparisons between different ways in which people's lives may go jointly influenced by the working of institutions but not just that people's actual behavior their social interaction and other factors that significantly impact on what actually happens.

The analytical and rather mathematical discipline of social choice theory in the early form of which can be traced to the works of Marquis de Condorcet and indeed other French mathematicians in the 18th century belongs to the second line of investigation to which also belongs Adam Smith Theory of Moral Sentiments Lectures on Jurisprudence posthumously published also parts of Wealth of Nation Marquis de Condorcet already mentioned Mary Wollstonecraft already mentioned and moving from 19th 18th to 19th century also John Stuart Mill and Karl Marx.

Their approaches were totally different but they share a certain concern with identifying injustices on which there would be agreement that they are injustices and whether they are removable and to the extent that they are removable that they come to agenda of a theory of justice. Very different agenda from that of the contractarian approach. In this alternative approach we don't begin by asking what would a perfectly just society look like as Rawls does but asking what remediable injustices could be seen on the removal of which there would be a reasoned agreement.

One of the limitations of the social contract approach to justice is the unjustified conviction that there could be only one precise combination of principles of justice with specified priorities and despite the improbability of that assumption that there would be agreement on that kind of a thing among all reasonable people that assumption is needed for the social contract approach to justice because its job is to identify uniquely a combination of ideal social institution you couldn't do if there were different to the views left on the priority of justice. So they needed. And that's actually as I discussed in the book gives Rawls some problem later in the second in his second book and later writing. He goes on often to say well there are other positions other than my justice and fairness which could also be a matter that but we are never actually clear how he would resolve that well or even fully admitting or fully recognizing how much it would affect the entire course of action he was suggesting that you

have to get the principles of justice uniquely defined then the institution then they all start legislation uh then the execution then judicial etc. All the phases coming to the story. It's a big story but if it doesn't start it's like a car in a wintry morning you can plan various journeys all it but it hasn't started. In contrast with this rigid insistence in most contemporary theories of justice the alternative of the social choice approach allows the possibility of a plurality of competing principles each of which is given a status after subjecting them all to critical examination.

It is of course important to scrutinize critically all principles that are presented for our attention and some may well get rejected after a certain probe and that's very important to do. But more than one competing principles or competing priorities over principles may actually survive on the basis of their reason justification. Indeed, I would argue that there is some naivety involved in assuming that once people tested interests are removed which is the way Rawls proceeds and which is the right step, but then he proceeds to think that once that goes then there is they're all going to agree that there's only one kind of impartial reasoning.

Um once those vested interests influence on reasoning goes then the entire group would come to accept unanimously one specific contract with one fully specified priority of principles of justice on the basis of which the basic institutions of the society could be fully set up to get the story going. Even though some of our disagreement do relate to our personal interests and also certainly there right there and then and that's also applies to Kant and applies to Adam Smith. There are other sources of disagreement among distinct points of view each of which can claim to have serious um um implications for the way to think about what impartial reasoning would yield.

In my book I I discuss a case in the idea of justice. I discuss a case in which three children are competing for a flute. He had to judge. One of them I think I called her Anne um demanding it on grounds that she alone knows how to play the flute. Others don't deny it. Uh that indeed the case. And if that's all you knew and if you were in a hurry then I think you'd quite easily give that to her because that's the way it's done. In an alternative counterfactual scenario if the second second child who speaks first I think I began to give a name with B like Bob.

So Bob says that he's so poor that he has no other toys to play with none at all. Whereas Anne and the person with C like Carla uh have huge supply of amenities. This flute will give him something to play. If that's all you knew the argument for giving it to Bob would be quite strong. In a still further scenario third scenario Carla says she had been working very hard to make the flute which he had just done. The moment she finished making the flute this Anne and Carla and Anne and Bob arrived trying to snatch it away with these all these complicated arguments.

Of course she doesn't approve. And again if you knew only that one has made the flute and another is trying to snatch it you have very good reason for giving it. It's legally of course totally definitive what it would do. The question is morally and political philosophy why what is it that we need to do? Um None of the claims are immediately dismissible and a just arbitrator has to weigh the claims of all three competing grounds. No mechanical priority of one of these three principles over the other two at the level of principles could be arrived at a priori independently of the concrete circumstances and the magnitudes involved.

Plurality of reason can sometimes pose no problem for a definitive decision whereas in another case it can pose a serious challenge. The case of three children we just discussed uh with with the flute came on the flute um it illustrate the possibility of an impasse in deciding what would be the just thing to do. But the acceptance of a diversity of consideration does not necessarily entail that an impasse would definitely arise. Even in the case of these three children it may turn out that the child who is I mean in another case may turn out that the child who had made the flute is also the poorest or the only one who knows how to play the flute.

Or it might be the case that child B's deprivation and poverty is so extreme and his dependence on something to play with so important for a plausible life and for growing up that the poverty-based argument swamps and trumps to dominate the judgment of justice. There could be a congruence of different reasons in many particular cases despite the disparate weights on the competing concern that may be allowed in different impartial judgment coming from distinct persons on the same or or indeed from the same one.

