The Authour
A. Sen is a noted economic philosopher of our country. He is most fitting author to refer to in our search for solutions as he has his experience in communal violence as the driving force in his intellectual journey. Basically from Bangladesh-Calcutta pre-independent India, he carefully narrates the disturbing memories of massive identity shift in mid 1940’s in his teenage years.
Thought
Directly related to our topic he has three works:
Reason Before Identity (1999) which he delivered as a lecture in Oxford university
Identity and Violence: The Illusion of Identity (2006)
The Idea of Justice (2009)
His Response
Basically he defines human being not as a self interested individual like other economists, instead as one who needs and wants to be identified with one group or groups. He/she has freedom though limited in his/her given-ness to freely choose the identities using reason. He notes “it is the mistake belief that we have no choice about our identity which leads people fall into the trap of sectarianism. Choice is possible and an important decision.”
His basic premise is that ‘Human being is Multi-indentified’. At present I am salesian, etc….
Our ignorance of this possibility narrows it down to one identity. We inherit a tendency to split these plural co-existence into little islands. This is the prime cause of hatred and violence in the world. He contends any such singular (isolated/unrelated) identity as an illusion. Secondly he argues that violence is caused by unquestioned acceptance of identity because it promotes a confirmist behaviour towards unjust traditional elements, instigates communal violence and tyranny of one identity over others.
Since the cause is public ignorance he proposes public debates based on informed reasoning (Public Reasoning) as the solution. To understand the concept read the discussion http://ibnlive.in.com/news/public-reasoning-can-combat-terrorism-amartya-sen/98807-40.html.
No comments:
Post a Comment