著者

平位 匡 池本 幸生

出版者

東京大学東洋文化研究所

雑誌

東洋文化研究所紀要 = The memoirs of Institute for Advanced Studies on Asia (ISSN:05638089)

巻号頁・発行日

no.174, pp.1-32, 2019-02-28

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In The Idea of Justice, Amartya Sen started his argument by differentiating his capability approach from the mainstream in terms of structure: comparative vis-à-vis transcendental. He called the mainstream approach of justice as transcendental because it has been trying to construct a theory of justice based on fundamental principles questing for perfection. Sen insists that it is impossible to construct a perfect theory of justice because our world is far from perfection and that what we need is a more practical approach, which can be used to compare feasible options that we actually have and to choose one from among them. What lies behind this strategy is respect for a plurality of values and reasoning in society. In this context, description plays a key role in this approach, given that plural values and reasoning can be reflected only in an inductive manner which requires rich description. This difference can be applied to his approach in economics. The mainstream economics has been constructing models and theories based on hypothesis such as utility maximization. In this sense the mainstream is "perfect" but not practical as such hypothesis is not realistic. In the field of development economics he uses more practical and realistic approach based on statistics. His main contributions in the field such as the cause of famine and missing women started from examining statistics. His argument always starts from reality and is thus inductive, which is in sharp contrast with the deductive mainstream approach. Sen's approach can be traced back to the Cambridge tradition, which typically embraces inductive methods of reasoning. The purpose of this article is to examine how Sen's approach is related to it with a particular focus on the influence of Maurice Dobb. In relation to this, some possible extensions of his approach will be discussed.