Even I mean I could entertain all the three of these beliefs which I I do believe poverty removal is important. I do believe that people working hard to do something is quite important. I do believe that giving um someone who can make good use of it is a good you know waste not want not argument in favor of it. And a libertarian will have no difficulty deciding what to do. However uncomfortable the libertarians might be in being in the company of Marxist labor right champions who would also give it to the one who had produced it with his labor.

Marx would have some problem though. In the critique of Gotha program his last document 1875 he contrast the claim of right based on labor as opposed to right based on need and suggest that ultimately it's the needs which will have to have priority. Um and of course Marx leaves I mean he wants to draw attention to the fact and therefore he fits into my story well that there are these plurality of principles and he chastises the German Workers' Party not to see that there is a conflict there. The basic issue here which is simple enough shorn of analytical um uh sorry I I skipped a sentence. The idea of justice does um it seems include cases of different types.

Sometimes with an easy resolution and other times very hard decisional problem. You know when I come to Northwestern it's very nostalgic for me because I I was very involved with Econometric Society for a long time. I was president of it. I was in the executive for 12 years and it's run from Northwest. I don't know whether it's still done that when I became president I think it was '84. Uh it certainly was run. It was a long time ago though and I think it was all in Northwestern base society I was on came here. And these were things that that those were days of formative social choice theory as to why partial ordering can be mathematically integrated into the decision procedure in a perfectly consistent way. That was one of the engagements I was involved in in which I got a huge amount of help from others in the Econometric Society and leaders of Econometrica Journal of Economic Theory Journal of Mathematical Economics and so on.

The basic issue here is simple enough shorn of analytical formalities. It's the need to recognize that a complete theory of justice may well yield an incomplete ranking of the alternative courses of decision. The fact that it's an incomplete ranking doesn't mean that it's not a complete theory. That's what it says. And that an agreed partial ranking will speak unambiguously in some cases and very unusually in those and hold its silence in others. When Condorcet and Adam Smith argued that the abolition of slavery would make the world world far less unjust as it may well come they were asserting the possibility of ranking the world with and without slavery in favor of the latter that is without slavery.

That is showing the superiority or greater justice of a world without slavery. In asserting such a conclusion they were not obliged to make the further claim that all the alternatives that can be generated but all social institutions um can be fully resolved. There was no such claim I don't believe that they thought that was the case. Slavery as an institution can be assessed without evaluating with the same definitiveness all the other institutional choices the world faces. We do not live in an all or nothing world and this is perhaps the first distinction I want to emphasize in contrasting the approach I've tried to present in the idea of justice from the dominant Rawlsian contract again the approach of justice and fairness. And that's the other contractarian approach.

I should say by the way Rawls was a huge influence on me as a as a friend and in many ways a teacher though he was never formally never a teacher but I learned so much and I have done various classes together with him. My book is dedicated to him though he disagrees. Uh I I with the though he disagrees with his position. And no one was as keen as Rawls was in encouraging me to finish the work. He knew perfectly well that I was going to be critical of him since I had published already about six or seven Journal of Philosophy papers on the subject. So he had no illusions. But he still went on to say don't do collection of papers because you often attempted to do it and economists tend to do it. That's not a good way of talking with philosophers that doesn't work.

You have to write a coherent book. That's the second biggest advice I had gotten. The other came from Isaac Levi when I was giving a lecture in Colombia in the philosophy department and I referred to a paper in Econometrica. And Isaac said, "Amartya, stop having the illusion that you'll persuade philosophers to read Econometrica. It will not happen." Um Thanks to the plurality of surviving principles, we may not be able to resolve on grounds of justice alone all the questions that may be asked involving justice.

For example, whether a 40% top tax rate is more just or less just than a 35% top tax rate. And yet, I mean, not every issue need be resolved on grounds of justice alone. And yet, we have every reason to try to see whether we can get reasoned agreement on removing what can be identified as clear injustices in the world in which we live. Such as in the 18th century, slavery, or gross subjugation of women, or extreme exploitation of vulnerable labor, or gross medical neglect of the bulk of the world population today.

And this is moved from 18th century to today, medical neglect of the bulk of the world population right now, through the absence of medical facilities in parts of Africa and Asia, or a lack of universal health coverage in most countries in the world, including rather surprisingly the United States of America. Though it might be changing. Or the prevalence of torture, which continues to be used with remarkable frequency in the contemporary world, sometimes practiced by the pillars of the global establishment.

Or the quiet tolerance of chronic hunger, debilitating hunger, which prevents full development of physical physical and mental abilities, even though there is no famine as it is in the case of India. And the end of the the the fact that planning's eliminated, it calls for celebration, but there's still there are things to do. I've so far been discussing the subject matter of public deliberation of justice. And since there will be Q&A, I'm going to leave it there. I'm already taking more time since I've been a bit um slow in presentation. I have to speed up.

Uh I now turn to the subject of participation. Whose voices should count in interacting public discourse on the demands of justice? In the social contract tradition, the views that most that must receive attention have to come from those who can be seen as parties to the social contract. And only them. Given the country by country and nation by nation structure of social contract, because you need a sovereign state for a social contract to be executed, which was powerfully identified already in the 17th century by Thomas Hobbes and pursued in mainstream political philosophy in 18th century as well as 19th and the 20th and today.

