Capabilities Equality

Basic Issues and Problems

Alexander Kaufman

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2007
• eBook ISBN: 9781134236848
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Philosophy History & Theory

The capabilities approach to equality, developed by Amartyr Sen and Martha Nussbaum, seeks to answer the question: what is a proper measure of a person's condition for the purposes of determining what we owe each other, as a matter of justice?

While the capabilities theory has avoided many of the conceptual difficulties that have undermined competing accounts of egalitarian justice, recent criticisms have raised questions regarding the focus, structure and justification of the theory. In this volume, leading scholars present new and original essays that address these controversies.

Part 1
A sufficientarian approach?

1
Distributive justice and basic capability equality

“Good enough” is not good enough

Richard Arneson

Amartya Sen has developed important conceptual clarifications and criticisms for the theory of justice. He has so far been reluctant to affirm a theory of justice (or a component of such a theory) in his own voice. This chapter urges that the criticisms Sen has made against utilitarian and Rawlsian measures of people’s condition are inconclusive, pending the elaboration and defense of an objective account of human well-being. Such an account would enable us to select among the myriad capabilities to function in various ways that people always have and identify some capabilities as the ones that matter for purposes of the theory of justice. In several essays, Martha Nussbaum has worked to elaborate such an account. The Nussbaum and Sen approach to social justice theorizing merits close scrutiny.

The Nussbaum and Sen approach can usefully be interpreted as sufficientarian. On this view, justice above all requires that each and every person be sustained at a threshold adequate level of capability to function in all of the ways that are important for human well-being. This chapter examines capability sufficiency doctrine and finds it wanting. The nub of the difficulty with sufficiency is that it overstates the moral importance of sustaining each and every person at the “good enough” level, come what may. In this respect the doctrine that has become known as prioritarianism is to be preferred.

The Nussbaum and Sen approach to social justice significantly maintains that justice requires fair provision of real freedom or capability to function in important ways to all persons, rather than assurance that individuals reach any particular life outcomes assessed in terms of functioning levels. At least, Nussbaum if not Sen himself is committed to the idea that capability, not functioning, is the proper measure of people’s condition for use by the theory of justice. For example, justice involves assurance of freedom of religion to all, not assurance that people achieve any particular sort of religious functioning. For another example, the just society is concerned to provide all people the capability to engage in satisfying sexual relations but does not regard any part of its proper business to be bringing it about that people actually function sexually to any degree. The issue of capability versus functioning as the proper measure of people’s condition for a theory of justice goes to the heart of liberalism, regarded as a philosophy of individual freedom for modern times. Giving priority to capability is appealing for many reasons. Nonetheless, this chapter argues against giving priority to capability at the level of fundamental moral theory. What ultimately matters, and should matter for the theory of justice, is the actual quality of life that people attain, not the capabilities, freedoms, and opportunities they enjoy.

Amartya Sen is a renowned economist who has also made important contributions to philosophical thinking about distributive justice. These contributions tend to take the form of criticism of inadequate positions and insistence on making distinctions that will promote clear thinking about the topic. Sen is not shy about making substantive normative claims, but thus far he has avoided commitment to a theory of justice, in the sense of a set of principles that specifies what facts are relevant for policy choice and determines, given a full characterization of any situation in terms of these relevant facts, what ought to be done in that situation. Moreover, Sen has expressed skepticism about the existence of a fully adequate theory in this sense. According to Sen, there is a plurality of moral considerations that bear on choice of action and policy, and no particular reason to think that weights can be attached nonarbitrarily to each consideration to yield a theory (see Sen 1982, 1985a, b, 1987, 1992).

“Sen’s proposal is that distributive justice entails equalizing midfare levels across persons,” writes John Roemer (1996:189). “Other things being equal,” one has to add by way of correction to Roemer’s formulation. Sen holds that we should be concerned with the extent of people’s capability or freedom to attain midfare as well as the midfare level actually reached. Sen holds that distributive values including equality must be balanced against, and should sometimes be sacrificed to, aggregative values. We should care about how much of the good things of life people get as well as how evenly they are distributed. Also, what Roemer is calling “midfare” is, according to Sen, not one thing but itself a plurality: the many functionings (doings and beings) that people have reason to value so far as they are seeking their own well-being. Sen does not affirm that there is a single canonical measure of these functionings, so the ideal of equality of midfare is in an important sense indeterminate. Besides well-being as midfare functionings and freedom to get well-being, the just society also properly promotes and distributes agency achievement, the attainment of goals one has reason to value, and freedom to attain agency goals.

In short, Sen’s message to any would-be theorist of justice is that things are more complicated than you think. Current theories on offer ride roughshod over distinctions that are consequential for right policy choice and ignore considerations that are morally important. The paradigm foil in this enterprise as Sen pursues it is utilitarianism, which achieves elegant simplicity by failure to register the actual complexity of the reasons that bear on evaluation. Sen has developed an approach to the understanding of social justice rather than a theory of justice.

