Two cheers for capabilities

Abstract

In this chapter, the author summons up qualified two cheers for the capability approach. According to the capability approach to the characterization of individual's condition for purposes of social justice theory, a person's wellbeing can be identified with the quality of her beings and doings, what Amartya Sen calls "functionings". Sen defends the capability approach against two rivals. One is welfare conceived in mental state terms, as desire satisfaction or as pleasure and the absence of pain. A second rival is the account of primary social goods developed by John Rawls. The author has urged that the principle of social justice that imposes on all of us a responsibility to ensure, to some degree, that no human life is avoidably blighted and wasted, is better regarded as responsive to people's overall condition rather than to the means or resources to which they have access.

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