Is justice an ideal, forever beyond our grasp, or something that may
actually guide our practical decisions and enhance our lives? In this wide-
ranging book, Amartya Sen presents an alternative approach to mainstream
theories of justice which, despite their many specific achievements have
taken us, he argues, in the wrong direction in general. At the heart of
Sen's argument is his insistence on the role of public reason in
establishing what can make societies less unjust. But it is in the nature
of reasoning about justice, argues Sen, that it does not allow all
questions to be settled even in theory; there are choices to be faced
between alternative assessments of what is reasonable. Sen also shows how
concern about the principles of justice in the modern world must avoid
parochialism, and further, address questions of global injustice. The
breadth of vision, intellectual acuity and striking humanity of one of the
world's leading public intellectuals have never been more clearly shown
than in this remarkable book.