Freedom, Responsibility and Economics of the Person

Jérôme Ballet, Damien Bazin, Jean-Luc Dubois, François-Régis Mahieu

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781135140076
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Economics
• Subtopic: Development Economics
• Index: Economics

The capability approach has developed significantly since Amartya Sen was awarded the Nobel Prize in Economics in 1998. It is now recognised as being highly beneficial in the analysis of poverty and inequality, but also in the redefinition of policies aimed at improving the well-being of individuals.

The approach has been applied within numerous sectors, from health and education to sustainable development, but beyond the obvious interest that it represents for the classical economics tradition, it has also encountered certain limitations. While acknowledging the undeniable progress that the approach has made in renewing the thinking on the development and well-being of a population, this book takes a critical stance. It focuses particularly on the approach's inadequacy vis-à-vis the continental phenomenological tradition and draws conclusions about the economic analysis of development. In a more specific sense, it highlights the fact that the approach is too bound by standard economic logic, which has prevented it from taking account of a key 'person' dimension — namely, the ability of an individual to assume responsibility. As a result, this book advocates the notion that if the approach is used carelessly in relation to development policies, it can cause a number of pernicious effects, some of which may lead to disastrous consequences.

Due to its multidisciplinary nature, this book will be of interest to those working in the fields of economics, philosophy, development studies and sociology.

1 Introduction

 

 

 

The present book is intended to present and develop thinking about the concept of the person in economics. Using this fundamental concept, we seek to enrich the economic analysis of an ethical reflection on responsibility and freedom. The relationship between freedom and responsibility has been the subject of numerous passionate debates in moral philosophy and politics. Henry Sidgwick's (1888) rereading of Kant has contributed to the confrontation of two opposing concepts. According to the first concept, freedom is equivalent to rationality; a person is therefore free to the extent that his/her acts are in accordance with Reason. A person is thus a free agent in proportion to his/her rational acts. As a result of this relationship with freedom, s/he is responsible for the consequences of his/her acts. According to the second concept, the freedom to choose can express itself irrationally, for example when choosing between good and evil. This is a moral freedom, i.e. that of the ‘moralists’. It refers to the imperatives of the person's conscience, but is disconnected with rationality. Thus, according to Sidgwick, Kant causes serious confusion by using the term freedom to designate two different things. More, he leads us astray by combining moral attribution with moral freedom since a person can only be held responsible if s/he is acting in accordance with reason. This conclusion is irrevocable. The divorce between rationality and morality is final.

Having opted for an unavoidable reference to rationality, it is hardly surprising that economic science should have developed an amoral concept of the person, reduced to a rational calculation. By doing this, economic science has dehumanised the person, to the extent of only accepting a representative individual, a sort of calculating machine who is, consequently, predictable.¹

Recent developments² have indeed started to challenge this amoral concept of the individual and have highlighted the feelings of sympathy or empathy of which s/he is capable, thus to some extent restoring a link with Adam Smith. Nevertheless, the reconciliation between the individual and the person is far from complete. We propose a methodological and applied reflection in order to bring about this reconciliation and re-humanise the person. This re-humanisation does not reject rationality. On the contrary, it restores it to its true place in relationship to morality.

Our approach is based on a twofold philosophical tradition. On the one hand the tradition of European phenomenology, and more specifically that of French phenomenology, with philosophers such as Jean-Paul Sartre, Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Paul Ricoeur; on the other the philosophers who have renewed the thought of Kant, such as Christine Korsgaard. This dual origin allows us to propose a phenomenology of the economic person. Using this phenomenology of the economic person we argue on two essential purposes.

First, persons are immersed in a world from which they cannot escape.³ This world consists of values and norms that create rights and duties for persons. Of course persons are not simply in servitude to this world. They also create this world, and contribute to reformulating its norms and values. However, people's actions cannot be dissociated from the rights and duties that are attributed to them, that they attribute to themselves, or that they reject. Economic calculation is consequently constrained. This does not mean that it no longer has any place. Quite the contrary, fulfilling one's duties means managing them and ordering them according to their priorities. Rationality is entwined with morality. For example, using income is not simply choosing between two types of goods for which the person has preferences. It assumes having accepted one's duties, sometimes by transferring part of one's income to other people for whom one feels responsible, even if this means sacrificing part of one's own consumption. The person can of course reject his/her responsibilities towards others by devoting all of his/her income to his/her own consumption, whilst assuming the social consequences that flow from it; and which cannot be reduced simply to appearing selfish, but may include sanctioning behaviour from other people. In all, the economic calculation forms part of a moral calculation that may not be angelic.

Second, the person cannot be dissociated from the practical identities that define him/her. But at the same time, these identities cannot be entirely divorced from the person's actions. A person is what s/he is in action. Actions of an economic nature thus forge the identity, or more exactly the practical identities, of the economic person. These identities are multiple. They are related to what other people expect, but also to how the person defines him/herself. Once again we find rationality in the handling of identities. In a given society these identities cannot escape the prevailing standards and values; practical identities, rights and duties are closely linked in a society. The economic calculation is carried out within a calculation of identity, which is also a moral calculation.

We construct the phenomenology of the economic person in a series of seven steps that constitute the next seven chapters.

