Sen's 'Justice & Identity'

 

Sen's 'Justice & Identity ' discusses the relationship between justice and identity.

To do justice, identity must be given an 'extension'. This may be 'individualistic'. In this case, to do justice involves punishing only the person who committed the crime. However, identity may be 'collectivist'. To do justice means punishing any person who belongs to the family or the clan of the criminal. We might say that a 'just war' involves collective identities whereas criminal justice, in the West, is individualistic. 

What makes justice ineffective is 'multiple identities'- e.g. where a criminal says that the identity which committed the crime is now a potted plant. Punish it by all means. Let me go free so I can kill your family.  

While it is widely agreed that justice requires us to go beyond loyalty to our simplest identity – being just oneself –

No. Justice requires us to, at the simplest level of our being, become loyal to the aims of justice. This is more particularly true if we are required to serve on a jury.  

there is less common ground on how far we must go beyond self-centredness.

A self-centered person whose self is devoted to Justice will want to act justly.  

How relevant are group identities to the requirements of justice, or must we transcend those too?

That depends. In a primitive state of society, it is likely that there will be a tit-for-tat rule such that if a person from your clan kills a member of our clan we either kill one of your clan or your people pay us 'blood-money'. As economies advance and grow more sophisticated, we may have a more individualistic  

The author draws attention to the trap of confinement to nationality and citizenship in determining the requirements of justice,

This is a trap smart or highly productive people can escape by emigrating.  

particularly under the social-contract approach,

So we aren't talking about actual justice. We are talking about some Alice in Wonderland shite cooked up by stupid academics.  

and also to the danger of exclusive concentration on some other identity such as religion and race.

Which is the only thing standing in the way of my becoming Pope. How come Catholics get all the top jobs at the Vatican?  

He concludes that it is critically important to pay attention to every human being's multiple identities related to the different groups to which a person belongs;

Do we really need to pay attention to a serial killer's claim that the murders were committed by a separate identity which is now a potted plant?  

the priorities have to be chosen by reason,

Reason tells us that people have a single identity though many different predicates may be applied to that person. There is no reason to say 'I prioritize my identity as a cat when I say miaow.' The truth is saying 'miaow' is something you like doing.  

rather than any single identity being imposed on a person on grounds of some extrinsic precedence.

The fact that the guy has just one body means he has a single identity. It isn't the case that you are 'imposing' an identity as fat, elderly, Tamil man on me when, the truth is, I have another identity as a Lesbian potted plant which is currently working as an Actuary in Singapore.  

Justice is closely linked with the pursuit of impartiality,

in other words, there should be both 'horizontal equity'- i.e. treating like cases alike- and 'vertical equity'- treating dissimilar cases differently. We would punish very severely a premeditated murder carried out by a cunning and clever man. A gibbering imbecile might not have known what he was doing when he accidentally crushed his granny to death when all he meant to do was give her a hug.  

but that pursuit has to be open rather than closed,

No. It must be closed and 'buck stopped'. A Court which continually hears new arguments and thus never makes a decision is denying justice to those whose rights have been violated.  

resisting closure through nationality or ethnicity or any other allegedly all-conquering single identity

Justice must be limited by jurisdiction. The fact that some Ayatollah in a foreign country says a person in our country should be killed, doesn't make his murder any the less illegal. Of course, a Hindu buddhijivi might disagree. 

 Deen Chatterjee, who taught normative jurisprudence, has this to say about Sen's memoir

- The concept and implications of our shared humanity are central to the questions of where we belong, who we are, and how we relate to others.

This is nonsense. If I am hit on the head and suffer amnesia, nothing to do with 'shared humanity' will help me discover to whom I belong and how I relate to various other people- e.g. my boss, my best friend etc.  

 Sen notes that the divide between the near and the far is not so much a product of the barriers of space and time as it is a characteristic in the attitudinal makeup of people, both between and within communities.

This is not true. No matter how much I change my 'attitudinal make up', I won't get any closer to the Andromeda galaxy.  

Noted philosopher and ethicist Amy Gutmann cites the compelling example of Cornelia Sorabji to make a similar point: “Sorabji’s cultivation of multiple cultural identities permitted her to feel more rather than less at home in England, despite the fact that it was not her homeland.”

Her mother had been adopted at an early age by an English couple. Cornelia went to College in England. In India, she had English friends. She fell in love with an Englishman who, sadly, was married. After things became too hot for her in India- because she defended Katherine Mayo's defamatory attack on India- she moved to the UK. The Brits paid for her to go and do anti-Indian propaganda in the US. I should mention, she had other family in London. 

In a stratified society, for instance, the near can be far due to a lack of shared concerns.

No. The near remain near. It is a different matter that you can ignore them.  

Attitudinal changes enabled by establishing contacts and getting to know others expand people’s moral universe and expedite institutional reforms.

The reverse is equally likely.  

Sen cites friendship as a good example of this. In extolling the virtues of friendship in fostering connections between people far and near, Sen points out the “admirable goodness” of humanity that often gets overlooked.

Also, people often fail to mention the importance of respiration and farting.  

Likewise, Sen notes that shared vulnerabilities, not just strength, can also bring people together.

Or keep them apart.  

He bemoans the lack of sufficient coverage on the topic of friendship in literature, compared to, say, love (p. 54).

Also, too few books have been written about farting.  

Born in 1933, Sen grew up in a nurturing and liberal-minded community of friends and family in Bengal, India, with exceptionally gifted parents and grandparents.

His grandfather was a Judge who become the first Registrar of Dacca University. His father was the first Indian to get a PhD in Soil Science. He was a Professor of Chemistry who was consulted by the Government on various important issues. Sadly, Sen devoted himself to studying and writing nonsense.  

He received his early education at an innovative school that fostered curiosity, imagination, and empathy rather than competitive excellence.

Tagore's father had wanted him to set up a Vedic patshala. But this would have meant not just paying students to study but also supporting them after they became 'snatak' (graduates). The Tagore's simply didn't have the money. That's why Rabi set up a school for wealthy thickos. True, the sons and daughters of staff members were smart- they had to be because they would inherit no vast estates.  

His college days were spent in two premier institutions in India and England. His penchant for engaging in animated discussions on topics covered (as well as not covered) in college curricula not only drew him closer to his classmates and professors but put him in the company of many of the most prominent intellectuals of the day.

they helped destroy not just Bengal's but India's economy.  Tagore had wanted his students to study useful things like agronomy or engineering. Sadly, the Bengali upper-crust preferred talking vacuous bollocks. 

