The Problem of the Relevance of Global Perspectives: an analysis of Sen’s solution
Daniela Goya Tocchetto
Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul
UFRGS
daniela.gt@terra.com.br
Keywords: Amartya Sen, Global Justice, John Rawls
Introduction
In The Idea of Justice, Amartya Sen present us with a whole world of practical and
useful information about how to effectively address the injustices of contemporary
societies; a world mostly ignored by political philosophers before Sen. His work sheds a
new light into a long tradition in philosophy of approaching such a complex subject as
justice in a transcendental manner; consequently deserving serious attention by all those
interested in political philosophy.
The first and fundamental insight is that, on the one hand, humans apparently have
widely shared judgments about the flagrant injustices currently present in our world. On
the other hand, individuals seem to have endless disagreements about what constitutes a
perfectly just society. In face of these facts, why should we keep insisting in the
elaboration of a theory of justice able to provide us with the ultimate description of a
just society?
Sen suggests that perhaps the most natural way to proceed would be precisely the
opposite: start from widespread assessments of what constitutes cases of manifest
injustice, and from these assessments build a wide consensus1 about which injustices
should be addressed. Accordingly The Idea of Justice represents a major contribution to
the attempt of putting together a consistent theoretical structure capable of affording
viable solutions to real cases of injustice in the world.
Sen’s departure point for the construction of his theory of justice is clearly Rawls’s
theory of justice as fairness. He dedicates an entire chapter of his book to the discussion
1
Not necessarily complete. Indeed, Sen exposes his belief in the impossibility of a complete ordering of
individuals judgments on matters of justice.
both of his debt to the rawlsian theory and of the points he believes to be problematic –
to which his work intends to provide a feasible alternative.
The purpose of this paper is to evaluate Sen’s alternative to one of this supposedly
problematic points in Rawls’s theory of justice; the problem of the relevance of global
perspectives. In order to properly assess Sen’s proposal we shall proceed in the
following manner. Firstly, we will elucidate in what exactly the problem consists of.
Secondly, we will analyze the ways in which both the theory of justice as fairness and
Sen’s comparative theory tackle the issue. Lastly, we will critically examine the two
options, so as to better understand how good a solution Sen’s approach is able to
provide to the problem in hand.
1. The problem of the relevance of global perspectives
Sen exposes this problem in the third chapter, Rawls and Beyond; under the section
‘Difficulties that need fresh investigation’. At the outset the problem consists in the
obstacles posed by the device of the rawlsian original position in obtaining principles of
justice able of avoiding the influence of parochialism, through the allowance of globally
different perspectives on matters of justice. According to Sen’s interpretation of the
original position, its foundation in the social contract tradition is incompatible with the
participation of individuals from outside the borders of a given community in the choice
of the principles of justice that will rule its basic institutions.
Amartya Sen also mentions, under this same section, the problem of global justice,
stating that Rawls’s original position is so problematic for a conception of global justice
that it would ultimately render it impossible2. Following this remark, Sen seems to
argue that the impossibility of global justice would undermine the utmost relevance of
regarding the views of persons from outside a country’s borders in the assessment of
justice inside its borders.
Yet we must recognize here the existence of two apparently distinct problems: (i) the
problem of the relevance of global perspectives; and (ii) the problem of global justice.
The first problem is related to the difficulties involved in preventing the influence of
vested interests and parochial beliefs in the formulation of the principles of justice;
while the second problem concerns the difficulties in arriving at a globally shared set of
2
This impossibility was disclosed by Thomas Nagel (2005), in ‘The Problem of Global Justice’.
justice principles and an institutional structure able of enforcing these principles around
the world.
The main point here is that one could solve the problem of the relevance of global
perspectives, while having no answer for the problem of global justice. If the original
position is in fact, as Amartya Sen claims it is, unable to avoid the influence of
parochial beliefs, we could build another instrument able to take global perspectives
into account without being able to supply globally accepted justice principles neither
global institutions that resemble a State.
Still that Sen treats both these problems as intertwined indicates some important aspect
about his perspective of justice. He is not developing a theory of justice similar in scope
to Rawls’s theory. While Rawls’s theory of justice is intranational, applied solely to the
rules governing the basic institutions of a given society geographically limited; Sen is
aiming at global justice, as applied to the rules governing both intranational and
international3 relations, i.e., the relations between sovereign countries. Thus, his
approach is consistent with the view that that one could solve the problem of the
relevance of global perspectives, while having no answer for the problem of global
justice; but the opposite does not follow.
