Amartya Sen’s Idea of Justice, a treatise on inequality as a form of injustice

Abstract

In The idea of justice (2009), A. Sen returns to the idea of inequality as a form of injustice, and highlights some repairable injustices as well as possible formulas for their analysis and compensation. The idea of inequality is a constant in the work of A. Sen since Economic Inequality (1972, revised and expanded in 1997). In Equality in what? (in Spanish, Nuevo examen de la desigualdad), he expanded on this proposal while analyzing the social implications of those economic inequalities denominated as “egalitarianism” and “utilitarianism”.
This measuring of economic inequality and poverty led him to propose a conceptual “corpus” in which is found the so–called ”Capability Approach”, which he actively collaborated on with M. Nussbaum. This “capability approach” refers to what we are able to be, do and choose, and was adopted by the United Nations Program for Development (UNDP) to design the indicators in the Multidimensional Poverty Index (S. Alkire and JE Foster, Oxford). The application of the Capability Approach allows social improvement alternatives to be identified and managed, always adapting themselves to contexts that generate inequalities.