Where Is Home?

Not East Bengal. Muslims might kill you. Once Muslims become the majority in West Bengal, it will be time to run away from there.  

Where are people from and where do they belong?

This is 'oikeiosis'. It has to do with who your Mummy and Daddy were and the place they ran away to so they could bring you up safely.  

To this question, Amartya Sen wonders: “Why one place?”(p. 4). In reflecting on the first three decades of his life—all filled with an amazing range of experiences, encounters, and intellectual explorations spanning Asia, Europe, and North America—Sen finds that his home was wherever he found receptive and reflective human company.

i.e. home was where he was paid to teach worthless bollocks.  

For Sen, a home does not have to be exclusive.

Lots of people have a second or third home they visit on holidays. So what? 

Partly, this was inculcated into Sen from an early age. His ancestral home in Dhaka was named “Jagat Kutir”, which, in Bengali, means “The cottage of the world” (p. 6).

Sen's people were smart enough to run away from it before it became their own graveyard or 'kabristan'.  

This name reflected the disdain Sen’s grandfather had for nationalism

which one? His paternal grandfather worked for the British. The maternal grandfather worked for Tagore who was against Indian nationalism because he knew the Muslims would grab his Estates in the East if the Brits ran away.  

and was for Sen a reminder of the one shared world in which we live.

Why not also be reminded of the one shared solar system in which we live?  

Yet Sen also learned this by observing nature. For instance, growing up near mighty rivers in Bengal and Dhaka left a deep impression on him. The primacy of rivers in people’s lives, regardless of their sectarian divides, became for him a symbolic nod to the shared plight of humanity—a lesson Sen carried with him all through his life.

Sen likes rivers because so many Bengalis die during floods. We sympathize.  

 Tagore showed us that rejecting relativism is not inconsistent with endorsing pluralism.

It is also not inconsistent with running the fuck away from Muslims and emigrating to a country still ruled by White Christians.  

Sorting out the right balance of this approach is not simple.

It is pointless. What matters is running away to somewhere nice still ruled by Whitey.  

It requires a delicate blend of reason and imagination

and running away 

that takes time to cultivate and is best started at an early stage in one’s life. At Tagore’s school, Sen was intrigued by this challenge. Looking back, Sen writes

'Rabindranath insisted on open debate on every issue,

like whether or not to fart loudly?  

and distrusted conclusions based on a mechanical formula. . . . It is in the sovereignty of reasoning—fearless reasoning in freedom—that we can find Rabindranath Tagore’s lasting voice.

You can do plenty of fearless reasoning in freedom while running the fuck away from Muslims.  

At the same time, Tagore’s educational philosophy was rooted in the belief that a flourishing life is one that has room for play, exuberance, and imagination, which take us beyond mere acceptance of difference to a joyous celebration of diversity, as well as beyond the static comfort of our daily routines to the boundless wonder of the great unknown.

Also, if the Brits start packing their bags, run the fuck away from East Bengal.  

Satyajit Ray—the celebrated film director who got his art degree from Tagore’s university—has noted that even in Tagore’s paintings, “the mood evoked . . . is one of a joyous freedom.”

No. They look like shit. But Tagore was very old and very disillusioned by the time he took up the brush. 

As Sen puts it: “The exceptional importance of that combination”—fearless reasoning and joyous freedom—“has remained with me all my life” (p. 43).

Economics is described as the dismal science. Teaching it kills the spirit more particularly because you know that the kids who quit your class, drop out of skool, and join the family stock-broking business will soon earn ten times more than you do.  

As Sen moved on with his studies at Santiniketan, he came to see that Tagore’s quest for freedom and human dignity was embedded in a broader vision of humanity that makes room for multifaceted and overlapping identities of individuals and groups. In taking women out of their “boxed” identities as passive and subordinate members of society defined by their gender and infusing them with delight and confidence as they explored uncharted territories, Tagore was an inspiration for Sen, whose later work would contain pathbreaking ideas on women’s agency.

Why is it that only women, not men, got raped by the Pakistani army? Yahya Khan should have 'unboxed' male identity so that they too got their share of dick.  

 For Sen, Marx’s insistence upon seeing people from many different perspectives was a “vitally important message” for our world,

Marx said only one's socio-economic class mattered. That is the only way people should be seen.  

where the penchant for labeling individuals and groups in one-dimensional terms not only robs them of the richness of their plural identities, it also lies at the root of pervasive inequality, exploitation, and conflict.

Labels have no effect. Sticks and stones can change outcomes. But so can doing useful stuff- e.g. studying soil science rather that Social Choice theory.  

The joys of intellectual deliberation—reading, arguing, and debating—continued for Sen when he enrolled at Trinity College in Cambridge, England, in 1953. Looking back, Sen writes: “Reasons to reflect upon our varying identities seemed omnipresent in my college life and became increasingly clear to me in my years at Cambridge” (p. 372).

Sen chose not to reflect upon 'varying identities'. He cultivated relationships with two Leftists because this would help him when he returned home.  

His college days with Trinity continued for ten years, first as an undergraduate, then as a research student, and finally as a young lecturer. The discussion topics Sen encountered in Cambridge were broadly the same as they had been in Calcutta—

because Cambridge was as poor as Calcutta- right? Joan Robinson would often regale her students with tales of how, in 1946, she had seen a poor Unitarian Bishop, who used to do odd jobs in her neighborhood, being hacked to death by members of the Spanish Inquisition. 

the role of liberty and equity in left-wing political theory,

but left-wing political theory's own role was to make the Left unelectable.  

with the complexity of identity problems in economic and political decision-making commanding a fair share of attention.

Not at that time. It was generally acknowledged that if immigrants ran amok they would be killed or deported. Homosexuals too were at risk of a long spell of porridge.  

Sen had misgivings about the one-sided coverage in the teaching of mainstream economics that he experienced first in Calcutta and later in Cambridge. He questioned the general assumption that “everyone puts self-interest first, without any other values influencing our concerns and decisions” (p. 220).

Nobody told Sen that utility is whatever a person decides for himself.  

For Sen, this one-dimensional portrayal of human motivation undermines the rich texture of a flourishing human identity.

Then why teach that shite? Why not study soil-science or Operations Research and do 'first-order' good?  

