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.;Is justice an ideal, forever beyond our grasp, or something that may actually guide our practical decisions and enhance our lives?In this wide-ranging book, Amartya Sen presents an alternative approach to mainstream theories of justice which, despite their many specific achievements have taken us, he argues, in the wrong direction in general. At the heart of Sen's argument is his insistence on the role of public reason in establishing what can make societies less unjust. But it is in the nature of reasoning about justice, argues Sen, that it does not allow all questions to be settled even in theory; there are choices to be faced between alternative assessments of what is reasonable; several different and competing positions can each be well-defended. Far from rejecting such pluralities or trying to reduce them beyond the limits of reasoning, we should make use of them to construct a theory of justice that can absorb divergent points of view. Sen also shows how concern about ...