Transcendental vs. comparative approaches to justice: a reappraisal of Sen's dichotomy

Abstract

In The Idea of Justice, Sen describes two competing approaches to theorising about justice: “transcendental institutionalism”, in which he includes Rawls, and “realisation-focused comparison”, in which he includes Condorcet and himself. The objective of this paper is to demonstrate that a comparative approach cannot exist without a transcendental dimension. Contrary to Sen, who claims that a transcendental theory is neither necessary nor sufficient in order to frame comparative judgments, it is shown that a transcendental dimension is a necessary, albeit not sufficient, condition of any comparative approach. To illustrate our thesis, we refer to the works of three great authors: Condorcet, Sen himself and the later Rawls.

Keywords:

• Sen
• Rawls
• Condorcet
• social justice
• reason

Notes

1 On these issues, see also Sen (2006, 2012).

2 It should be noted that most examples proposed by Sen on this issue do not relate to social justice (see p. 16 for the choice between a Dali and a Picasso and red or white wine; p. 102 for the comparison in terms of peak heights between Mount Kilimanjaro and Mount McKinley).

3 Sen does indeed acknowledge the evolution of Rawls's thought from a transcendental theory to a more comparative one (see Sen 2009, pp. 11–2 and p. 58), as we will discuss in Section 4.2, but the analyses Sen develops regarding Rawls are unquestionably focused on A Theory of Justice (Rawls 1971).

4 We wish to thank an anonymous referee for bringing this issue of “conglomerate” theory to our attention.

5 Note that the contrary is not true, even though we will not demonstrate this in the present paper. As Sen himself stresses (2009, pp. 16–17), pure transcendental theories are quite conceivable.

6 Sen (2009, pp. 91–2) also recalls the legacy of Borda's analysis.

7 It should be stressed that a consideration of the work developed by Sen in the seventies is of particular interest as it leads to a better understanding of some of the concepts used in The Idea of Justice. Of course, we do not deny that Sen's thought might have undergone some evolution, just as for instance did Rawls's (see section 4.2 on the evolution of Rawlsian thought). But we claim that some aspects of The Idea of Justice implicitly appeal to transcendental elements developed earlier by Sen, irrespective of the evolution of his thought regarding issues such as the original position or the notion of impartiality (on these subjects, see Gilardone, forthcoming).

8 For a quick survey of the issue of metaranking, see, for instance, Ege and Igersheim (2011, pp. 4–6).

9 But note that this does not mean that the model of morality proposed by Sen leads to a “zero-one contrast between the actual ordering and the one moral (or ‘ethical’) ordering” (Sen 1974, p. 63). As Sen himself states, there can be “gradations of morality”. This is precisely the interest of the concept of metaranking.

10 Of course, we do not advance the absurd view that what an author has to say regarding his own approach should not be taken into consideration. But we believe that a close examination of an author's reasoning is indeed necessary in order to bring out the internal logic which governs this reasoning (on this issue, see Ege 2012).

11 For a recent analysis of the relationship between Rawls's and Sen ‘s thoughts, see Gilardone (forthcoming).

12 Again, it should be noted that these statements do not entail that A Theory of Justice must be seen as a “conglomerate” theory. On the one hand, as stressed in the beginning of this section, it is primarily and unquestionably transcendental. Second, the idea of “reflective equilibrium” clearly implies a connection between the principles and the “considered judgments”: this does not match Sen's definition of a “conglomerate” theory, since it is stated that neither the transcendental or comparative judgment “follows from each other”.

13 On the evolution of Rawls's thought, see among others Audard (1988) and Ege and Igersheim (2008).