Harvard University Press to Publish Amartya Sen’s The Idea of Justice

Amartya Sen’s book, The Idea of Justice, will be published by Harvard University Press on September 30^th 2009. Hilary Putnam, Cogan University Professor Emeritus in Philosophy, Harvard University, and former President of the American Philosophical Association, commented:

“I believe that Amartya Sen’s The Idea of Justice is the most important contribution to the subject since John Rawls’s A Theory of Justice appeared in 1971.The approach of that book was to try to devise an account of an ideally just nation-state. While fully acknowledging the path-breaking nature of Rawls’s work, Sen, who is a Nobel laureate in economics and social choice theory as well as a profound social philosopher, points out grave problems with this “transcendental” approach, and argues that what we urgently need in our troubled world is not a theory of an ideally just state, but a theory that can yield judgements as to comparative justice, judgements that tell us when and why we are moving closer to or farther away from realizing justice in the present globalized world. Sen draws on his mastery of all the fields I mention to provide the basic ideas for such a theory. In addition, he discusses, in illuminating (and historically and cross-culturally informed) detail, fundamental issues concerning democracy, human rights, economic development, and the nature and limits of ethical objectivity. This is a book that deserves the widest possible readership”

The Idea of Justice by Amartya Sen, published by the Harvard University Press: http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog/SENIDE.html