Amartya Sen presents two main reasons for his insistence on the necessity of a global
framework for justice. Firstly, in the globalized world in which we live what happens
inside one country has unavoidable consequences on the other countries. Every rule or
policy a country adopts inside its borders may affect the lives of other people around the
globe. The American response to the threat of terrorist attacks is a plain example; but
any other economic or trade policy could also potentially affect entire populations.
Secondly, Amartya Sen emphasizes that each society has its own parochial beliefs,
which may call for more global scrutiny. Every society would take huge advantages
from a global debate about its internal rules and policies; a debate that would enlighten
the local views and the existence of unreasonable convictions. Global deliberation can
transform our ideas
3
The distinction between intranational and international justice was introduced by Thomas Pogge
(2003), in ‘What is Global Justice’.
because it can broaden the class and type of questions that are considered in that scrutiny, and
because the factual presumptions that lie behind particular ethical and political judgments can be
questioned with the help of the experiences of other countries or societies. 4
Hence the problem of the relevance of global perspectives and the problem of global
justice are treated as inexorably interrelated in the contemporary world. Countries
around the world are strongly politically and economically connected in a way that an
action by one country inevitably affects the others. These connections arouse the
necessity for a global debate on justice. Additionally the issue of local parochialism
calls for the importance of allowing for the views from distinct perspectives.
Consequently a constructive theory of justice cannot but provide a realistic alternative
for these problems.
2. Possible alternatives: justice as fairness and Sen’s comparative approach
Sen develops a comparative approach to justice intrinsically global in scope; diverse
from the lines of Rawls theory of justice as fairness, specifically aimed at the
construction of just institutions for a geographically limited society. Rawls elaborates
his global theory of justice separately, in a latter work, namely The Law of Peoples.
This later theory still relies in the device of the original position, only adapted to be
constituted not of individuals of a given society, but of world leaders.
Nonetheless Sen’s critique is directly addressed at the device of the original position as
originally formulated in A Theory of Justice. Sen argues that if Rawls is unable to solve
the problem of the relevance of global perspectives in his treatment of justice within
sovereign states, it follows that he will be inevitably incapable of providing a treatment
of justice between these states. Thus if Sen is correct in asserting that the original
position does not effectively address the problem at hand, then it becomes unnecessary
to extend the discussion to Rawls’ approach to global justice – given that his theory will
have failed in a previous stage. In order to better evaluate Sen’s claim we will discuss
both his’ and Rawls’ possible solutions to the problem in the next couple of subsections.
4
Amartya Sen, The Idea of Justice, 2009, page 71.
2.1 The original position
The original position and the veil of ignorance constitute the basic rawlsian framework
for thinking about justice as the result of a procedure that is fair – hence ‘justice as
fairness’. Rawls conceives this thought experiment as a natural way of arriving at basic
principles of justice capable of accounting for our intuitive ideas of impartiality in fair
judgments and of the existence of an equal value of human beings as moral persons5.
In this manner the original position comprises an initial situation of equality among
individuals of a given society, where all those features irrelevant to justice are ruled out
by the veil of ignorance. The veil of ignorance excludes from deliberations about the
basic principles of justice such characteristics as personal income, social class, natural
abilities, and all other biased influences on our judgments. Thus it is the instrument
through which Rawls guarantees the impartiality of the basic principles of justice. As he
puts it “The idea here is simply to make vivid to ourselves the restrictions that it seems
reasonable to impose on arguments for principles of justice, and therefore on these
principles themselves.”6
The main critique of Sen to the original position, in respect to the problem of the
relevance of global perspectives, is the fact that Rawls includes in this initial position
only the persons within a given society, thereby excluding the views of others from
distinct social environments. As previously discussed, this exclusion undermines the
theory of justice as fairness since (i) it opens the possibility for the influence of
parochial beliefs in the formulation of the basic principles, and (ii) it is incapable of
recognizing the global scope that any theory of justice should inevitably aim at in the
contemporary world.
2.2 The idea of justice
Amartya Sen recognizes the utmost importance of impartiality in any deliberation about
justice, but discards the original position in the face of its inherent flaws. He proposes
5
As defined by Rawls: “(…) the purpose of these conditions is to represent equality between human
beings as moral persons, as creatures having a conception of their good and capable of a sense of
justice. The basis of equality is taken to be similarity in these two respects.” (p. 19)
6
Rawls, A Theory of Justice, 1971, p. 18.
the use of a different device for thinking about justice, the so-called ‘impartial spectator’
as developed by Adam Smith in the Theory of Moral Sentiments.
Smith explains our morality as a system ultimately founded in our natural moral
sentiments. These moral sentiments of approval or disapproval of our own and other’s
actions are explained through the mechanism of what Smith refers to as sympathy. This
sympathy can be understood in modern terms as the feeling of empathy, the ability to
put ourselves in the place of another individual and share his feelings.
