Justiça e economia: ética, economia e normatividade no pensamento de Amartya Sen

Abstract

This paper aims to reflect on the problems involving existing economic injustices. Given the characteristics of the current world, with its rapid changes and increasingly complex issues, adequate normative theories are necessary so that we can reflect and find reasonable solutions to various situations that involve ethical and economic matters requiring deeper reflection and more objective analysis. In this sense, this paper seeks to analyze the conceptions of justice and the economic thought developed by Amartya Sen, an Indian economist and philosopher widely recognized for his contributions to development economics, political philosophy, and ethics. For the purposes of this study, his conception of justice as presented in his work The Idea of Justice (2009) will be analyzed. In the first part of this work, the main characteristics and foundations of this theory are highlighted, as well as its advantages in relation to preceding conceptions of justice. The author’s argumentative structure is based on the premise that a rational and reasonable theory must serve as a basis for matters of practical rationality. For this, it must be capable of providing both objective evaluation criteria that help identify existing injustices and of reflecting on appropriate means for reducing various injustices and expanding situations of justice. This line of argument leads the Indian philosopher to take a path directly opposed to more traditional conceptions of justice, which focus on seeking and determining a characterization of perfectly just societies and institutions. Likewise, in the second and third parts of this work, the aim is to analyze and reflect on certain characteristics of Sen’s economic thought. To this end, we will focus on the works On Ethics and Economics (Sen, 1976), Development as Freedom (Sen, 1998), as well as articles and dissertations by commentators. Essentially, the second part argues that the economic thought presented by the Indian philosopher differs from many more traditional economic views that reduce the evaluation of the economy to its efficiency and wealth creation, treating such mechanisms as self-sufficient. Finally, we analyze how Sen’s work provides reasonable normative frameworks for the evaluation of problems of economic justice.