Because of that, the contractarian tradition uh makes the discussion confined the voices confined to members of a given polity, in particular the citizens of each country who are engaged in deciding on the ideal institution and corresponding values for that particular sovereign state. Rawls later goes into the exercise in a later book called Laws of People. And that's about about how to uh actually Law of Peoples, I think. And that is about relation between countries, but he doesn't invoke justice. It's humanitarianism.

Justice is national. Thomas Nagel in fact also stated them in a in a widely quoted paper, which had a part in my It was Tom and I were doing a joint seminar together and I said, "Look, Jack Rawls has been trying to convince me, but what you really convinced me that I have to do this book because he was arguing that the idea of global justice is a chimera, is an illusion, because you need a sovereign state for that. They don't have a sovereign state. The question is is that right? And that is certainly the contractarian view Hobbes onward.

It's not the view of Smith or all the same or Rawls and Kant for that matter, Tom Paine. Um the the need for impartiality in the treatment of different citizens within the country uh has to be supplemented in some way or other when it comes to global justice in allowing voices voices coming from far as well as near. The idea of confining impartiality only to the citizens of a state, I called closed impartiality in my book, where impartial consideration is confined to the citizens only of a given country.

And we can contrast this with Adam Smith's insistence in his Theory of Moral Sentiments, published 250 years ago, 1759. I was privileged to write a long introduction to the anniversary edition of uh of of Smith, which came out this kind of thing in December of 2009, making the 250th anniversary. Uh and I had a long introduction discussing the reach of Adam Smith's philosophy, which had been neglected both by economists and by philosophers fairly comprehensively. But not just in Theory of Moral Sentiments, but also in parts of Wealth of Nations and his lectures on jurisprudence.

And in there, Smith argues that you need an impartial spectator to pay attention to the views of people from far as well as near. What can and and I call that open impartiality. Reasoning coming from anywhere can count. Smith saw that impartial consideration, which must be essential for justice, demanding that we go beyond the boundaries of each state. There are two principal grounds for requiring that the encounter of public reasoning about justice should go beyond the boundaries of a state or a region.

One, the relevance of other people's interests, which may be affected by what we do. And two, the pertinence of other people's perspectives and points of view to broaden our own investigation of relevant principles for the sake of avoiding our parochialism based on the values and presumptions in the local community. The first ground related to the interdependent related to the interdependence of interests motivated Adam Smith to take up many several issues of global justice. He also discusses that in a kind of display of anger, which is really quite extraordinary in this part of Smith, since he's seen so much as a free market champion is not ever read very seriously. I did give my first talk in in in coming after coming to Chicago the talk on uh Scottish Enlightenment and Adam Smith and to the to the um British Studies department of of of of of um of um uh at Chicago University. And there I quoted the fact that there Smith refers to uh he's at one stage is so inflamed by the pretension of of the white man's

superiority, alleged superiority over the intellectual ability of the slave. And he goes on to say that uh it's actually a big generalization using the term Negro, of course, which was common, that he's that there is not a and he often made very strong generalization. There's not a single Negro anywhere in the African continent whose ability to understand the demands of justice is um had levels of sophistication that his I quote here again, "Sordid master is utterly incapable even to understand."

So there is is is a is a piece of real anger in Smith's part part. And and if and he thought that that not allowing foreign perspective to come in has an element of that concern that we are self-superior. And living in Britain at that time, which was shortly served as the center of the universe, there was you can see what what that was addressed to. He similarly takes up the English against the on the superiority sense of superiority over the Irish, but I won't go into it. Otherwise, I won't be able to finish this paper.

The first ground related to the interdependence of interests that I mentioned made Smith chastise injustice, for example, of early British rule in India in the 18th century, discussing why it was utterly unjust and that the British early British rule was at at the early British rule of the utterly incapable of ruling any any country whatsoever. In today's interdependent world, it's easy to appreciate the need to consider our interdependence of interests, whether we consider the challenges posed by global terrorism or by global warming or the world economic crisis that we are currently experiencing, confining our interests to national deliberations only cannot be the basis of understanding the demands of justice.

Also, AIDS and other epidemics move from country to country, as do the medicine from one country to another. In addition to the global features of interdependent interests, there is a second ground, that of avoidance of the trap of parochialism, for accepting the necessity of taking an open approach to examining the demands of impartiality. If the discussion of demands of justice is confined to a particular locality, a country or or a region like Europe, there is a possible danger of ignoring or neglecting many challenging counterarguments that might not have come up in local political debate, or been accommodated in the discourses confined to the local culture, but which are eminently worth considering in an impartial perspective, and which have actually been advanced elsewhere. And part of the thing for which Brian was giving me unjustified credit, I saw myself carrying on some of Smith's admonitions, namely to see what the Indian, the Chinese, and the Japanese, and the Middle Eastern, and African

thoughts have to offer to these issues. Smith was particularly concerned about avoiding the grip of parochialism in jurisprudence and moral and political reasoning. In a chapter entitled, and rather revealing, I quote the title of the chapter, "On the Influence of Custom and Fashion upon the Sentiment of Moral Approbation and Disapprobation", unquote, in the Theory of Moral Sentiments, Smith gives various examples of how discussion confined within a given society can fatally be fatally limited by parochialism.

