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Property and Hunger

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 December 2008

Amartya Sen
Amartya Sen
Affiliation:
Harvard University
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Extract

In an interesting letter to Anna George, the daughter of Henry George, Bernard Shaw wrote: “Your father found me a literary dilettante and militant rationalist in religion, and a barren rascal at that. By turning my mind to economics he made a man of me” (George, 1979, p. xiii). I am not able to determine what making a man of Bernard Shaw would exactly consist of, but it is clear that the kind of moral and social problems with which Shaw was deeply concerned could not be sensibly pursued without examining their economic aspects. For example, the claims of property rights, which some would defend and some (including Shaw) would dispute, are not just matters of basic moral belief that could not possibly be influenced one way or the other by any empirical arguments. They call for sensitive moral analysis responsive to empirical realities, including economic ones.

Type
Essays
Information
Economics & Philosophy , Volume 4 , Issue 1 , April 1988 , pp. 57 - 68
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1988

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