Two notable friends include Mahbub ul Haq from Pakistan,

who did play a praiseworthy role in recking the Pakistani economy 

who later pioneered the human development approach at the United Nations, through which nations are gauged in terms of the quality of life of their people;

measuring quality of life is like measuring your dick. It won't change anything. The thing is a wank.  

and Lal Jayawardena from Sri Lanka, who in 1985 became the founding director of the World Institute for Development Economics Research at the United Nations University in Helsinki.

Helsinki was very poor. Thankfully, some nice brown monkey helped them develop economically. 

 Tagore had been a major critic of Britain’s subjugation of India but did not consider the British people as his (or India’s) enemies.

Like his grandfather, Tagore knew that if the Brits left, the Hindus would lose their lives and their land in East Bengal.  

As Sen notes, Tagore “went out of his way to dissociate his criticism of the Raj from any denunciation of British people and culture” (p. 92).

A Britisher- Leonard Elmhirst- was funding Sriniketan. Also, Tagore profited from book-sales in Blighty.  

For Tagore, the “distinction between the role of Britain and that of British imperialism could not have been clearer” (p. 169).

British Imperialism existed only because Britain had taken on an Imperial role. There is no distinction here.  

Likewise, not long after arriving in Cambridge, as Sen started wondering why England’s social progress was not reflected in its relationship to colonial India, he became even more convinced that “the British in India went in a very different direction from the British in Britain” (p. 390).

No. They went in the same direction. The problem was most people in India were Indian and wanted to go in a different direction. In East Bengal that involved killing Hindus.  

Despite Britain’s colonial subjugation of India, which Sen has powerfully critiqued in his speeches and writings,

Nonsense! Sen, for all his faults, isn't one of those lunatics who blames Churchill for the Bengal famine.  

he was deeply touched by the friendliness and hospitality of the British people in England. He narrates a story of how deeply moved he was by the “Christian humanity” of a British friend’s parents during his visit to the friend’s home in Yorkshire. The parents “had spontaneous warmth and strong sympathy for all those they met—and indeed for people across the world” (p. 270).

Sen was an undergraduate at Cambridge. He wasn't a rent-boy their son had picked up from the slums of East London.  

Sen notes: “In thinking about the changeability and manipulability of identity, I became increasingly convinced that we must consider much more carefully how our identities adjust to circumstances, often in unpredictable ways” (p. 375).

Our identity remains the same so long as we are alive. True, to maintain this identity you may have to run away from Muslims and go settle in a place still ruled by White Christians. But this was entirely predictable.  

Although in this statement Sen is referring to a very different set of circumstances related to politics and economic decision-making,

in which case it has nothing to do with identity and everything to do with Statistical classes.  

the point made here has general validity.

It is nonsense any way you look at it.  

Nested Multiple Loyalties

give rise to concurrency problems. Sen has never taken that on board.  

With the symbiotic relationship between identity and violence in the rising politics of hatred and intolerance across the globe, Sen sees “how easy it is to generate hostility and violence by fanning the flames of division in artificially generated identity confrontations” (p. 266).

what is even easier to talk vacuous, virtue signaling, bollocks. But it has no effect on those who stand to gain through violence or confrontation.  

He witnessed this as a young boy in the Hindu-Muslim riots prior to the partition of India in the 1940s, when an otherwise tolerant and inclusive Indian society went up in flames over the religious divide.

Because Indians were intolerant of British rule. They wanted to get back to slaughtering each other.  

Later, as a student, seeing the names of so many Trinity men who had been killed in the two European wars on the walls of the college chapel, Sen was reminded that the Europeans fought against each other along the lines of another identity divide—national identity—which even trumped the commonality of their religion.

Why did Sen need to be reminded that nations sometimes go to war with each other?  The fact is, war is about territory and economic issues linked to control of territory. There is a good enough economic model for why and when Nations will go to war. This has nothing to do with the fact that Germans have a German identity but Poles have a Polish identity. 

For Sen, who grew up with a disdain for nationalism and communal separatism,

based on running away from Muslims 

such vivid instances of the disruptive power of singular identity left a deep impression as he struggled to understand the multiple layers of identity.

There are no multiple layers. True, a small child may be puzzled to see Daddy- who normally dresses like a Bank clerk, because that is his usual occupation- suddenly dressed up as a soldier. Are there two Daddies- one who is working in the Bank and another who has gone to fight the Germans? Mummy says 'there is only one daddy. He used to be a Bank clerk. Now he has been conscripted into the Army, he is a soldier.'  

He found inspiration in Tagore, who responded to similar concerns.

Tagore wasn't stupid. He had no similar concerns.  

At Santiniketan, Sen was nurtured by Tagore’s global vision of a broader humanity that makes room for multifaceted and overlapping identities of individuals and groups.

interests, not identities. I have interests in common with my best friend. But I don't overlap with him. It would be wrong for me to pork his wife on the supposition that my dick is his dick for the duration.  

For instance, Tagore took pride in his cultural heritage, yet he cautioned people not to use the rigid identities of culture and religion as a wedge in their common pursuit of human dignity.

They cautioned him not to be such a vacuous bore.  

We see a nod to this idea in Sen’s affirmation of his Bengali identity: “A Bengali identity has always been important for me, without being invasive enough to obliterate my other loyalties of occupation, politics, nationality and other affiliations, including that of my shared humanity with all others” (p. 132).

Sen was born as an East Bengali. His people decided it was safer not to stick with it. My own view is that Sen would have been a less vacuous and worthless bore if he hadn't been so fucking Bengali.  

For Sen, an individual’s various loyalties, made up of plural and overlapping identities,

No. Identity is singular. Loyalties arise out of relationships with other singular identities. It is not the case that a man who is loyal and faithful to his wife has a vagina as a consequence. He may have access to a particular vagina, but then again he may not because she is porking the Milkman.  

are to be understood not as conflicting loyalties but as nested multiple loyalties.

'nested' means 'recursive'. Loyalties are not recursive. True, I might say 'I am so loyal to you, my wife, that any vagina I put my dick in is actually your vagina. I think your pussy is so wonderful I want you to have more and more pussies'. However, this is not a particularly persuasive argument.  

They may sometimes compete with wider objects of loyalty or affiliations, such as our shared humanity, but we negotiate the challenges posed by multiple identities all the time.