I quote from Smith. It's interesting Smith discusses many bad practices elsewhere, including in India and China, foot binding, but when it comes to criticizing on the intellectual ground, he knows what the most convincing would be to take the people for whom the British have the greatest respect. Who better than ancient Greek and ancient Athenians? Compulsory reading for any public school boy in Britain. The murder of newborn I'm quoting Smith. "Murder of newborn infants was a practice allowed of in almost all the states of ancient Greece, and even among the polite and civilians civilized Athenians, uninterrupted custom had by then so totally authorized the practice that not only the loose maxims of the world tolerated this barbarous prerogative, but even the young doctrine of philosophers, which ought to have been more just and accurate, was led away by this established custom."

Aristotle talks of it as of something that the magistrates ought upon many occasions to encourage, infanticide. The humane Plato is of the same opinion, with all the love of mankind which seems to animate all his writing, nowhere marks this practice with disapprobation." Unquote. His argument here is not that they can't couldn't think clearly, it's just that they they were unfamiliar with the society in which there's no slavery, and uh in which there was no infanticide, which still survived. And there were such societies even even at that time.

Not in ancient Greece, I think it happened. Um and there was not even a general hypothesis allowed of what would happen if you change that. There's so many hypothetical arguments in Plato and Aristotle. It's interesting that this one never comes up seriously. While Smith's example of infanticide remains sadly contemporary even today, though only in a very few societies, happily, some of his other concerns have relevance to many other contemporary societies as well. This applies, for example, to Smith's general insistence that, I quote from Smith, "The eyes of the rest of mankind must be invoked to understand whether a punishment appears equitable", unquote.

Scrutiny from a, quote unquote, distance may be useful for practices as different, in terms of today, as the stoning of adulterous women in Taliban, Afghanistan, selective abortion of female fetuses in China, Korea, and parts of India, and plentiful use of capital punishment in China, or for that matter, the United States. I might mention here that US is in odd company there uh in terms of its usual statements on on on human rights and so on. The four top executing countries is China, followed by Iran, followed by Saudi Arabia, followed by the United States.

The relevance of distant perspectives has a clear bearing on some current debates in the USA. For example, that in the US Supreme Court not long ago, in the appropriateness of death sentence for crimes that are murder that are committed in a person's juvenile year. The issue is you can't execute a minor, but he has committed a murder. You wait until he becomes major, and the moment he becomes major, you catch him and hang him. Oh, okay. Electrocute him. The demands of justice being seen to be done, even in a country like the United States, cannot entirely neglect the understanding that maybe generated by asking questions about how the problem is assessed in other countries in the world, from Europe and Brazil to India and Japan.

It's important to recognize that to listen to distant voices, which is part of Adam Smith's exercise of invoking the impartial spectator, does not require us to invoke uh does not require us to be respectful for every argument that comes from abroad. And by the way, the US Supreme Court justice uh then, by five to one majority, ruled against hanging people executing people when they become major if they've committed crime in the minor. But the five four majority would have been the other way when they would have been um uh more than compensated by the fact that court composition has changed, and the Chief Justice Roberts had already said that was the wrong decision as to why American judges should not listen to points of view coming from elsewhere.

It is a distinctly American affair. This is a headlong collision clash with the with the with the with the Smithian perspective. I'm actually giving a full talk on this in something called the Herbert Hart Lecture in the Oxford Law School um in in next month on on this kind of subject. We may reject the great many of the proposed arguments, sometimes even all of them, and yet there would remain particular cases of reasoning that could make us reconsider our understanding and views linked with the experiences and conventions that are entrenched in a given country or culture.

It's the necessity to consider reasoning, not conclusions, coming from anywhere, and not just um views and and and and and points of view uh in a given country seen as an island on which Smith Adam Smith puts his big emphasis in invoking the idea of impartial spectator. That open perspective plays an important role on largely Smithian grounds on the analysis of justice and kind to present in my own work. Thank you.

I think there's left very little time for quick Q&A. Can we take still take some? Yes, we do indeed have time for Okay, good. And then we're going to be seated over here. There there should be the microphone right here, and we ask that you speak into the microphone. Yeah, and I don't want to hold everyone in prison because it's uh taking longer. You can easily go away and even generate the illusion that you'll be buying the book. Uh but so Very good. So, um we're going to have a seat here, and um let me entertain um questions from the from the audience.

I'd like to start with the question. You've got a question right over here. If they will announce who they are. My question is that um if you could just let us know as people ask questions um who you are and who you are and your affiliation. Sure, my name is Wayne Shaw. I'm actually a third year law student here at the law school. But the question I have is about what one of your co-authors and collaborators has described as the frontier of social justice, Martha Nussbaum, and namely what I have in mind is species membership and animal rights.

Um I guess my perspective is that there's been a gap between conventional perspectives on justice that has not been confronted directly in every small between national the national perspective? Excuse me? Gap between national I'm not hearing properly. You know, sometimes I have to request people to hold it very close, but in your case it's a bit No, in your case it's awful, it's farther away. Farther away, yeah. You're booming in my ears with sound, but not necessarily sentences, so uh that's my problem.