Yet to accurately feel what a third party is feeling in a given situation we must have
information about how the situation came about, “(…) our sympathy depends on our
ability to approve of another’s behavior because it is appropriate to the situation. Until
we understand the context of another’s behavior, we cannot know whether our own
emotional response will be one of positive sympathy or negative revulsion, of approval
or disgust.”7
Thus in order to make sense of our moral sentiments and explain the system of morality
we must have (i) the ability to feel sympathy, (ii) the relevant information about the
situation, and there is still a third fundamental characteristic of the smithian approach:
impartiality. We cannot judge an action based on personal interests, we must always
evaluate a situation from a distance, as a third uninvolved party would evaluate it.
The veil of ignorance is effective in ruling out the influences of personal interests in the
elaboration of the principles of justice; but it is still unable to bring into the deliberation
in the original position the opinions of individuals from outside the focal group. For
Sen, the impartial spectator is able to overcome not only the influences of personal
interests, but also the influences of local conventions of thought. As Sen puts it:
Smith invoked the reflective device of the impartial spectator to go beyond reasoning that may
be constrained by local conventions of thought, and to examine deliberately, as a procedure,
what the accepted conventions would look like from the perspective of a ‘spectator’ at a
distance.8
7
Theory of Moral Sentiments, page 58, in The Essential Adam Smith, edited by Robert Heilbroner, 1987.
8
Amartya Sen, The Idea of Justice, 2009, page 125.
Sen establishes the distinctions of closed impartiality and open impartiality to elucidate
the main difference between the original position and the impartial spectator. Closed
impartiality is defined as a geographically limited impartiality, in the sense that only the
views of the members of a given society are taken as relevant in deliberations of justice
inside that society. In contrast, open impartiality is defined as global impartiality, in the
sense that the views both form inside and from outside a given society are taken as
relevant in debates about justice.
The original position provides, in Sen’s interpretation, only an ‘identity blackout’ in the
individuals who are members of a society. Yet “Something more than an ‘identity
blackout’ within the confines of the local focal group would be needed to address this
problem. In this respect, the procedural device of closed impartiality in ‘justice as
fairness’ can be seen as being ‘parochial’ in construction.”9
Another aspect of the relevance of global perspectives in Sen’s approach to justice is
his emphasis in the need to take the idea of justice beyond the scope of sovereign states.
He affirms that “(…) no theory of justice today can ignore the whole world except our
own country.”10 He bases this need in three main reasons:
(…) assessment of justice demands engagement with the ‘eyes of mankind’, first, because we
may variously identify with the others elsewhere and not just with our local community;
second, because our choices and actions may affect the lives of others far as well as near; and
third, because what they see from their respective perspectives of history and geography may
help us to overcome our own parochialism.” 11
Sen also calls attention to three main points of difference between the rawlsian approach
and the smithian device of the impartial spectator:
“(…) first, Smith’s insistence on what is being called here open impartiality, accepting the
legitimacy and importance of the ‘enlightenment relevance’ (and not just ‘membership
entitlement’) of views from others; secondly, the comparative (and not just transcendental)
focus of Smith’s investigation, going beyond the search for a perfectly just society; and thirdly,
Smith’s involvement with social realizations (going beyond the search only for just
institutions).12
9
Amartya Sen, The Idea of Justice, 2009, page 126.
Ibid., p. 173.
11
Ibid., p. 130.
12
Ibid., p. 134.
10
3. Critical analysis
Sen’s central argument is that the original position is (i) unable to filter the influence of
parochial beliefs in the construction of the basic principles of justice and (ii) is also
unable to account for the interests of other societies that are inevitably affected by the
institutions of any given country. I believe the first criticism to be misguided and the
second to be appropriate.
The parties in the original position only know certain very general facts about their
society, namely, “that it exists under the circumstances of justice, both objective and
subjective, and that reasonably favorable conditions making a constitutional democracy
possible obtain”13. Beyond that, when identifying principles of justice (as opposed to
just institutions), the parties in the original position do not know more particular
information about their society – and, in particular, they do not employ the kinds of
country or society-specific beliefs that would give rise to concerns about ‘parochialism.’
Sen seems to be conflating the original position, in which principles of justice are
selected, with the ‘constitutional stage,’ at which point the parties apply the principles
of justice to the constitutional structure of a particular society, while remaining ignorant
of the particular place of the people whom they represent within that society.
