Publications by Year: 2009

2009
The Idea of Justice
Sen, Amartya. 2009. The Idea of Justice. Cambridge, Mass. Harvard University Press, xxviii, 467 p. HOLLIS Abstract

Introduction: An approach to justice – The demands of justice. – Reason and objectivity – Rawls and beyond – Institutions and persons – Voice and social choice – Impartiality and objectivity – Closed and open impartiality – Forms of reasoning. – Position, relevance and illusion – Rationality and other people – Plurality of impartial reasons – Realizations, consequences and agency – The materials of justice. – Lives, freedoms and capabilities – Capabilities and resources – Happiness, well-being and capabilities – Equality and liberty – Public reasoning and democracy. – Democracy as public reason – The practice of democracy – Human rights and global imperatives – Justice and the world.; Presents an analysis of what justice is, the transcendental theory of justice and its drawbacks, and a persuasive argument for a comparative perspective on justice that can guide us in the choice between alternatives.

Self-constitution : Agency, Identity, and Integrity
Korsgaard, Christine M. 2009. Self-constitution : Agency, Identity, and Integrity. Oxford : Oxford University Press, xiv, 230 p. HOLLIS Abstract

Agency and identity – Necessitation – Acts and actions – Aristotle and Kant – Agency and practical identity – The metaphysics of normativity – Constitutive standards – The constitution of life – In defense of teleology – The paradox of self-constitution – Formal and substantive principles of reason – Formal versus substantive – Testing versus weighing – Maximizing and prudence – Practical reason and the unity of the will – The empiricist account of normativity – The rationalist account of normativity – Kant on the hypothetical imperative – Against particularistic willing – Deciding and predicting – Autonomy and efficacy – The function of action – The possibility of agency – Non-rational action – Action – Attribution – The psychology of action – Expulsion from the garden : the transition to humanity – Instinct, emotion, intelligence, and reason – The parts of the soul – Inside or outside – Pull yourself together – The constitutional model – Models of the soul – The city and the soul – Platonic virtues – Justice : substantive, procedural, and platonic – Kant and the constitutional model – Defective action – The problem of bad action – Being governed by the wrong law – Or five bad constitutions – Conceptions of evil – Degrees of action – Integrity and interaction – Deciding to be bad – The ordinary cases – Dealing with the disunified – Kant's theory of interaction – My reasons – Deciding to treat someone as an end in himself – Interacting with yourself – How to be a person – What's left of me?