Yeah, much better. Okay. So, um I'll I'll start from the beginning. The question I have is about what one of your co-authors, Martha Nussbaum, described as the frontier of social justice, namely species membership and animal rights. And let me not make it questions, I'm just making two quick observations. Human civilization and society are impacting the natural world in ways that are completely unprecedented. Climate change alone, for example, is putting anywhere from 500,000 to 1.4 million species or tens of billions of animals confined in the most atrocious conditions imaginable on factory farms, even in places like India and China where factory farming has not existed. The second observation is the growing body of psychological cognitive research showing the commonality between human and non-human animals, dolphins being the most recent species to pass the mirror test for self-awareness.

So, I guess my perspective is that conventional views of justice, especially in the United States, tend to neglect the natural world, the non-human world. Martha Nussbaum, among others, has tried to remedy this fundamental gap. And And I'm wondering what your idea of justice has to say about the natural world and the non-human world, and what we can do to include them, or whether we should include them at all in a conception of justice. I do discuss the question quite a bit in the book. Um and it's quite relevant for one point that I didn't discuss that issue here in the book. Um in my presentation today.

That is what what we understand rationality to be. There's a very strong view called rational choice theory, which tends to see rational choice as the pursuit of self-interest. And if that is the case, then in order for us to take an interest in the species survival, somehow our interest will have to be affected. But if you take a view, which I think is a Smithian view, those Smith views are so badly badly distorted in many discussions. Um if you take the view that rationality consists of your your of being able to test for those things which you have reason to support, then that not be parasitic on your own interest on the matter.

That is, I could claim that it's very important for me that uh you know, um bald-headed eagles do not get extinct. But if I were to That doesn't In order to qualify that my point of view should count as in a democratic decision-making, it must. I don't have to say that how my own interest is affected, because that's not what the issue is. In fact, I'm not interested in bald head I you know, my life would not be affected by a bald-headed eagle, and I certainly don't want any uh hanging around in my garden either. But I would like them to survive. I think it's it's a terrible thing for the reason that you're discussing that very important species which have taken hundreds of million years to evolve could be extinct.

So, the way to deal with it is to recognize what our reasoning for that is. And um you may be right that that that that leaning outside the uh Western tradition may have some advantage in that. Partly because both in Indian as well as in Chinese thinking, and Japanese, too, there have been a not this sharp distinction between human beings and other species. And I do quote actually quite extensively um a passage from Gautam Buddha in Sutta Nipata, where he is talking about one's obligation to animals, giving an analogy in terms of mother's obligation to a child, not on ground that the mother has produced the child, but that we'll discuss that we'll be a reason to discuss it elsewhere. But what I'm saying here that the mother can do many things for a child which a child cannot, because there's this asymmetry of power, which gives a greater responsibility to human beings in a way that it doesn't apply. And And all those things like the factory farming and the torture that you referred to will fall

fall under this category. So, that's the kind of issue that distinguishes the kind of idea of rationality that I also present in my book and in other book, in particular in an earlier book called Rationality and Freedom, that directly links to that question. So, I'm delighted you asked that question. Right back here, please. Hi, my name is Adam. I research in applied math, and I guess I think with a really mathematical sciences. When I was very disappointed that you didn't have a graph to discuss the first design of the block diagram.

Um but uh regardless, your talk did hint at uh perhaps at a framework of decision that you talked about in the blank space. Basically, what it is. So, regardless of that, my talk being what? I'm sorry. I missed the word. My talk is what? Oh, it hints at uh at the possibility of parameterizing certain Parameterizing, yes, yes. certain ideas of justice. Um whenever you answer a question or you propose a um a situation that is ambiguous, um and give a rational response, that is um in essence proposing transportation.

And um my thinking is that that like general economics proposes that um that there are people who can make models and be authoritative, much like people in public uh in public policy. So, the question is, now that we have um this tool, or we're developing these tools that shape public policy in a manner of justice that um that's much different from say, you know, uh the classical model of economics where you have the perfect line of uh competition, and you see that there's an infinite number of sellers that you can actually shape policy based on this. So, where would you see the change? It would be good if the question was shorter. Uh uh between models that we develop and an actual public policy Yeah.

implement. Um because you mentioned the key parties arguments earlier. There's thousands of people in the world, or millions of people in the world who think that they know more about how the country should be run than 100 economists. The economists. That's certainly true. Um But But uh the um I think um um I I wasn't defending what the economists should do. I have talked about that elsewhere. And I think there's no question that I think um in many ways the economic thinking went very very bad actually on many of these issues.

I When people say, "Have you revised your view?" Well, I don't think I have to revise my view because I never actually expressed these views. It's like never thought that the market is a self-correcting mechanism. Never thought that market polices itself. Uh and being an Adam Smithian, I never read Smith, which main reading is confined to about 13 lines about butcher, baker, and brewer, where Smith is discussing a very minor problem, namely why is it that people have an interest, and basically saying you don't have a to be a raving altruist in seeking an exchange.

