A letter to Professor of Philosophy Amartya Sen

Dear Doctor/Professor Sen IIII I am a prospective doctoral student from Finland. I live in Tampere Finland, but I'm moving to Helsinki in the near future. I have lived abroad about ten times until this day. My language skills are highly developed, and I can speak Finnish, Swedish, German, French, English and about five others at a less developed level. IIII I have of course been informed of your diligent and perpetual and incessant career in philosophy from my teens onwards. I have read your books Idea of Justice and Identity and Violence. Your work in ethics and economics is admirable for everyone with at least mediocre sophistication to wonder. I find it particularly intriguing that you are from India, which was a part of the British Empire until your teens. The falling empire and the retrieval of its ashes has been a massive metaphysical theme in my mind from my teens, of course because of that also that we Finnish von Becker's have also British ancestry. I have also read your book about wellbeing and the political process in India, and that has widened my interests in economics and philosophy in a way of an immense bunk. Of course I am also aware about your work with Professor in Chicago Martha Nussbaum which has produced the novel concept of ”capability creating”. Your selfironical comment in Identity and Violence when you told that you were mistaken as a visitor of your self in your bungalow in England was perplexual and very telling about racism in Western societies. IIII If I tell you something about myself, I can say that I have always been interested in practical philosophy, and Professor in Princeton Peter Singer's Practical Ethics has been a great divider in particular. Applied ethics is a keen hobby of mine, and I have also planned to do a text book for high school's about applied ethics. I have been for many years in the opinion that philosophy must create an external need for itself, which realises its meaning in economics and politics in particular.. Even though some say that practical philosophy is not any more practical than theoretical philosophy, I am in a different position still. I studied at the University of Jyväskylä till master level. My masters thesis was about participatory philosophy, in which theoretical foundations were about Iris Marion Young's and Herbert Marcuse's philosophy. Underlining was filled also with anarchist philosophy and Michele Micheletti and Andrew S. McFarland's theory about creative participation in politics. The epithet under the thesis's title was ”Participatory philosophy as synthesis of political philosophy and social ethics”. As you can see, I have always combined philosophy in connection with politics and ethics as the most important sphere of philosophy in connection with practical life. I have started to plan my doctoral dissertation about applied ethics as a mental effort in integrating concepts of economics with ethics and civilization, especially in enhancing the meaning of money and currency. I have read books by Singer, Nussbaum and Friedrich von Hayek in particular. Of course I'm also going to read every book of your's of which I can get my hands on. I have planned to start my doctoral dissertation in University of Helsinki, which also gives a way in getting a fulbright-scholarship in Harvard or Princeton for example. Philosophy of economics is the main thing about my dissertation, and I have been in contact with Heikki Saxen, who you may know yourself, who is the highest authority on bioethics in Finland. My former professor Mikko Yrjönsuuri has mentioned professor Uskali Mäki's name for me as a prospective supervisor with my doctoral dissertation. He is also a quite knowable figure in the philosophy of economics. IIII I am interested if you would like to read my research plan, and maybe give some advice, and the most pompous and nosy of my suggestions is, would you like to be supervisor of my dissertation? You are in the States and at the moment I am in Finland. Of course one can read text material in any part of our planet because of email, and we could be in connection through Skype etc. It is also possible that I may come to the USA in the near future. IIII I hope that I do not disturb your work with my pompous and nosy proposal. IIII With kind regards, IIII Olli von Becker IIII Master of Social Sciences (2013)