Amartya Sen의 정의론의 방법과 구조

In this Article, Amartya Sen’s theory of justice is introduced as a alternative theory of justice. Sen has criticized Rawls’ theory of justice as a, transcendental institutionalism in that it is based on social contract and it has an arrangement-focused conception which emphasizes on constructing just institution. Instead, Sen stressed on realization-focused understanding as a approach to justice. In that way, Sen criticizes Rawls’ the two principles of justice and difference principle, which is founded on hypothetic conception such as original position and veil of ignorance. In contrast with Rawls, Sen has developed his justice theory on the assumption that human is diverse. The premise of human diversity enables us to consider that person’s capabilities play more important role in achieving individual well-being than distributing of primary goods, because distribution of primary goods depends on person’s own condition and capability. And adapting Adam Smith’s conception of “impartial spectator” which is any other fair and impartial spectator, Sen suggests open impartiality instead of 'justice as fairness’ as closed impartiality. Sen also notes that equality is important in dealing with justice. Especially, he moves questions of equality from ‘why equality’ to ‘equality of what’. It means that actually every theory of justice treats and highlights equality in different space. The fact equality and inequality coexists in different spaces implicates human diversity. Therefore what is important is not to distribute primary goods, but to convert them to person’s capabilities to achieve actual freedom. As freedom has both opportunity perspective and process perspective, it is important to have capability as achievement of freedom and it can be called development as actual freedom. Of course, Sen’s theory of justice has some limits like other political theories. However, it not only functions as an alternative theory of justice, but also suggests useful way to understand the nature of justice in this world.