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rotorguy64's review
2.0
I had high expectations of this book when I first heard of it. Amartya Sen has some serious academic achievements, he's regarded as one of the worlds leading experts on famines, and the book had high ambitions. The Idea of Justice, not even Rothbard could've come up with a more powerful and impressive name for a book. Understandably, I expected a philosophical treatise on, well, the idea of justice. Boy, was I in for a ride. I really wanted to like this book, if not as something that I could agree with, then as something that would at least challenge my libertarian views. Within a few pages, I realized how wrong I was.
Let me first say something about the style of the book. Its trains of thought are the opposite of stringent. The author keeps referring the reader back to earlier chapters where he (supposedly) already tackled a question, all the time. It was also filled with redundancies. These two things don't go along well. When you refer me to an earlier chapter after I read something that sounded like that earlier chapter, I feel cheated. Reading 400 pages isn't fun when they all sound the fucking same. I've read books that developed out of stand-alone essays that had more of a red string running through them.
The worst thing about his style, though, is how extremely imprecise and relativistic his writing is. I'm used to libertarian philosophers. They tend to give you definite ideas that you can easily grasp, incorporate into your worldview, cricitize and modify. Sen gives you suggestions on how things might be and shares his thoughts on what he believes could be important, hidden behind a layer of pretentious academic phrases. There is nothing definite to grasp or to criticize, and that makes reading the book tiresome. I had no sense of reward, no moment were I felt like everything was coming together.
That brings me to his philosophy. You'd expect there to be a lot of that in a book with 400 pages, but no, it doesn't go beyond giving these vague suggestions and unpolished thoughts. At one point, Sen mentions three systems of ethics that have different ideas on how to allocate resources, namely marxism, libertarianism and utilitarianism. He notices that they are in conflict with each other, says that this conflict cannot be decided in favor of one ideology and calls it a day. I think he did that to illustrate how complex questions of justice are. Why, of course they are complex to the point of not being solvable when you outright refuse to remove the clutter and the bullshit surrounding them! The book goes on like that, making statements that it instantly relativizes, and telling the reader about aspects that have to be considered alongside other conflicting aspects. That's the equivalent of "be yourself" and "listen to your heart", except worse.
To summarize, on a philosophical level, the book fails. The only things I gained from it were the niti-nyaya-distinction and the word "transcendental institutionalism" and its counterpart, as well as some admittedly very interesting thoughts on environmentalism, but in a book as long as this one, a few decent ideas only make the difference between two stars and one star.
Now, Sen is also an economist. In fact, that's his primary occupation. So you'd expect him to share some of his economic ideas, right? Wrong. Check out the footnotes for that, sucker! Sen could've dealt with different government programs in this book and detailed which ones are more effective, but he never did that.
Another beef I have with this book is that despite supposedly dealing with justice, it really only deals with social justice. General welfare and equality are not justice, they are general welfare and equality. Granted, they are related to the question of how goods should be distributed, which is a question also related to justice, so dealing with both makes sense, and mixing them together is understandable. However, not only does The Idea of Justice not deal exclusively with justice, it doesn't really deal with it at all aside from the question of distributing scarce goods. No mention at all of the criminal system, for example. Why does a book about justice not deal with justice? I blame the modern Zeitgeist. Justice is not in. Justice rapes consequentialism, pragmatism and relativism hard if you allow it to, and then what are you left with? Nothing that supports tyranny and social engineering, that's for sure, and the planners that run academics and politics can't have that.
The Idea of Justice only gets two stars from me because of the few decent (sometimes genuinely good) passages inside it, and because one star is reserved to books that I find outright disgusting, depraved, vile and worthless. The Idea of Justice is far from meeting these terms, but I still can't recommend or even like it.
Let me first say something about the style of the book. Its trains of thought are the opposite of stringent. The author keeps referring the reader back to earlier chapters where he (supposedly) already tackled a question, all the time. It was also filled with redundancies. These two things don't go along well. When you refer me to an earlier chapter after I read something that sounded like that earlier chapter, I feel cheated. Reading 400 pages isn't fun when they all sound the fucking same. I've read books that developed out of stand-alone essays that had more of a red string running through them.
The worst thing about his style, though, is how extremely imprecise and relativistic his writing is. I'm used to libertarian philosophers. They tend to give you definite ideas that you can easily grasp, incorporate into your worldview, cricitize and modify. Sen gives you suggestions on how things might be and shares his thoughts on what he believes could be important, hidden behind a layer of pretentious academic phrases. There is nothing definite to grasp or to criticize, and that makes reading the book tiresome. I had no sense of reward, no moment were I felt like everything was coming together.
That brings me to his philosophy. You'd expect there to be a lot of that in a book with 400 pages, but no, it doesn't go beyond giving these vague suggestions and unpolished thoughts. At one point, Sen mentions three systems of ethics that have different ideas on how to allocate resources, namely marxism, libertarianism and utilitarianism. He notices that they are in conflict with each other, says that this conflict cannot be decided in favor of one ideology and calls it a day. I think he did that to illustrate how complex questions of justice are. Why, of course they are complex to the point of not being solvable when you outright refuse to remove the clutter and the bullshit surrounding them! The book goes on like that, making statements that it instantly relativizes, and telling the reader about aspects that have to be considered alongside other conflicting aspects. That's the equivalent of "be yourself" and "listen to your heart", except worse.
To summarize, on a philosophical level, the book fails. The only things I gained from it were the niti-nyaya-distinction and the word "transcendental institutionalism" and its counterpart, as well as some admittedly very interesting thoughts on environmentalism, but in a book as long as this one, a few decent ideas only make the difference between two stars and one star.