Seeking an exchange. But when he's discussing other things like distribution of production, he's not saying that all you need is pursuit of self-interest. When he's discussing how to not seek exchange, but sustain them, he's not discussing that. He's discussing how you need uh trust in each other. Uh and and and I I I have a paper in the um in the in the um in the New York Review of last year, I think around March, uh dealing with that, and and also why the Keynesian collective is not an adequate one.

Uh that Keynes is again not really addressing the issue. I got into a huge problem by saying that Keynes has almost as much to say about uh um social support of human life. No, I didn't say as much as that. I said worse than that. I said Keynes had less to say less to say on social security than Bismarck had. And as a result, the whole of my all my friends in Bank of Italy rose like one man to write immediate letters saying, "Withdraw, withdraw. You can't insult Keynes like that." I did not really insult him. I thought that his book on Treatises in Probability was his best book. I still think that. It is a very good book. But I And the general theory is pretty good for one or two points, which are quite important. But there are many other things to know. But where our disagreement will arise that is your belief that I'm trying to say that all the variables involved could be parameterized.

It If it were the case, I mean, that is in some way the Rawlsian tradition. It's not exactly The mathematical structure is not exactly the same, because you're not generating a full ranking, you're generating only a top. And you know, ABC and ACB have exactly the same top, A. So, you don't have to agree uh to generate on that. But for the same reason, the fact that you've identified top doesn't tell you whether B is better than C or C is better than B, because both ACB and ABC are consistent with A having only A on the top. So, there's a lot of the mathematical structure to consider here.

And one of my complaints is that the kind of math that economists have tended to use for a long time was so guided by physics, where the nature of the variables are different, that we didn't pay enough attention to the other kind of math. Of course, ultimately topology did get in place. Those were very much the ma- matter in in the in in kind of discussion that um uh that takes place among mathematicians dealing with um uh you know, um um the structure of uh set theory, topology, and so on, where partial ordering In fact, the If you take a great classic book of maths of Bourbaki in in French, the first the basic ordering is not a a complete order. It's what is called a pre-ordering, which is exactly a partial order, which is what I'm trying to present. And then there are other formal looser mathematical structure like fuzzy sets and fuzzy relations, all of which have much greater use in the social sciences than they have in in in in in in in in the physical sciences often. In some physical sciences, too. So, the

right thing we don't have really time to resolve this issue is to see that when you're trying to parameterize it, whether you are over specifying something to the extent that it could not be. And that doesn't mean that you haven't got a unique parameter, means that you can't say anything. You would still get rankings that a partial order would admit. You'd still get things that is fuzzy set and fuzzy relation would allow. I don't go into these mathematical question in this book, of course, but I've discussed them elsewhere. And so, I think your your concern is right, but it's slightly I mean, I hope it's comforting at least to you to to say that that's not an error that is being committed here.

Very good. Right over here, please, on the far side.

Hi, um

And um so, I specialize in terrorism studies, and so when you look at terrorism, and you talk to your colleagues, it occurs to me that there's some interesting intersections with the idea Close that. Further question. No, close that microphone. There are some interesting intersections with what you suggested about distant perspective in that theory of terrorism and so on. Of course, terrorism is something that can strike anyone at any time of day or night. And so, I was thinking, is there a way that you can actually have a distant perspective on such a theoretically progressive problem that really everyone seems to have a stake in, and how maybe you could use that to think about that in distance or a world of such close communication and ties, you know, or Well, I think when you're thinking about distant perspective, you have to be careful that you're not confined only to those which have been forcefully drawn to your attention and to no other.

Now, terrorism, of course, inescapably draws an attention to a part of a Middle Eastern tradition which is present in the sense that there has been these cases involved. But that overlooks the fact, for example, that um the Turkish Empire, for example, was a very tolerant regime compared with any European empire. It overlooks the fact that when Giordano Bruno was being burned at the stake in Rome in Campo de Fiori for heresy, exactly the same year, the same time, uh Indian Muslim king, Mughal emperor Akbar, was giving lecture on on in Agra about the need to tolerate different faiths and not force anyone to take any particular view.

And actually, if you discuss it then, it would have looked as if I mean, you could easily see a discussion in Agra as to whether it would ever be possible for the Western world, like in Rome, to understand that um inquisitions are not a good thing to do. And it's a completely different um world from the one which which now is standardly put down our throats by, say, the clash of civilizations and so on. And that's why it is very important to take a broader understanding of different things that have been discussed in the past, and not just that, you know, if you come across the Muslim world only in the context of terrorism, that would be a very limited understanding of what the traditions there are.

Unfortunately, thing is so dominant is the Western uh thinking on that today that even in in the rest of the world, that becomes the standard reading, whether it's in Japan or, for that matter, even in Turkey. It may end up being that dominant thing a thing because it's so dominant here in Northwestern and Chicago and MIT and Harvard and and Oxford and Cambridge that that becomes the that's the way you tend to think of it. So, I think it's a hugely important thing to bring in these broader perspectives, the Smithian issue about the need to listen to far as well as near. I mean, the need for it is much stronger today than at the time when Smith was writing, where there was mainly lack of interest.