Furthermore Rawls does not intend the original position to represent a gathering of all
actual or possible persons. He stresses that
To conceive of the original position in either of these ways is to stretch fantasy too far; the
conception would cease to be a natural guide to intuition. (…) it is important that the original
position be interpreted so that one can at any time adopt its perspective. It must make no
difference when one takes up this viewpoint, or who does so: the restrictions must be such that
the same principles are always chosen.14
In the above passage it is clear that Rawls intends the original position to function as a
possible (and the more appropriate, he argues) perspective for addressing issues of
social justice. In addition, the restrictions imposed by the veil of ignorance cover all
aspects that would render a judgment partial; there is no suggestion in justice as fairness
13
Rawls, Justice as Fairness: a restatement, 2001, p. 87.
14
Rawls, A Theory of Justice, 1971, p. 139.
that we should not think of parochial beliefs as an aspect that is ruled out by the
application of the veil of ignorance.
Another way of ruling out social conventions such as racism is explicitly and effectively
addressed in A Theory of Justice; racist principles are not only unjust under the lights of
justice as fairness, they are also irrational. The following passage magnificently
expresses the argument:
Those born on a sunny day might be blessed with a happy temperament, and for some positions
of authority this might be a qualifying attribute. But such distinctions would never be proposed
in first principles, for these must have some rational connection with the advancement of
human interests broadly defined. The rationality of the parties and their situation in the original
position guarantees that ethical principles and conceptions of justice have this general content.
Inevitably, then, racial and sexual discrimination presupposes that some hold a favored place in
the social system which they are willing to exploit to their advantage. From the standpoint of
persons similarly situated in an initial situation which is fair, the principles of explicit racist
doctrines are not only unjust. They are irrational. 15
Given this irrationality, such principles as racism do not fall into the category of moral
conceptions; they are merely means of suppression. In Rawls’s theoretical construct,
conceptions of right are not empty: they have substantive content and are thus able to
exclude arbitrary principles.
Turning now to the second major criticism of the original position, namely its inability
to account for the interests of individuals from other societies, I believe Sen actually
presents some appealing justification for the need of improving Rawls’ theory. The
justification has already been presented in the preceding sections, and rests in Sen’s
assertion that the scope of any talk about justice in the contemporary world is
unavoidably global.
One cannot discuss justice for a given country confined within the interests just of its
own citizens. The actions taken by one country affect the lives of persons all around the
world. This influence works not only through means of the deliberate use of force, like
in the invasion o Iraq in 2003; but also through the indirect impacts of commerce and
trade. As Sen remarks
15
Rawls, A Theory of Justice, 1971, p. 149.
We do not live in secluded cocoons of our own. And if the institutions and policies of one
country influence lives elsewhere, should not the voices of affected people elsewhere count in
some way in determining what is just or unjust in the way a society is organized (…)? 16
In this respect Rawls’ separate treatment of justice within a country and between
countries seems insufficient in a world where it does not make sense to talk of justice
confined within a country’s borders. Hence Sen’s insistence in the relevance of the
‘views from everywhere’ is not to be discarded without serious reflection.
The Idea of Justice is capable of enlightening the philosophical debate in a number of
ways, especially in what concerns the focus on practical results and on the possibility of
global deliberation. However philosophers will have to work out the foundations of
Sen’s view regarding the possibility of a comparative approach to justice, given that in
many ways it seems to be ‘political in the wrong way’17.
Sen wants to ‘diagnose’ particular instances of injustice in a way that allows for ‘plural
grounding’ on the basis of multiple, conflicting ‘evaluative criteria’; apparently without
a serious concern with the reasons for why an injustice is to be considered as such. He
argues that “Agreements on particular justice-enhancing moves are material enough for
public action (what was described earlier as ‘plural grounding’), and for that guidance,
unanimity on the nature of the perfectly just society is not needed.” 18 Nonetheless, this
is merely asserting that whatever judgments persons under global deliberation arrive at
are to be taken as correct; and this is far from sufficient for justifying a given notion of
neither justice nor injustice.
16
Amartya Sen, The Idea of Justice, 2009, page 130.
17
In Part V of the Restatement, Rawls asserts that political liberalism seeks a kind of consensus that is
different from ‘consensus politics’. The latter aims to identify a particular policy that can gain sufficient
political support in a particular time and place, without seeking agreement concerning the justification
of the policy (and allowing the balance of power between various groups to influence the decision). For
example, one might hope to reach agreement on the ‘diagnosis’ that X is unjust, without first (or ever)
identifying why X is unjust. In contrast, Rawls’s view is political not because it bypasses the question of
justification, but because it deals with that question in a political way.
18
Amartya Sen, The Idea of Justice, 2009, footnote page 135.