On Sen’s Idea of a Theory of Justice*

Amartya Sen has recently drawn a distinction between different conceptions of a theory of justice: the transcendental vs the comparative (Sen 2006, 2009). He claims that these two conceptions do not include or entail each other. As I firmly believe, to put it succinctly, that a useful theory of justice should be comparative as well as containing elements of what Sen is subsuming under the heading „transcendental“, I have to find fault with Sen’s distinction. And it turns out that there are plenty of problems. Let me begin with an idea I take over from John Broome. He told us that there is primarily one thing (and really not very much more besides it) that philosophers should learn from economists, viz. to think comparatively (Broome 1999, 9ff.). It is not really helpful to find out what is good, and what is not, but rather we should strive to recognize what is better than other alternatives. Comparatives give rise to an ordering relation, and orderings are the basic structure of everything normative. Same with justice: what we as philosophers, and others as well, should really be interested in is which institutional arrangements (or whatever the items of evaluation might be) are more just than others. Broome’s advice seems to me very sensible and I would like to see every theory of justice formulated in such a comparative manner – or at least being compatible with such an account. Now this sounds just like Sen’s idea of a „comparative approach to justice“, that „would concentrate (...) on ranking alternative societal arrangements (whether some arrangement is ‚less just ’ or ‚more just ’ than another), rather than focusing exclusively (...) on the identification of a fully just society. “ (Sen 2006, 216). But as it turns out, there seems to be a big difference for Sen where I don’t see any. For Sen contrasts his comparative approach with what he calls the transcendental approach, „focusing (...) on identifying perfectly just societal arrangements. “ (Sen, ibid.) And he * This text is an English version of my talk „Zu Sens Idee der Gerechtigkeit “ on the Congress of th