I've been seeking out and reading Herb Gintis' stuff for a few years since I encountered his work on evolutionary game theory a decade ago. See example. Currently I get my Gintis fix reading his Amazon reviews of books. It's so convenient to have an RSS feed on them. Today he reviews The Idea of Justice by Amartya Sen.

In much the same way as German philosopher Jürgen Habermas, Sen's commitment to freedom and democracy is based not on distributional issues, but rather on a deep understanding of the importance of communicative discourse and public debate in making the good society. This commitment fits well with Sen's major contribution to welfare economics, which is providing an alternative to the selfish and materialistic Homo Economicus of standard neoclassical economics. For traditional economics, well-being is a function of the goods and services and individual enjoys. For Sen, well-being is a function of how fully and vigorously an individual exercises his human capabilities. Democracy, then, is less about who gets what, and more about how people come to craft both their personal life-meaning and their collective destiny through political participation and discourse. . .

Sen's innovation in this book is to critique the "transcendental institutionalism" of such traditional moral philosophers as Hobbes, Rousseau, Kant, Dworkin and Rawls, who seek to define a set of social institutions that foster "perfect justice," Sen argues that perfect justice is not capable of attainment, and it is better to focus on how society can be improved from its current state, give its actual pattern of injustices. . .

I am extremely skeptical concerning the whole approach to justice that has dominated analytical philosophy since Rawls' seminal A Theory of Justice. Sen critiques John Rawls, Ronald Dworkin, G. A. Cohen and other left-liberal thinkers on grounds of the impossibility of perfect justice. However, the real problem with these thinkers is that they believe justice is a matter of the distribution of wealth and income. This is not at all what justice means to most voters and citizens, who rather follow Robert Nozick in believing that justice consists in individuals getting what they deserve in terms of what they have contributed to society, given their capacities. Serious thinkers must find the idea that ideal justice consists of complete social equality to be deeply repugnant. Poverty, not some abstract inequality of income and wealth, is the real enemy. Full social equality is not a lamentable unattainable ideal state, but rather a thankfully unattainable monstrosity because it presupposes the absence of personal accountability and effectivity.

Sen's critique of the Rawlsian tradition is anemic and trivial. For this reason I find this book deeply disappointing. It is altogether too genteel in dealing with a philosophical tradition that deserves to be bitterly criticized, not gently reproached for its excessive zeal in the pursuit of an unattainable ideal.

That's my general take on Sen and many other academic writers. They seem to see the defects of old fashioned leftist thinking but don't have the energy or courage or something to help society improve by making critiques that are robust enough to overcome inertia. IMV this is a betrayal of public trust analogous to the betrayals of scientists that I recently complained of in Political Failure.

So I end up wondering what such folks really think. Are they just cowards avoiding making career limiting remarks since a howling leftist mob would attack them mercilessly for candor, and they wouldn't be any more comfortable seeking shelter in another gang? Is it a long term strategy of shifting the conversation slowly while maintaining a place at the table? No way to know. My usual reaction is to assume that they are mealy mouthed about their insights since they are horrified at having had them. They want to be good little left-bots complacently shuffling along with comrades, but their own minds nettle them with heretical thoughts. Today, as a heresiarch, I doubt it. I should not assume that they have honest and honorable intentions but lack the strength to be their best selves. They might just be bad guys with agendas.