Self-seeking and the Pursuit of Justice

The most influential theories of economic justice ground themselves in utilitarian or related contractarian ideas about the self. These ideas take self-interest to be transparent and unproblematic. Favoured assumptions about the self also make scarcity the primary reality with which economic justice must deal. In this book the author attempts to place the discussion of economic justice on a sound foundation and explores the nature and ends of the self. The book begins with a discussion of the self as a structure, and proceeds to consider aspects of self-interest, public ends, economic welfare, needs and wants, the limits of the market, economic democracy, global inequality, and justice as the end of development.