Articles by Colin Farrelly

Hi All,
This is the first post to kick off the reading group on Sen’s new book The Idea of Justice. I want to thank Blain for organizing this and I look forward to participating in it.

I have to admit it is with much anticipation that I begin to read Sen’s book. A few years ago I heard him give this talk which outlined the basics of the arguments he advances in the book. His project struck me as one that I (as a critic of ideal theory) would be very sympathetic with and I hope this book can helpfully advance the methodological debates the discipline is now engaged in. So I have high hopes for this book and look forward to reading it together with the group.

OK, so down to the business at hand. Keeping Blain’s advice about word count (I’m a bit over, sorry!) in mind, I thought I would begin by drawing attention to a crucial passage in the Preface, and then link that with a few of the central issues that follow in the Introduction itself (issues which will, I suspect, play an important role in the overall argument of the book).

In the Preface Sen explicitly states that the theory of justice he seeks to advance “aims to clarify how we can proceed to address questions of enhancing justice and removing injustice, rather than to offer resolutions of questions about the nature of perfect justice” (ix).

The issue of what we want a theory of justice to deliver is arguably one of the most interesting, and hotly debated, topics in the field today. Some obvious examples that immediately come to my mind are David Schmidtz’s analogy between theories and maps in The Elements of Justice, Elizabeth Anderson’s critique of luck egalitarianism, and G.A. Cohen’s Rescuing Justice and Equality where he distinguishes principles of regulation from principles of justice and maintains that the latter are “fact-free”.

The contrast between Cohen’s position and Sen’s is very stark and worth considering. The vision of political philosophy Sen is invoking, at least in this early chapter of The Idea of Justice, is one primarily concerned with the question “How should be done?”. Whereas for Cohen the primary concern of the philosopher is: “what we should think, even when what we should think makes no practical difference”. I myself come down on the side of Sen on this issue. Those partial to Cohen’s approach might maintain that we ought to privilege deliberating about perfect justice for it is only once we comprehend the ideal that we can properly undertake the practical task of trying to realize justice in the “real world”. Sen notes that he will address this kind of challenge in Chapter 4, so I look forward to seeing how he addresses that concern.

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This post is a continuation of my earlier post from December.

Last week President Obama give this excellent speech to the National Academy of Sciences.  He pledged to invest 3% of GDP for science research (basic and applied research).  He also vowed to improve education in math and science.  This represents the largest investment in scientific research and innovation in American history.  With such a monumental investment being made in science one has to wonder:  what do we (i.e. political philosophers) have to say about all this?  Is such an investment just or unjust? And why?

Surely the National Academy of Sciences are part of the “basic structure” of society and thus an investment of this scale must raise some important questions of justice that we can contribute some insights to.  Do we have some developed ideas about such issues?  Do we equip the students we teach with the tools for thinking rationally and critically about such issues?

Here is an exercise I hope you might entertain trying.  Imagine that a reporter has contacted you about President Obama’s investment in science and innovation.  You are asked, as a political philosopher interested in issues of justice, to offer some comments about this policy.  Please consider using the “comments” section to this post below to add your insights and thoughts.  I think this might be a useful exercise to help stimulate interest in this neglected area of the field. 

Cheers,

Colin   

If you are really struggling to come up with anything to say here are some basic questions to consider to help get the juices flowing:  (1) What is science? (2) what is science for? and (3) how large are the stakes involved between the worst possible science policies a government could implement and the best policies? (and what constitutes the worst and best here?)

Kant’s three maxims of “public sense” are:

(1) Think for yourself (the motto of the enlightenment)

(2) Think from the standpoint of everyone else

(3) Think consistently

Kant inspires me…. so I made this:  “3 Wishes”

Cheers,

Colin

Moral and political philosophers are concerned with how we ought to act, as both individuals and collectivity as societies.  So we ask questions like: What makes an action right or wrong?  What constitutes the “good life”?  How should society distribute the benefits and burdens of social cooperation (like wealth, and rights and freedoms)?

As philosophers, it is not surprising that we turn to the history of philosophy to help us grapple with these timeless normative questions.  So we turn to intellectual giants like Aristotle, Kant, Mill and Marx for guidance on how we can sensibly deliberate about the demands of morality and justice.  More recently, moral and political philosophers have engaged (and still do) in many a spirited debate relating to John Rawls’s theory “justice as fairness”, and topical applied topics like multiculturalism, animal rights, deliberative democracy and cosmopolitanism.  These are all interesting issues, topics I myself have published on and currently teach.  But something vital is missing…. 

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