In this chapter I argue that Sen’s official position is unstable. To vindicate his criticisms of subjectivist versions of utilitarianism, one must have good reason to affirm an objective account of human well-being – objective in the sense that items are identified as intrinsically enhancing the well-being of a person independently of the person’s own opinions and attitudes toward these items.¹ Otherwise, the criticisms he lodges against desire satisfaction accounts of distributive justice can be turned against his own proposals. In several essays, Martha Nussbaum (1988, 1990, 1991, 1992, 1999, 2000a), registering appreciation of this point, proposes a set of capabilities to function as definitive of a good human life, and proposes that social justice requires that every person should have the capability to achieve a decent or good enough level of functioning for each and every one of the types of functioning that together constitute a good human life. This proposal dovetails with suggestions that recur in Sen’s own writings to the effect that the core of social justice is basic capability equality, a state of affairs in which each person equally has the capability to attain all of the designated important basic types of functionings, and so is able if he or she chooses to function at a good enough threshold level with respect to each and every one of the types of functionings deemed basic or essential (see, for example, Sen 1982). The Sen and Nussbaum approach to social justice decisively affirms claims that Sen only suggests, and to which he himself is not then committed. But the approach is valuable for working through some of Sen’s hints and suggestions, so one can see what they might amount to. The idea that social justice is basic capability equality is attractive in its own right, and is worthy of careful examination. Moreover, versions of the idea have elicited assent on the part of other moral philosophers and theorists of justice (see Anderson 1999; Scheffler 1981; Crisp 2003).

In this chapter I criticize the ideal of basic capability equality, in large part by touting the merits of an alternative theory of justice. To the extent that these criticisms are plausible, some cold water is incidentally thrown on Sen’s skepticism regarding the prospects for a genuine theory of justice. In the welter of normative complexity, the great tangles of which Sen has helped us appreciate, some simplicity may also be discerned. Or so I shall claim.²

From utility and primary goods to basic capability equality

Sen’s view emerges by way of criticisms of other theorists’ answers to the question, what is distributive justice concerned to distribute? In other words, insofar as justice requires fair shares for individuals, we need some measure of a person’s condition that is relevant for determining whether the allocation of goods and alterable aspects of circumstances to the person is fair. For example, if justice requires equality, we need some measure of people’s condition so that we can determine whether their conditions are equal or unequal.

Sen supports an emphasis on the measures of functionings and functioning capabilities by pointing to inadequacies in the Rawlsian and the standard utilitarian interpersonal comparison measures. John Rawls (1999) has proposed primary social goods as the measure.³ These are goods it is rational for every person to want, whatever else he or she wants. The Rawlsian primary social goods are general-purpose means that will be useful for furthering a wide variety of rational plans of life. The standard utilitarian view is that the proper standard of interpersonal comparison for social morality is utility, construed as pleasure and the absence of pain or as desire satisfaction.

The objection to primary social goods as the basis of interpersonal comparison is that individuals differ in their personal traits and in particular in their abilities to transform resources into fulfillment of their aims or achievement of values. Suppose two individuals espouse the same life aims but differ in their personal traits, and have identical resources and means. They may be able to fulfill any reasonable aims to markedly different extents. Sen suggests that we should be concerned directly with what people are enabled to be and do with their resources, given their traits and circumstances. Focusing on means rather than on the extent of freedom is fetishistic. Suppose that what people seek from life is running and jumping and two individuals are given equal means: a pair of well-fitting athletic shoes and access to paths and roads. But one has healthy legs and the other is lame. A theory of justice that measures people’s condition by the means and resources they possess must judge the two individuals to be equal in resources, but this assessment is overshadowed by the very unequal extent to which the two persons are enabled by their resources to achieve aims they affirm and have reason to pursue.

Sen objects to the utilitarian measures of interpersonal comparisons on the ground that people’s mental states tend to adjust to their condition, whatever it is. Living in hell, one ceases to desire cool-weather activities; such desires are unsatisfiable and thus pointless. In hell there is nothing to do but suffer heat, but people may become inured to the unpleasantness of the situation, and experience little pain. Hellish conditions might also distort the formation of desire – cause me to desire odd things the getting of which would bring me no satisfaction and serve no sensible purpose. Living on earth in a normal lifestyle may be more valuable for an individual than living in hell in many ways that do not register in utilitarian assessment but that should matter to us all the same.

Sen is not denying that it may be perfectly reasonable and prudent if one can to try to adjust one’s desires to one’s circumstances, actively to desire only what is likely to be obtainable, and to steel oneself so one feels less pain and gets more pleasure from small bits of good fortune. These reasonable tactics will lessen or perhaps entirely eliminate the gap in utility between those placed in disadvantageous circumstances and lucky people fortunately placed. Sen’s point is that desire satisfaction and degree of pleasure are inadequate measures of how good a life a person is having. There are other things that matter besides desire satisfaction and pleasure. Moreover, oppressive conditions can have the effect of truncating people’s desires, but then a high degree of satisfaction of these reduced desires should not persuade us that the person is really well off, as utilitarian measures must insist.

Sen’s position is that the right basis of interpersonal comparison for a theory of justice is neither the resources made available to the individual nor the quality of the mental states of the individual induced by what he or she does and becomes by utilizing those resources. Instead we should focus directly on the doings and beings of the individual, which Sen calls “functionings,” and on his or her real freedom to choose among different possible combinations of these doings and beings. We can single out those doings and beings that pertain to the indivi...

Table of contents

• Routledge innovations in political theory
• Contents
• Contributors
• Introduction
• Part 1 A sufficientarian approach?
• Part II A clearly differentiated approach?
• Part III Issues in implementation
• Index