“Justice” is a term all too often invoked without careful scrutiny of its substantive complexity. Amartya Sen contends that rather than projecting perfect schemes of justice à la John Rawls, we are much better off seeking partial rankings of justice that take into account diverse perspectives on justice across parochial boundaries.

The distinction in Indian jurisprudence between niti and nyaya serves as a substantive guide post throughout Sen's text. Whereas niti focuses on “the roles of institutions, rules, and organization,” nyaya focuses on actual realization of justice through people's behavior. While niti may insist upon implementing rules of justice at all cost, nyaya focuses on morally assessing outcomes and consequences before initiating action. Sen focuses on the elimination of clear cases of “manifest injustice” through the behavior orientation of social choice theory, rather than on the realization of the “perfectly just world society” (26). As opposed to the transcendental institutionalism that he finds in the social contract theorists such as Rawls, Sen sides with the realization-focused approach of figures as diverse as Mary Wollstonecraft, Karl Marx, and John Stuart Mill.

As complimentary as Sen is to Rawls's seminal study of justice, he contends that Rawls's deontological approach cannot (1) compare concrete situations with regard to justice; (2) move beyond institutions and rules to bring about behavioral realizations of justice; (3) tolerate assessments that offer only partially just solutions; or (4) avoid parochialism, given that only those in the contract situation are deliberating (p. 70). Instead, Sen emphasizes Adam Smith's notion of the impartial spectator who takes into account diverse perspectives from distant locales and does not seek to resolve all conflicts. Building upon Smith, Sen emphasizes that social choice theory cultivates a public reasoning that can (1) make comparative assessments of justice, (2) bring competing perspectives of justice to bear on concrete situations, (3) emphasize partial resolutions that rank preferences on justice, and (4) reexamine persistently the norms that inform social preferences in diverse locales across the globe.

If in the initial section of his text he distinguishes his approach from deontological liberalism, in the middle sections he contrasts his perspective with those of rational choice theory and utilitarianism. Rational choice theory, he contends, reduces rationality to mere self-interest. Instead, he argues, a number of motivations inform human behavior, especially a concern to take into account the interests of others. In the same vein, utilitarianism is unable to reckon with diverse assessments people have of what constitutes happiness. Consequently, he concludes that anticipating the consequences of one's actions needs to be more than just a calculative assessment of utilities or rationality too narrowly conceived.

At the same time, Sen seeks to include not just social choice theory but a plurality of rationalities, including those dealing with emotions, to effect justice in concrete situations. For example, in the case of which of three children should be given a flute, he suggests a libertarian would likely give it to the child who made it, an economic egalitarian would give it to the one who was the poorest, and a utilitarian would give it to the one could play it. But Sen's point is that the claims of each of these impartial rationalities and others need to be considered to assess just outcomes. In turn, as much as Sen's social choice bent stresses the need to move beyond abstract articulations of freedom to whether in fact each person has the capability to realize this freedom given his political and socioeconomic situation, he also emphasizes the contributions of other articulations of freedom, such as not being dependent on others and noninterference from others.

In his final section, Sen's ethos of the impartial spectator navigating multiple rationalities leads him to an inclusive public reasoning that can advance participatory democracy around the globe. Crucial to this undertaking, he argues, is a flourishing free press that raises awareness and provides an accountability structure to the actions of political, social, and economic institutions. As opposed to the persecution of minorities in parochial democracies, Sen advocates a global democratic discourse that embraces plural identities.

Just as he does with respect to freedom, so too does Sen contend that the realization of human rights is a complex, multifaceted undertaking. Beyond just making ethical pronouncements, reconciling the competing ethical obligations of human beings regarding rights calls for constant critical discourse and comparative assessments. As opposed to those who seek a univocal, transparent global justice, and those who see such an endeavor as intrinsically hegemonic and thus flawed, Sen insists that persistent partial enhancements of justice are realizable through communication between diverse perspectives and interlocutors.

To his credit, Sen's civil critique and partial inclusion of the ideas from a wide range of traditions manifests the type of democratic engagement he is advocating. He especially integrates Western and Asian sources in a way that clearly distinguishes his approach from those that treat the Western tradition as practically sacred, as well as from those that see diverse traditions from across the globe as irreducible to each other.

Rawls, in his later work, stressed an “overlapping consensus” in which interlocutors come to political, not metaphysical, agreement on principles of justice regardless of the diverse moral perspectives that lead them to this consensus. Sen, of course, finds that these more realistic sensibilities of the later Rawls call into question even more the transcendent bent of his earlier framework. Sen's pursuit of justice through social choice theory, though, actually builds upon this intuition of the later Rawls. On a day-to-day basis in diverse societies, there are principles in practice that provide cohesion to political and socioeconomic relations. Sen, through comparative assessments and partial rank orderings, seeks to make these relations more just, not perfect.

Curiously, Sen contends that Rawls's approach is simultaneously detached from reality and yet parochial. At the same time, despite Sen's claim to be much more focused on concrete behavior, his call for global democratic discourse is rather ethereal. Although his ideas seem consonant with Michael Walzer's notion of a thin morality that diverse peoples can share regardless of their attachments to thick particular locales, no case studies are included by Sen to illustrate the pursuit of justice in practice, apart from a discussion of a 1940s famine in Bengal. Sen's elaboration of Smith's impartial spectator has an amorphous character and it is not clear if and where faith-based approaches to justice fit into Sen's framework. It is especially surprising, given his disavowal of transcendent approaches, that Sen does not wrestle with the possibility that juxtaposing several reasonable theories of justice might simply degenerate into modus vivendi arrangements.

That being said, Sen elicits the idea of justice from within, not apart from, the plurality of the human condition. Whereas in the work of Hannah Arendt, especially in The Human Condition, the contest between diverse interlocutors in the public realm has an agonal disposition, Sen seeks to evoke an Aristotelian-style phronesis that can animate transnational engagements of justice. From this prudential impetus, he now needs to illustrate how to effect a democratic transnational civil society that can cultivate the institutions and the human conduct that indeed expands the capabilities of human beings that he so cherishes.