On the other hand, not a kind of distorted view of the nature of other civilizations. And then you take the question, as it often happens, I mean, it's so frustrating for Westerners when you encounter such things as genital mutilation. How can you deal with that? Well, the point is that there's a lot of the opposition to genital mutilation uh mutilation is local. Uh there's also that any kind of custom that had to be um executed by force indicate that there are some people opposed to it. Um even if you're discussing Iran, to describe the Iranian society's values in terms of the only the government overlooks that the fact is government is having to put many people to prison because they don't agree with it. So, I think it's that variety of views that have to be involved in the understanding that is generated.

There's two different issues going on. One is to understand other cultures and other societies, and I think the cultural divisions here is is is very distorting because the differences within a country can be very large between the Tea Party uh right and the and the extreme left in the United States. You have a huge variety of views, and and and and that's not much larger if you were to move abroad. Um and that's one thing. The other thing is the Smithian question that you were if you are confined, your your thinking would be would be limited. And I have to say, I must say, I do think since uh Sam Huntington was a friend of mine, though I found just as this one in the is a critical of all my love, but one book, Identity. No, it was my last book. Identity and Violence was very critical of him.

Um but I did think that it to some extent there was a kind of the narrowness of the parochialism of Western thinking is reflected in that book in terms of the Western reading of world culture. It's quite amazing. It's it's no recognition, for example, of the fact when you say the tradition of Magna Carta, well, 600 years before 606 years before Magna Carta, um the constitution of 17 articles in Japan was pointing out why decision cannot be taken by one person without consulting everybody. That's language that is exactly like Magna Carta.

So, I think it's very important to broaden the exercise in the way that I think you you were asking about. Okay. On the far uh right of us.

Hi, I'm Sarah Smith. Um I'm studying Middle Eastern history Okay. Um my my question changed to that, but more broadly speaking, um terrorism itself as a term has been problematized in that it's a very subjective term. What is terrorism versus what is freedom fighting or justified violence, etc. And I guess my question is, how do you fit violence in general uh into the theory of justice? How is it maybe more just for the United States to inflict um violence and then whatever damage to civilians um and any any worse than what a perhaps a a terrorist um organization Good.

whatever example you want. Yeah. Uh let me say three things in response to that very interesting question. Um one is that terrorism is, and I'll come back to whether it's legitimate to use the word terrorism, um but I'm postponing that for the moment. Terrorism, as the word is used now, is not the only way in which you could do injustice to the rest of the world. No one could regard the American intervention in Iraq to be a terrorist activity. It wasn't in any way. And yet, I thought it was a deeply wrong activity. Wrongness can arise for reasons other than terrorism. That's the first thing to recognize.

Second, I don't think terrorism is a subjective term. I think there are well-defined uses of the term terrorism when you kill innocent people and, you know, who are not involved. That's a big thing. Now, you could raise the question legitimately, was the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki a terrorist activity? A lot of innocent people got killed. And you could raise that question. That's an important issue, certainly. But you couldn't say that the issue of intervention of continuing to have inequalities of some kind or not having decent patent laws whereby medicine remains beyond the reach of people are terrorism because they are not.

And so I think one of I'm not a subjectivist generally. It seems to me the term is can be used only in subjective thing then I'm enough of a with Kantian to think that we haven't arrived at a an understanding of how the world what the rules of the game would be. And if the rules of the game are specified, then it's no longer subjective because you're following that rules of the game. That is one of the main thing that it can stand philosophical investigation tries to argue. The third point is to say that it need not always be federated. That is you might say is that a bad thing to do and on the whole I think it is a bad thing to do.

But if you might take the view and that's not ruled out that terrorism may be in general wrong but sometimes it's justified. You don't have to say it's not terrorism. And I might mention that say they as a fact that when Gandhi was battling with those who did did think in India that non-violence would never get India independent. There were people who described themselves as terrorists. That is self-described epithet. Their job was to plant bombs here and there. And they tried to kill the governor of Bengal for example they missed.

They got three other people. But they were not using they were using the term terrorism but arguing that whether it is an justified you know it would be justified given the indignity and the iniquity of the British rule. And they gave a plausible argument. It was a serious subject. There's a novel of Rabindranath Tagore the poet and the novelist also called Char Adhyay four chapters which actually engages on this issue as to say why the argument is a feeling and ultimately like in many of these novels the protagonist who gives the strongest argument ultimately loses the loses out on the argument as more complexity emerges. So he was arguing against terrorism but not by saying we dismiss it because it just terrorism is always bad. He's just saying that terrorism would require justification and ends by saying that that justification didn't emerge in this case.

So I think this is the way I would take your thing but that doesn't in any way deny which I see it perceive as your indignation at some of the things that the America may be doing abroad. But that doesn't make them terrorists but there are other there's so many ways of going being bad. And terrorism is only one of them. So there is hope for all of us.

I was born there too. Shantiniketan

He did. He did. He did name me. He was a close friend of my mother too. And um he wrote a rather startling letter to me when I was born. I mean I I don't have much recollection since I was about 12 hours old then. Uh saying that he was very upset by the fact that everyone uses the same lot of names again and again. We have to start being innovative and here's a name for your son which no one had had it before which is true. Uh and and um it was given that. But I really shouldn't go into Tagore now because that's not the theme of today's discussion. But I would mention that he was very much a Smithian the way I'm describing in being interested in in cultures abroad and other thoughts elsewhere. Even in Shantiniketan when I was at school I I was my family is from Dhaka in Bangladesh and first two years at first three years I spent in Burma and then two years in Dhaka then I came to Shantiniketan I was school there until early college.