No we don't. Very few people say 'my loyalty to you requires my helping you against your enemy. However, that obligation was discharged by other identity as a potted plant.' On the other hand, you could say, 'listen, I found out your enemy is actually the husband of my cousin. Blood is thicker than water. I have to be loyal to my kith and kin before I can be loyal to a friend. If you get into a fight with somebody not related to me, then I will definitely help you.'  

Sen would like us to get beyond the narrow conundrum of conflicting loyalties—beyond the boundaries of groups, cultures, and religions—and focus on the substantive issues of interdependence confronting our common humanity while simultaneously embracing the best in all cultures and groups.

Why not just say 'Be nice!' and leave it at that?  

Futility of War

Sen focused on mathematics and Sanskrit in his studies at Tagore’s school in Santiniketan.

He is shit at both.  

He found the two complemented each other.

They don't. However, they are both synthetic or 'algorithmic' at the lower levels.  

The analytical rigor of mathematics was reflected in the linguistic intricacies of the Sanskrit grammarians and in the works of several great Sanskrit mathematicians.

Sadly, it now appears they were developing ideas brought in by the Greeks. 

Studying Sanskrit opened up an important dimension in Sen’s thinking, as he explored the vast reservoir of literature on agnostic and argumentative atheistic thought based in the works of the Lokayata and Charvaka schools of philosophy, among others.

There is no such 'vast reservoir'. You only have attacks upon these schools which may never have had any genuine adherents. Thus, both are 'straw-men'.  

The Charvaka example of rational discourse, in its emphasis on a penchant for clarity and nonconformity, a questioning mind, and a humanist spirit, has played a seminal role in Sen’s own thinking.

No it hasn't. The Charvaka would say 'do first order good. Be a soil scientist. Don't talk bollocks about Social Choice unless there is no other way to fill your stomach with nice food.'  

Sanskrit was also the language of Gautama Buddha’s rationalistic and agnostic philosophy.

No. Pali was his language.  

Learning about Buddha’s reason-based moral psychology

which says you must become a monk if you want to gain Liberation from some supposed cycle of re-birth 

had a great impact on Sen’s thinking.

No. He didn't become a monk.  

Buddha’s focus on humanity’s interdependence and interconnectivity

which is what you should escape from by becoming a monk and gaining Liberation from 'samsara'.  

and, as a corollary to that, the Buddhist ethics of universal compassion

except to butchers, fishermen and other such 'untouchables' 

would be valuable resources for Sen in his later work on justice.

No it wouldn't. Actual Buddhist societies have no problem with cruel and unusual punishments. Also Buddhists in Ceylon and Burma were perfectly happy to slaughter Hindus.  

Yet Sen also loved the great plays and poetry of the ancient classics and the two Sanskrit epics: the Ramayana and the Mahabharata. From the ancient Sanskrit plays, Sen gleaned lessons on the significance of a person’s multiple identities

Actually, in Hinduism some 'yogijivas' do have the miraculous power to inhabit more than one body. Thus, when Adi Sankara was challenged to a debate on Sexology by the wife of a rival Pandit, Sankara entered the body of a recently deceased king and had lots of sex. Thus he was able to defeat the learned lady. 

Sadly, if you aren't a 'yogijiva' you can't have multiple identities.  

as well as the value of social attitudinal reform in mitigating conflict and violence.

This is the value of trade and the division of labor. If fighting must be done, restrict it to a small professional class. Sadly, this turned out to be a disastrous idea. India kept getting invaded by more warlike people.  

Sen also took note of the Bhagavad Gita—a short but important poetic text that is part of the Mahabharata—containing the dialogue between the divine Krishna and the dissenting and despondent warrior Arjuna on the duty to fight a just war and the morality of social contract.

The point of the Gita, like the point of the New Testament, is that God got incarnated as a particular person at a particular time and place. One may say Christ has 'two natures'. But even then, he has a single identity.  

Collectively, these ideas feature in Sen’s later work on justice and the argumentative tradition in Indian thought.

He misunderstood them just as he misunderstood everything else.  

Sen draws on the teachings of Jesus and Buddha to underscore the dimension of shared humanity in his pioneering work on justice.

Both said there was no path to salvation save through them.  

Citing the story of the Good Samaritan in the Gospel of Luke, where Jesus questions the idea of a fixed neighborhood,

No he does not. Jesus says that the Samaritan was a good neighbor because he was adjacent to the injured man and decided to help him. Those who ignored him were bad neighbors. If one such lives on your street, don't trust him even if he appears pious. He is not a good neighbor.  

Sen observes that “there are a few non-neighborhoods left in the world today.”

Any place where two or more individuals become adjacent is a neighborhood.  

Going beyond the concept of reciprocity between equals that is embedded in the idea of social contract in the dominant Western ethics of justice,

there is no such concept.  The Western notion of Social Contract is that it is a contract of adhesion. Somebody should have developed an 'incomplete contract' theory of this sort, but, so far as I know, nobody has bothered. 

Sen’s project of global justice

stuff like invading Iraq? How about invading Ukraine because Zelensky is a Nazi?  

takes a critical look at the realities of entrenched inequalities.

like how come women don't got dicks? Also, why are old people not as young as young people?  

Citing Buddha’s teaching, Sen argues that we have responsibility to the global poor precisely because of the asymmetry between us—our power and their vulnerability—and not necessarily because of any symmetry that is presumed in the social contract of reciprocity.

Do we also have a responsibility to cockroaches because of the asymmetry between us? How about the responsibility of guys with bigger dicks than mine to chop off a goodly portion of it so that equality of dick size is attained?  

Although Sen’s idea of justice is relational, it is not transactional—it is inclusive.

It is meaningless. Suppose Sen, like his grandfather, were a Judge. You say 'the defendant beat and sodomized me'. The defendant says 'I am a potted plant. The law says that only human beings, not potted plants, can be sent to jail.' Sen then gasses on about Tagore and Buddha and says 'potted plants should be nice to non-potted plants. Non-potted plants should encourage and support potted plants in their various identities as Beyonce, the Andromeda Galaxy, and Cornelia Sorabji's cat Mitzi. Moreover, we must consult 'impartial observers' from Patagonia or Uranus or whatever.'  

To illustrate the scope and relevance of a broad-based consequentialist evaluation critical to his theory of justice, Sen cites the dialogue between Krishna and the ace warrior Arjuna in the Bhagavad Gita, raising foundational questions about the ethics of war and peace.

