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We do not prosper by income or happiness alone Samuel Brittan Financial Times 04/09/09 The wellbeing of a society cannot be judged by national income indicators alone, even when these are augmented by so-called happiness measures. And it is worth removing specific injustices on a piecemeal basis even if it is impossible to construct a perfectly just society or even agree on what such a society would look like. These two propositions might seem blindingly obvious, but they go against the grain of much recent political philosophy and highbrow economics. This seems to me the central message of The Idea of Justice by the Nobel-winning economist and philosopher Amartya Sen. The tradition of English-language political philosophy used to be firmly utilitarian. Put bluntly, it judged states of affairs by a happiness criterion. When John Stuart Mill, the utilitarian philosopher, spoke of higher and lower pleasures he was being inconsistent with his own doctrine. As the old clerihew runs: John Stuart Mill By a mighty effort of will Overcame his natural bonhomie, And wrote "Principles of Political Economy". The first departure from the ranks of the English analytical school came from the philosopher G.E. Moore and his disciple J.M. Keynes, who believed that the aim of public activity was to maximise the amount of goodness in the world. Goodness was in turn identified with the pleasures of human intercourse and the enjoyment of beautiful objects. This might seem a long way from improving the "international financial architecture", on which Keynes spent so much time; but he believed that well-tempered and steady economic progress could make an indirect contribution. Many modern political philosophers reject both utility and "goodness" and prefer to talk about "justice". This is not a usage that much appeals to me. Justice is in the first place a desirable quality in a legal system. It can be extended by analogy to other situations when an adjudication has to be made, a famous one being a mother dividing a cake where there is a presumption of equal shares, but modified by specific factors such as the size and degree of hunger of each particular child. Usage has now gone much further and justice is used by some political philosophers for the ethical valuation of the whole state of society. What they really mean is something like the equitable distribution of the good things of life. But I prefer to avoid arguing about the meaning of words. The most famous of modern theories of political justice is that of John Rawls, the late Harvard philosopher. He invented the idea of the "veil of ignorance", in which people asked themselves what structure of society they would approve of if they had no idea of their own position in it. He then propounded the principles that he imagined would emerge from such deliberation. The most famous, although not the most important, of these was the "maximin" - that social and economic inequalities must be to the benefit of the "least advantaged members of society". There is in fact a lot of argument about whether these propositions really would emerge from beneath the veil. It is no use practical politicians boasting that they have never heard of this discussion, as many of their advisers are, knowingly or not, applying Rawlsian principles. They are doing so incorrectly, as these principles are not meant to apply to policy directly, but to govern the central institutions of society, such as the political constitution, the basic laws and so on. They belong to what Mr Sen calls the "transcendental" position emanating from Immanuel Kant, the 18th-century German philosopher, which is only interested in the shape of an ideal society. Mr Sen on the other hand supports the piecemeal removal of specific injustices in the absence of an ideal society. So, although he does not quite put it like that, he supports those applied economists and jurists who try to apply Rawls on a piecemeal basis. The two writers have in common an insistence that basic freedoms of choice and opportunity are important, and not just income or "happiness". I would happily recommend Mr Sen's new book, read selectively with those chiefly interested in politics and economics moving swiftly from the introduction to the final chapters. Those wanting to catch up on modern political philosophy should then turn back. Unfortunately I cannot, try as I might, get to grips with Mr Sen's criterion of extending "capabilities". I know it has been found helpful by many development economists. But it seems to me to conflate personal abilities with material means. I do not have the physical capability to swim the Channel, but even if I did I might not be able to afford the training and the whole infrastructure of boats to support me. I cannot see the advantage of putting the two notions together. But never mind. Mr Sen's whole book is a cornucopia of commonsense humane advice combined with analytical insight, and far wiser than those thinkers who try to derive all their recommendations from one usually questionable overriding value.
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