PHIL 102 Lecture Notes - Reproductive Health, Negative Liberty, Amartya Sen
Document Summary
Final exam class discussion + friday discussion sessions + readings. They argue for a different approach to measure wellbeing. Nussbaum aristotle"s well being: different conception of wellbeing. Amartya sen: economist, west bengal, studied with rawls @ harvard. Influenced by the west bengal famine: famine is not caused by not having enough food but not distributed, disagreed with rawls in some aspects. Influenced by indian philosophy and classical economics (an idea of justice) Agents in the original position are deprived of the very knowledge they need to contend with actually injustice. They don"t know about human life, and that is needed to address injustice in our worlds: knowing the ideal may not be sufficient for achieving it. Set it aside and try to achieve it: sen replaces the agent in the original position with an (imperfectly) impartial observer. We should look at social arrangements comparatively and pluralistically.