Krishna points out that consequences are only known to God. Consequentialist evaluation can't be the foundation of a theory because it has no non-arbitrary representation. If you are an 'agent', do your duty or quit your job. If you are a principal learn statistical game theory, or consult someone who can do it for you. That's the best you can do. Don't try to shit higher than your arsehole.  

Sen notes that Arjuna’s concern with fighting was not only about the impersonal consequences of the war’s devastation; it was also about his own role in contributing to that carnage.

Which is why he wanted to quit the battlefield. Why note the bleeding obvious?  

For Sen, a comprehensive consequentialist approach accommodates the motivation of taking responsibility for one’s choices, which demands a “situated evaluation” of one’s own position in the scheme of things.

But that's not what happens in the Gita. Krishna is the only guy who can do 'comprehensive consequentialist evaluation'. He also reveals that he is the sole efficient cause in the Universe. There is no point doing 'situated evaluation' unless you are prepared to quit your job and take up some other line of work.  

This agent-sensitive consequentialist perspective endorses the importance of agency and personal responsibility so ingrained in the deontic framework,

If there is a deontic framework, then there is no 'consequentialist perspective'. Why not say 'the homosexual perspective of a heterosexual person is ingrained in the fact that the dude fucks only his wife. He shows no interest in dicks or assholes. ' ?

without making the procedure unduly tilted toward backward-looking considerations.

In which case, the thing is not 'agent-sensitive'. Backward induction is useful because the fact is what we decide to do here and now affects our future. It is no good saying to me 'Because you will marry the Pope and get to live in a splendid palace you may as well lend me twenty quid'. The fact is, my lending you money has not been shown, by backward induction, to be causally connected with my future marriage to the Pope. I may mention that both my grandfathers married Popes and these things tend to skip a generation. I am grateful to my good friend Vivian Fernandez for pointing this out to me. He also drew several very enlightening cartoon depicting what happened to my esteemed grandfathers on their honeymoon night with Popeji. Say what you like, St. Columba's was just as good a skool as Shantiniketan.  

It also puts a limit on the impersonal optimizing strategy that critics level against consequentialism.

Which is why if you get conscripted into the army you should refuse to fight. The fact that, if your fellow countrymen refuse to fight, you will all be killed, whereas casualties will be proportionately much smaller if your cohort shows courage, is irrelevant. Moreover, it is not agent-sensitive- and believe me, I'm a very sensitive little snow-flake- and represents an 'impersonal optimizing strategy'. But the same could be said of paying your taxes or not stealing stuff. 

This broad-based consequentialist evaluation, where actual consequences are just a part of what Sen calls the “plural grounding procedure,”

though his parents preferred a plural running away procedure 

is a key element of Sen’s social choice matrix of comparative justice, one that assesses the relative merits of available states of affairs

Sen has never provided any such matrix. It is one thing to say 'give to the poor', it is another to explain where the money is supposed to come from.  

. From this perspective, Krishna’s duty-based exhortation to Arjuna to fight and not give up pales next to Arjuna’s compelling real-life moral dilemma.

What moral dilemma? He could either fight or quit the battlefield as Krishna's elder brother had done. However, it turns out, what Arjuna wanted was instruction in Yoga from the Lord of Yoga. That's what he receives through Divine Theophany.  

Sen’s reconfiguration of the moral imperatives of the Krishna-Arjuna dialogue shows that the story is not just about Arjuna’s crisis of faith and resolve, which is how the tale is widely known, but more importantly, it is about the futility of war itself, even when a war is considered just by the prevailing judgment of the day.

What God ordains is not futile. War isn't futile. The Brits won wars in India and families like the Tagores and the Sens and the Mukherjees and the Iyers rose up. After the Brits ran away, some of us followed them back to their green and pleasant land and continued to rise up. 

Indeed, Sen’s work on global justice has been an exemplary road map for showing the futility of warfare for the cause of peace, security, and justice.

Zelensky is very evil. He does not understand that it is futile to defend your country from evil invaders. You should run away, not fight.  

Instead, Sen’s project calls for rooting out the underlying causes of conflict,

killing Putin? But his guys will kill you first. Indeed, his country may nuke yours.  

injustice, and humanitarian crises through a collaborative system of just governance.

& niceness. Everybody should be nice. OMG! Why are you people so fucking naughty? Even Joe Biden has not undergone gender reassignment surgery even though dicks cause RAPE! Take a look at the Environment. Who is raping it? Dicks. Vaginas are constantly trying to swallow up trees or shrubs. The problem is caused only by penises.  

The goal of his proactive noninterventionist platform

based on very actively running away 

is to make the case for preventive military intervention redundant.

because everybody has run away.  

Sen has shown that peace with justice, or “just peace,” is the true foundation of an enduring peace.

More particularly if you have run away to a place where some portion of the population has martial ability and thus can secure the borders.  

Returning to Trinity as the master of the college forty-five years after he enrolled there as a student and seeing again the names of the Trinity men killed in the First World War, Sen realized that they died “in a completely unnecessary European war, long before I was born in a far-away land”

The two world wars were necessary for Asia and Africa to become free of European rule.  

As we saw above, in Cambridge Sen wondered how Europe would overcome the political division that had led to the “carnage in Europe in the two world wars” (p. 305).

The two world wars were caused by France's lack of an offensive military doctrine. De Gaulle understood this. After the War both Britain and France took steps to secure their own independent nuclear deterrent. Ukraine was foolish to give up its nukes.  

The dreadful manipulation of national pride leading to such horror was a powerful reminder for Sen of the complexity of identity and its potential for generating violence.

Identity is simple- you have a body. But, because you have a body you can inflict violence or have it inflicted on you. Clearly we must give up our bodies and become beings on the astral plane so as to escape violence. Alternatively, we could run away to some place with a kick-ass army and police force and talk bollocks there.  

Sen was well aware of Tagore’s vocal opposition to nationalism and his stance against communalism and religious sectarianism. Tagore’s message was consistently to “stand upon the higher ideals of humanity and never to . . . [fall prey to the] organized selfishness of Nationalism as . . . [a] religion.” For Tagore, “Moral law is the law of humanity.”

A big landlord whose possessions are protected by the British army may well say so more particularly if he failed to qualify as a barrister.  