Now, Sen is also an economist. In fact, that's his primary occupation. So you'd expect him to share some of his economic ideas, right? Wrong. Check out the footnotes for that, sucker! Sen could've dealt with different government programs in this book and detailed which ones are more effective, but he never did that.
Another beef I have with this book is that despite supposedly dealing with justice, it really only deals with social justice. General welfare and equality are not justice, they are general welfare and equality. Granted, they are related to the question of how goods should be distributed, which is a question also related to justice, so dealing with both makes sense, and mixing them together is understandable. However, not only does The Idea of Justice not deal exclusively with justice, it doesn't really deal with it at all aside from the question of distributing scarce goods. No mention at all of the criminal system, for example. Why does a book about justice not deal with justice? I blame the modern Zeitgeist. Justice is not in. Justice rapes consequentialism, pragmatism and relativism hard if you allow it to, and then what are you left with? Nothing that supports tyranny and social engineering, that's for sure, and the planners that run academics and politics can't have that.
The Idea of Justice only gets two stars from me because of the few decent (sometimes genuinely good) passages inside it, and because one star is reserved to books that I find outright disgusting, depraved, vile and worthless. The Idea of Justice is far from meeting these terms, but I still can't recommend or even like it.
livyyy's review
4.0
4.5
Sen is honestly such a great writer. Usually these treatise-like works are such a bore but Sen made it enjoyable and easy to comprehend
Sen is honestly such a great writer. Usually these treatise-like works are such a bore but Sen made it enjoyable and easy to comprehend
oceanwader's review
3.0
The content, thesis and reasoning is terrific, but 3 stars only due to the deplorable academic writing. Without the constant references backwards and forwards to sections in other chapters, the needless adverbs, the repetition of arguments already hashed and repeated to death, and unnecessary asides, this book would have been half as long - and compelled the reader not to put it down. As it was, I ended up skipping portions because the writing was so off-putting. Even so, took me almost a week to get through it.
nwhyte's review
3.0
https://nwhyte.livejournal.com/3345733.html
I've never been hugely attracted to philosophy, not even political philosophy, and this book reminded me why not; the essential argument is that justice and fairness are crucially intertwined concepts, which I accept without feeling strongly about; and it is largely in reaction to Rawls' classic work, which I have not read and am not really persuaded to read.
There are some interesting insights. For Sen, "democracy" is not just about voting, but about having a plural political system where governments are under scrutiny (see my recent posts about Season 12 of Doctor Who). This also means that we should not get too hung up on developing perfect institutions, as the process is more important than the form of government.
Two bits did grab me. Chapter 7, "Position, Relevance and Illusion", starts with King Lear and ends with the Good Samaritan, and insists that to get a better understanding of justice (or indeed anything at all) we need to look beyond our social and cultural comfort zone and bring in insights from viewpoints that we do not ourselves know. It brief and well argued.
And the final four chapters, on Public Reasoning and Democracy, really spoke to me - a challenge to put principles into practice (including a nice section on "Wrath and Reasoning", why anger is an important part of discussions of rights), with plenty of references to India and the Middle East, and the failings of the so-called West.
So I got more out of it than I thought I would get from the opening chapters - a case where it was very much worth reading to the end.
I've never been hugely attracted to philosophy, not even political philosophy, and this book reminded me why not; the essential argument is that justice and fairness are crucially intertwined concepts, which I accept without feeling strongly about; and it is largely in reaction to Rawls' classic work, which I have not read and am not really persuaded to read.
There are some interesting insights. For Sen, "democracy" is not just about voting, but about having a plural political system where governments are under scrutiny (see my recent posts about Season 12 of Doctor Who). This also means that we should not get too hung up on developing perfect institutions, as the process is more important than the form of government.
Two bits did grab me. Chapter 7, "Position, Relevance and Illusion", starts with King Lear and ends with the Good Samaritan, and insists that to get a better understanding of justice (or indeed anything at all) we need to look beyond our social and cultural comfort zone and bring in insights from viewpoints that we do not ourselves know. It brief and well argued.
And the final four chapters, on Public Reasoning and Democracy, really spoke to me - a challenge to put principles into practice (including a nice section on "Wrath and Reasoning", why anger is an important part of discussions of rights), with plenty of references to India and the Middle East, and the failings of the so-called West.
So I got more out of it than I thought I would get from the opening chapters - a case where it was very much worth reading to the end.
cetian's review against another edition
4.0
Took me a long time to finish it, and severall restarts. But it was rewarding. Amartya Sen has a brilliant analytical capacity, that sometimes can almost be too thorough, but always seems anchored in a humanist horizon. The final chapters are the ones in which we can see more clearly the socio-political aplications of the moral philosophy that the author goes through the entire book. The body of references to other authors is incredibly rich and there is a balance of intelectual modesty and academic confidence that make this work unapologetic where it is critic of others but with an elegant and polite tone. Coming from a series of Zizek and Sam Harris texts, maybe this was part of the dificulty I had in picking up rhythm. Eventually I discovered it was my problem and it had to do with style, not content.
cpa85's review
Couldn't finish this one. The general idea proposed was very intriguing but it got to be way too much of a chore to grind through this dry, tedious material.
collismeanshill's review against another edition
I’m ok with slow books. I can push through dense, heavy texts without trouble. I will no longer, however, finish over-written and rambling books that appear to have been paid for by-the-word. I don’t have enough years left for this kind of drudgery.