Although all struggles against oppression operate with an idea of justice, no struggle against oppression requires a comprehensive theory of justice. As Amartya Sen reminds us in his wide-ranging and refreshing book, The Idea of Justice, “When Condorcet and Smith argued that the abolition of slavery would make the world far less unjust, they were asserting the possibility of ranking the world with and without slavery, in favour of the latter … not also making the further claim that all the alternatives that can be generated by variations of institutions and policies can be fully ranked against each other” (398). Their fight against slavery needed a comparative assessment of different possible social outcomes, not a comprehensive, ideal theory of justice.
In The Idea of Justice, Sen develops this insight and presents it as an alternative to what he takes to be the dominant approach toward justice. The dominant...