Although Tagore’s vision of a global world has no room for nationalism in this sense,

it had room for British nationalism. Otherwise it would have to run the fuck away. Dwarkanath Tagore had spent his own money lobbying Westminster to permit unrestricted European immigration because only Whites could protect the Bengali Hindu from the Bengali Muslim. Sadly, the Brits had a sense of fair play and would listen to the complaints of the Muslim cultivator- e.g. after the Pabna riots. This caused some Hindus to think they could do a better job of holding down the Muslim agriculturist than the Red Coat. Tagore quickly realized that Bengali Hindus are good at talking but shit at fighting. They should stop clamoring for their own throats to be slit.  

it also eschews liberal internationalism. Anthony Burke, in an opinion shared by other scholars, has noted that liberal internationalism, with its latent “statist, geopolitical agenda,” has been “inexorably drawn toward the norm of war and the instrumental images of the human . . . [that] war would engender.”

Then voters discovered this was a stupid way to squander blood and treasure.  

As early as 1916–1917, Tagore foresaw that this flawed civilizational model rooted in Europe’s liberal internationalism would someday engulf the continent and the world in the ruined ashes of violence and war.

This was because a big big war had broken out in 1914. Even bearded Bengalis had become aware of this fact.  

This is what he saw happening in 1941, when in his last message to the world in Crisis in Civilization, he wrote in anguish: “As I look around, I see the crumbling ruins of a proud civilisation strewn like a vast heap of futility.”

Had he lived a little longer, he would have seen that Bengal could sink lower yet.  

The memories of the war were still fresh in the minds of people across Europe in the 1950s when Sen, as a student in Cambridge, undertook several trips across the continent. Visiting Italy and Germany, where nationalism had been such a dominant force for several decades, Sen was pleased to see the unrepressed buoyancy of the Italian people

one particularly buoyant Italian person would rule over India for ten years 

and was taken in by the idealistic global vision of the young German students he met at a local wine festival on the Rhine.

My vision tends to get very idealistic when at a wine festival. 

A comment made by one of the students struck a special chord with him. Hearing from Sen how far away his native Bengal was from where they met, the student became quite excited and announced: “We have to get the whole world together. . . . We are all neighbours . . . but we must work for it” (p. 307).

Actually, Europe has to work harder to keep out those who would like to become their neighbors and then knife them and take over their property.  

The comment reminded Sen of Luke’s gospel in the story of the Good Samaritan. He could sense how the young generation in Germany was shifting away from the earlier nationalism.

Because they would be nuked if they got up to any monkey trips.  

He saw many signs of change only a decade after the terrible war, including the message of “global amity” implicit in the student’s comment.

Since they were White, Sen was impressed. Perhaps if some nice Pakistani pressed him to return to his ancestral home in Dacca, Sen would have shown greater temerity.  

This memory came back to Sen later when he heard German chancellor Angela Merkel arguing, in response to the Syrian crisis, that “Germany must take a large number of refugees, as a part of its reasoned commitment to ‘our global neighbours’” 

There was an economic argument for this. But the thing backfired quickly enough.  

Likewise, while teaching at the University of California, Berkeley, on a visiting assignment in 1964–1965, Sen was impressed by how minority immigrants growing up under British colonial rule in diverse parts of the world were drawn to Berkeley and found a home, and friendship, in the intellectual and argumentative circles shaped by Berkeley’s free speech movement.

Some Indian revolutionaries had studied at Berkely some 50 years previously. But that wasn't the reason people were drawn to California. Wages there were high and life was good.  

The New York Times reported: “For foreign students—many coming from countries with strong left-wing movements—the rise in activism made them feel at home, said the Indian economist Amartya Sen…who was teaching at Berkeley at the time.”

What made them even more at home was buying big houses while Ronald Reagan lowered their taxes.  

Sen notes that America’s turn toward greater social equity and inclusive public policies over the decades has been in large part due to the free speech movement and activism in the 1960s: “Public debates and radical movements have made a significant contribution to this change” (p. 367).

No. LBJ pushed through Civil Rights because of people like Dr. King. Student activism helped get Nixon re-elected. Biden got his start by opposing 'busing'.  

Sen enjoyed the thrill of teaching his “astonishingly talented” students at the Delhi School of Economics, after completing his tenure at Cambridge in 1963.

They did their bit to harm the Indian economy though a lot pushed off for greener pastures.  

He narrates a moving episode of the reaction of his students during one of his lectures when he read aloud a passage from Adam Smith’s Theory of Moral Sentiments in which Smith strongly denounces the practice of slavery in America and Europe and resoundingly praises the people from the coast of Africa as superior to the slave owners.

There is no such passage in Smith. Anyway, even he was aware that Africans sold Africans to Europeans and Arabs.  

Sen’s students, who in their own investigations found some of the practices of inequality in India close to the inhumanity of slavery,

India had bonded labor similar to that which existed in Scotland till 1799 and North England till 1872.  

felt an “immediate sense of solidarity” with and a sense of pride in the people far away from them in Africa,

who sold Africans to Europeans 

as they felt with the people nearby.

Which is why they quit Collidge in order to set up enterprises able to provide well paid jobs to poor Indian people.  

Sen recalls the shock and horror Tagore felt, much as Smith did, in response to the degrading treatment received by a segment of humanity on account of their race or status.

Tagore employed people to dish out that 'degrading treatment'. To be fair, he himself did try to help his tenants. He sent his son and son-in-law to study agronomy in America. Nothing came of it.  

Sen concludes his memoir thus: “It was reassuring to find that the fundamental respect and understanding of people for which Smith and Tagore argued was so clearly recognized by the students. This must surely be a strong source of hope in the world” (p. 407).

But those students ended up teaching worthless shite or continually measuring poverty without actually ameliorating it in the slightest. By contrast, Purnendu Chatterjee studied O.R at Berkeley and became an entrepreneur. He employs 8000 world-wide.  

Democracy and Identity Politics

Meeting and interacting with people in different European countries who were open and inclusive during Sen’s youthful travel days gave Sen a sense of watching the “unfolding of European integration.”

The industrial north needed workers from the agricultural south.  

Indeed, as Sen looks back, he sees “some amazing achievements in Europe” over the intervening years in such important areas as human rights, rule of law, participatory democracy, the rise of the welfare state, and economic and political cooperation.

These were the fruits of economic growth. Once growth faltered, these things were scaled back.  

Yet, with dismay, Sen notes the recent rise of a “backward-looking attitude” in several European countries, including Britain, regarding European democratic tradition and European unity (p. 386).