And I was touched by the fact that we were being exposed to unusually for India at that time because foreign men written but we were being exposed to French and Italian and the Japanese and the Chinese. There was a huge China Bhavan the Chinese studies the first Chinese studies department in India. Uh it was in Shantiniketan. The first Japanese studies was in India. The first thing on Indonesian art was in Shantiniketan sorry not Indian Shantiniketan. Um the I knew about Thailand and so forth. So we were we were being totally exposed to world culture at that time. And that is the connection with with the Smithian impartial spectator issue today. But someday you and I could chat on Tagore.

I might say also that you see in these days when they give you the money for the Nobel Prize the illicit prize you have to write a bio which they immediately put on their website the Nobel Foundation does. Since Tagore no one uh asked that question to Tagore in 1913 then there's no self-written bio available for him. So I I did a paper in the New York again in New York Review and second time I'm referring to the that journal. I often publish there. So and that was called Tagore and his India. And you could one way of getting what my views on all these are is to if you did the Nobel site Nobel Foundation site and did Tagore they put my bio there since Tagore didn't have time to write it also.

biography there.

the story the story about the flute Oh the flute yeah. Yeah. So it kind of reminded me of a story in the Mahabharata um where the Pandavas gamble away their kingdom um after speaking speaking in the middle of the game and they got it away but then after the war they get it back. Um I just wanted to know what you thought. Is it actually just that they got it back after they had gambled it away and they kind of went back to Um I do actually oddly enough you may be surprised to hear discuss it. Not because I was expecting that you would ask me this question. Uh I had some foresight but not that much.

Uh But I discussed the Gita because that's a but you may recall that it's a part of Mahabharata. The story is very interesting because there's the very powerful warrior Arjuna who is going to lead his side to victory. He's one of the five Pandava brothers the third brother in fact. And he is the by long margin the biggest general there. And he if he fights he doesn't doubt that he will win the war. He doesn't doubt that. He doesn't doubt he doesn't worry about his life. But he asked the question just the day before the war began saying is this the right thing to do?

Of course they have treated us unjustly. We will capture the the the the throne. Would that be the right thing to do given the fact that so many people would die? A there will be a lot of carnage. B some of the people uh that will be killed will be killed by me. I don't like killing people. And C some of the people I'd be killing are people for whom I have affection because this is on two sides of the family. And each side depending on which part of the clan you came from were fighting the other. But they they were not constantly uh warring with each other and some of them as Arjuna says I have I have affection for. I will be killing people that I love. Why?

And he says that therefore I don't want to fight. Now Krishna who is um Arjuna's charioteer but meant to be an incarnation of God then gives this argument which Gita is captured as a separated document where Krishna says that you have to do your duty no matter what the consequences are. Arjuna is not convinced first and then gradually becomes somewhat convinced and finally he actually gives up and says that I accept the argument. And he goes and fights the war wins the war. So this this takes place not at the end of the war but before the war.

Uh what I argue is that if you look at the Mahabharata it's not clear that Krishna wins the argument. Uh in the sense that the as a as a religious document there's no question who wins the argument. But Mahabharata doesn't end there. It goes to what you are describing. The end the end of the Mahabharata of the epic is the just war has ended. They have captured they're full of it's a lovely Sanskrit word doesn't exist in English aniha not repulsion aniha meaning not a desire. There's a lack of desire to lead that life.

So with that aniha they're driven to basically abdecate their their their throne. And one by one they all come to an end. The Gita is Mahabharata is telling that story but as they're making a journey through the devastated Indo-Gangetic Plain, they see funeral fires burning everywhere. Women in large number weeping for men who have been killed. And it's very difficult to see that the Mahabharata is telling you that Krishna really justly won the argument. So, I think um uh it's a you know, it's a quite difficult thing because Gita is a religious document. I mentioned in the book that when in school, when I thought that Arjuna had a stronger argument, I did ask my Sanskrit teacher whether it is uh allowable to take the view that Arjuna had the stronger argument than Krishna got away with an incomplete and incon- convincing unconvincing argument. And unconvincing argument, and he said he thought about it, and he said, "Yes, it's all right to do it as long as you do it with adequate respect."

So, when I did that Journal of Philosophy paper on why you can't cannot shoot consequences out either in the way that Gita suggests or in the way that Immanuel Kant suggested or much of modern deontological philosophy does, I began by recounting the story there first and saying that I hope that this Journal of Philosophy paper, this was published in 2000, I think. 2000 uh yeah, about a decade ago, I think. A decade ago. Well, just about a decade ago. Um saying that I hope this whole article is presented with um due respect. But with due respect, I have to say that that's not the way I read how the argument went.

Very good. I think that's actually um a story from a a different tradition, very nice way to end the talk that advocated um searching and being open to and inviting in um arguments from other perspectives and other traditions. So, I want to um ask you all to join me in thanking Amartya Sen for a very stimulating discussion. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you.

So, now we can de-microfy you. Yes.