He does not note the cause of it- which is economic. This is because he is shit at economics.  

This trend reflects a recent surge of polarized politics centered on nativist populism and identity politics in democracies all over the world, posing a threat to the viability of participatory democracy.

No. The thing is purely economic.  Stagnant or falling real wages and fraying infrastructure and Social Capital mean that immigration must be restricted or rationalized. Nutters like Sen who pretend the taxpayer has a duty to help people in distant countries don't help. 

As with many related areas, Sen’s justice project has an important bearing on this issue.

Only in the sense that my project, which is to say to everyone 'be nice!' is important.  

Indeed, his project has innovative prescriptions for a built-in safeguard against the corrosive effects of identity politics within a liberal democracy.

No it doesn't. He has a formula for never arriving at any type of decision.  After all, if women are being denied abortions, might they not actually be potted plants and thus not require any such thing? How can we make up our minds on this till we have heard from an impartial observer from the Andromeda galaxy? 

The prime source of conflict between proponents of democratic solidarity and nativist populism on issues of identity is the cherished liberal idea that an impartial liberal theory of justice need not be incompatible with distinct principles of affirmative equality with regard to minority groups, within reason, of course.

Black people should be paid reparations for slavery, colonialism, having ginormous dicks, etc. So should homosexuals and people of Irish descent. Since everybody can have multiple identities as Black, homosexual, Irish people with ginormous dicks, everybody should receive ten trillion dollars in reparations from my neighbor who very meanly refuses to lend me twenty quid because, he says, he has no fucking money. 

This idea helps liberals justify minority accommodation in a pluralistic liberal democracy.

We stand with the Muslims who are demanding Justice for Gaza while standing with the Israelis who demand reparations for anti-semitism. We also demand that Joe Biden submit to gender reassignment surgery.  

But it leaves both sides—the minorities and the populists—unhappy, with the complaint of tokenism on one side and that of over-catering to minorities on the other, leading to simmering anger rooted in feelings of powerlessness.

The solution is simple. Ignore virtue signaling Professors.  

This distrust is a barrier to dialogue and deliberation as a means of negotiating claims of culture and identity, both within and among groups.

No. The barrier is that dialogue with nutters is a waste of fucking time.  

It makes pluralism—the hallmark of liberal democracy—an elusive goal.

Pluralism is not the hallmark of liberal democracy. It is majoritarianism under the rule of law.  

In contrast to this divisive solidarity along national, cultural, and ideological lines, Sen’s ideas lay the foundation for an inclusive democratic solidarity.

Shitting out a turd does not lay the foundation for anything.  

During his student days in Cambridge, Sen was instructed by his mentor Piero Sraffa to read Sraffa’s old friend John Maynard Keynes “on the formation—and importance—of public opinion and its role in social transformation…”

A guy studying econ reads Keynes because he was the top economist of his time. He doesn't do so because some Italian dude tells him to. It must be said, Sraffa was originally promoted by Keynes because he had an insider view of Italian Banking and Finance.  

Sen learned, among other things, that for Keynes public reasoning was critically important for a healthy democracy,

Nonsense! Keynes was an economist. He thought a healthy economy was necessary for a healthy democracy or dictatorship or whatever.  

and that “Keynes was eager to show how crucial it was for different sides to work together for the realization of their respective goals . . . even when their goals do not fully coincide . . . .” (p. 387).

That was the Fascist or 'Corporatist' ideology. It wasn't Keynes's theory. He thought workers had 'money illusion' and thus full employment could be promoted without too much inflation.  He did say his theory might be more easily carried out in Hitler's Germany than in the UK or US. 

The importance of public reasoning in a pluralistic democracy has been a key component in Sen’s great contribution in the culture and human rights debate, as well as to the topic of justice.

What Mamta showed, at least as far as West Bengal is concerned, is that beating people is important. Public reasoning isn't.  

Sen has opened the way to bridging the divide between theoretical pronouncements and practical impediments by situating the arguments of justice in the real world of diversity, need, vulnerabilities, and interdependence.

That real world ignores Sen. He is useless.  

Sen’s approach is practical and pluralistic, and based on the discipline of social choice, which pays attention to the lives of people as lived in the real world.

Where they have multiple identities as potted plants.  

For that, according to Sen, one need not be focused on ideal institutional arrangements, but should instead concentrate on promoting enabling institutions and viable social realizations to ensure the mitigation of injustice.

Why stop there? Why not promote the enabling of the promotion of the enabling of the promotion of the enabling of institutions, potted plants and viable social realizations that if you talk enough bollocks a magical money tree will sprout up and so everybody can receive reparations for all of their multiple identities as the descendants of enslaved potted plants?  

Accordingly, Sen proposes a comparative approach that is primarily about rectifying injustices rather than locating ideal justice.

Sen's other identity is as Batman. He catches the crooks whom the District Attorney is unable to convict.  

This bottom-up approach is in contrast to the dominant Western social-contract paradigm that seeks perfect justice in a liberal democracy.

The Western paradigm postulates an elected Legislature which can change the 'Social Contract' subject to judicial overview. This can work well enough provided the economy is healthy. What cant work is nutters running around screaming their heads off about manifest injustice.  

Sen's concern is more practical, guided by the realities of people’s lives and capabilities, with a focus on people’s plural identities.

Because the reality of most people's lives is that they occupy a lot of different bodies- some of which may be that of animals or plants.  

Sen’s comparative approach is open enough to guide people in assessing and ranking available alternatives,

We don't know what alternatives are available. How can we assess them? The best we can do is imitate what smart people, in similar situations, are doing or have done. This is an ideographic, not a nomothetic, matter. 

without the need to speculate on all possible outcomes for a perfect resolution.

Great! Why solve a difficult maths problem like what 64 minus 27 when you can guide your students to feel empathy for their multiple identities as various types of potted plant? 

In fact, his approach is broad and inclusive in its enunciation of what counts as reasonable, and it even accepts the prospect of more than one reasonable option. Even if this procedure cannot always resolve all competing claims, Sen points out that this “valuational plurality” makes public reasoning all the more necessary, to be celebrated rather than shunned in a democracy.

In a pluralistic liberal democracy, people should be permitted to defend their thesis that the answer to 'what is 64 minus 27' is 'Modi is a Fascist. Also, Biden should chop his dick off.'  Obviously, before any decision is made, impartial observers from the Andromeda galaxy must be consulted. This isn't futile at all. It is what Zelensky should be doing instead of fighting Putin. 

Early on, Sen found a version of this valuational plurality in Tagore’s thinking. Sen writes: “One important aspect of it was his willingness to accept that many questions may be unresolved even after our best efforts, and our answers may remain incomplete.

More particularly if we are as thick as shit.  

I found Tagore’s outlook very persuasive and it had a great influence on my own thinking. The domain of unfinished accounts would change over time, but not go away, and in this Rabindranath saw not a defeat, but a beautiful, if humble, recognition of our limited understanding of a vast world” (p. 90).

Tagore wasn't getting paid to teach. He didn't pretend to know econ. But that isn't the case with Sen.  

Public reasoning emboldens democracy by making it truly participatory.

No it doesn't. Only people who enjoy talking bollocks will go in for it.  

It brings disparate groups together by showcasing their concerns in the shared arena, which generates cooperation and mutual understanding.

But we know what those disparate groups want without meeting any of them. I get that pedophiles want to fuck children. I don't want to meet a guy who explains to me why fucking kids makes him happy.  

Sen’s justice project is tied to the plurality of impartial reasons embedded in today’s expanding circle of global human-rights approaches.

i.e. saying Israel is very evil. Hamas terrorists have multiple identities as potted plants. Killing plants is wrong.  

Because the notion of human rights is predicated on our shared humanity, Sen’s idea of justice is open to the world.

Because notions are predicated on our species knowing what notions are, every notion is predicated on our being human even if we don't share the ability to know what a notion is with gibbering imbeciles who nevertheless have human rights under a bond of law iff a remedy for any violation of their rights is in fact made available. If there is no remedy, there is no right- save such as they can provide for themselves.  

It goes beyond national borders and regards people, rather than states, as sovereign.

Why stop there? Why not see them as Gods who can have multiple identities across the multi-verse?  

Sen is aware that “there are bound to be difficulties in advancing the assessment of global justice through public reasoning,”

we may want to advance justice. Why would we want to advance the assessment of justice? How about advancing the assessment of the assessment of justice, instead?  

especially due to social media and the Internet. Yet he is cautiously optimistic. He notes: “What is needed is to make . . . public reasoning more extensive, more systematic, and much better informed, partly through expanding the vehicles of dissemination of information, strengthening the facilities for ‘fact-checking’ and for the scrutiny of ‘fake news,’ and doing what we can to remove the barriers to public discussion.”

In other words,  removing constraints on private reasoning improves public reasoning.  Sadly, Sen and his ilk didn't improve the reasoning skills of their own students. They just virtue signal in a vacuous manner. 

Sen declares that in a world where our lives are globally interdependent as never before,

less so in the case of India and Britain. The British parliament used to have to pass laws for India. Indians were dependent on British MPs.  

“if the jointness of problems of justice is a global reality,

Global reality features no such problem. This is because there is no World Government. True, there can be multilateral treaties which are a source of law and thus which deal with problems of justice, but enforcement may not be feasible.  

interactive and informed reasoning is surely a global necessity.”

Some people are involved in such things. But we could probably get by well enough without them. Indeed, getting rid of the UN might be quite salutary.  

Sen gives us a challenging but promising road map toward restoring liberal democracy in the face of populist illiberalism.

Mamta's road map involves beating or killing people. Also raping their wives can be helpful.  

However, regardless of how inspiring and practicable his path might be, it ultimately depends on the prevailing political will as to whether or not his vision is put into practice.

Mamta has plenty of political will. Sen doesn't.  He didn't even beat up Manmohan Singh. Sad. 

Sen notes: Keynes’s efforts to “sway contemporary government policy were not immediately successful,”

though he himself said Nazi Germany had taken the course he advocated.  

but he “contributed a great deal to the ‘general opinion of the future’. . . .”

Actually, in 'Econ consequences of the Peace' he predicted that Germany would run out of food (Keynes thought America was already a net food importer) and thus Germans would starve unless their Army grabbed land to the East.  

What ended the Great Depression was rearmament and what kept America booming was the military industrial complex. This had nothing to do with Keynes. 

Likewise, regardless of whether Sen’s ideas are getting immediate success in responding to the current political challenges, his monumental contribution to the imperatives of justice in our global world is a great gift to scholars and policy makers for generations to come.

Useless scholars, sure. They can gas on about the importance of assessing the assessment of assessing all the multiple identities of my neighbor's cat. 

Home in the World

Noted ethicist Sissela Bok

daughter of the Myrdals who favored sterilization on eugenic grounds. Sadly, they didn't take their own advise 

observes that when children are deprived of a culturally rooted education, “they risk developing a debilitating sense of being exiled everywhere.”

This is nonsense. Plenty of kids had no fucking education but, if they remained in their native village, they didn't have the feeling of being exiled at all. 

Tagore was well aware of this risk.

No. He was aware that East Bengali Hindus would become exiles if the Brits ran away. This would be the case even if they studied at Shantiniketan.  

He made efforts to see that students’ education was firmly rooted in Indian history and culture as well as in the Asian heritage, while simultaneously pursuing relevant knowledge and wisdom gathered from all corners of the world.

He ran a school.  A Japanese pal- Okakura- sent him a monk and a Judo instructor or something of that sort. He was able to employ one or two teachers who had gained degrees and thus knew some English. But, his was a rustic school for thickos who had dropped out of schools with higher academic standards.  

Instead of the exclusivity of a singular identity, Sen’s vision makes room for a joyous interplay of multifaceted and overlapping identities whereby

he fucked Manmohan in the ass? Are you saying Sen doesn't have a homosexual identity? Is he homophobic?  

the imperatives of human yearnings are not compromised in the name of local practices

e.g. not fucking your best friend's wife 

or blindly followed while ignoring cultural roots and traditions.

like the tradition of actually knowing Econ if that is what you teach.  

He goes beyond the narrow conundrum of conflicting loyalties, where the forces of nationalism and ethnocentrism can have an uneasy alliance with the broader vision of our common humanity, as we see in Tagore’s novel The Home and the World.

Which ends with Muslims slaughtering Hindus, grabbing their gold and raping their women. Sen's parents paid it enough attention to run very quickly away from Dacca.  

Sen’s mission is to bring the local and the global together in finding our home in the world.

Most of us can already find our way home in this world well enough even after we have had a few drinks. Sen's mission is only relevant to amnesiacs or drooling imbeciles.