In the second chapter we look at the idea of freedom. We want to demonstrate that freedom cannot be reduced to the use of reason, which would amount only to the simple rationality of choice. The capabilities approach, proposed by authors including Amartya Sen, has indeed extended the concept of freedom, but it remains trapped as a purely functional freedom. In the end it only extends freedom of choice. It is simply a set of characteristics external to the person. From this point of view, a person is little different from an object, which also has particular characteristics. The question of moral freedom is never raised and its corollary, self-constraint – which is found in Kant, but which Sidgwick has completely left out – does not appear at any time. This is a very unfortunate oversight, because freedom is not simply choosing between two alternatives; it is also, and above all, power over others. Freedom is, above all, what I can do in the world I inhabit; the world in which I locate my interactions with other people. Without the freedom to constrain oneself, for example by seeking not to harm others, freedom can soon become monstrous. According to a long tradition, this problem is resolved by an entity external to persons, often designated by nebulous terms such as the ‘State’ or the ‘Government,’ but such a tradition in fact denies the capacity of persons to constrain themselves and to act in accordance with morality. It is this tradition that we think is fundamentally flawed. In addition, it only allows us to view responsibility from a very narrow angle.

In the third chapter, we will go on to discuss the notion of responsibility and its links with freedom. If freedom is equivalent to the use of rationality, responsibility is reduced to a calculation of the consequences of rational choices. In this case, we can speak of ex-post responsibility, because responsibility flows from freedom. This sequence will be more or less developed depending on whether the intentions of the agent, the weakness of his/her will, etc. are included in the reasoning, but it inevitably remains causal. From this point of view, the logic of the notion of agency has not radically changed. It simply expresses a capacity to use freedom. This concept of responsibility is problematic. Indeed it is necessary to be able to identify the beginning of the causal chain, and this beginning is the agent. Meanwhile, the agent is not a precise individuality. It is a point without thickness. The agent remains an empty concept defined in a circular manner with action. The action is attributed to an agent, who is him/herself defined by his/her capacity to choose actions freely. This means that the agent must be given some depth by assigning certain characteristics that lie outside the chain of causality. One way of conferring depth on the agent is to replace a purely causal logic by the logic of implication, which makes responsibility a defining characteristic of the agent. We take moral freedom and self-constraint into account. Responsibility no longer flows from freedom; it constitutes its foundation. In this case, we speak of ex-ante responsibility. Responsibility is understood as arising from a relationship of implication with the agent, and is synchronistic with freedom. Agency becomes the way the person uses his/her responsibility.

The agent cannot escape his/her responsibility. It is immediate. The agent is immersed in the world, but simultaneously personalises it by the way s/he assumes his/her responsibility. This responsible agent is designated a ‘person.’ In the fourth chapter we look more closely at this concept. It has two distinct meanings: on the one hand, that of the generic person, which differentiates the person from other living beings, and on the other, the particular person that each of us constitutes. Through identity, these two meanings combine to the point where it is no longer possible to distinguish between them. The person personalises the world at the same time as s/he personalises him/herself. We have both a personal identity as a generic person, and multiple practical identities as a particular person. And even though the practical identities are multiple and could potentially give rise to tension, they are resolved in the personal identity, which means that whatever I do, I remain a responsible person, and as such I cannot escape from my responsibility. I can only choose the forms that it will take by my actions. Identity is forged by the manner in which we assume our responsibilities. It is self-esteem with responsibility towards oneself, recognition of others with responsibility towards other people, and acceptance of rights and duties with responsibility towards everyone. Identity is not a state, but an activity. Because identity cannot be situated outside time, it cannot be a fixed state, but must be conceived as an activity, the activity of constituting oneself as a unique person by taking on board the responsibilities in a pre-existing world. Identity is what we are in the action of constituting ourselves as a person.

Having thus established a concept of the person, in the fifth chapter we establish the methodology that allows us to give substance to this economic person. To do this, we use a form of individualism, because we think it is necessary to go through the person. However, this individualism accepts a form of contextualism, since the person is always located in a given context and the concrete responsibilities that s/he has to assume must be interpreted in this context. Such an approach leads us to defend a phenomenological form of contextualism. Such a methodological position consists of recognising that the choices and behaviour of individuals cannot take place outside a pre-existing context with the values that persons cannot avoid, while accepting that these values can have no meaning without the choices and behaviour of persons. The person is an entity in which social and personal values converge. This means that the person is indeed responsible, but must nonetheless be reasonable. The responsibilities that the person sets him/herself must be acceptable to society. S/he must also be rational, because the multiplicity of responsibilities implies constraints and the person must necessarily carry out arbitrations between his/her various responsibilities. Moral freedom and rational freedom are thus two different expressions of responsibility. We therefore express the modalities of managing responsibilities in terms of the rights and duties that reflect both the opportunities available to the person, and the constraints with which s/he has to cope.

In the sixth chapter we go on to provide some illustrations of the economy of the person. Here we show that results that would seem to be unexpected and counter-intuitive for the usual economic analysis can be understood through the economy of the person. This is true of the decrease in consumption that occurs when income increases, of the large amount of time devoted to work that does not permit the immediate and substantial increase of people's wellbeing, of lending at rates below the market rate, etc. These illustrations reveal two important characteristics of persons in context. On the one hand, their practical identities are also a vector of vulnerability. On the other hand, the rationalisation of practical identities can lead them to be fallible towards other persons. In the seventh and eighth chapters, we look in turn at these topics of vulnerability and fallibility. This allows us to conclude that the person is fragile, and the extreme forms of this fragility lead to suffering, forced migrations, death, etc. The economics of the person leads to questions about the events that render persons fragile. These events are not always natural; they can also result from deliberate economic and social policies. The ninth chapter concludes by outlining what an economics of institutions and of experts responsible to the populations could look like. This thinking will have to be pursued further in follow-up to the present work.

2 Freedom and the capability approach

According to a popular paradox, a free society cannot be fair – and a fair society cannot be free. This is a paradox often trotted out by bar-room pundits and others.¹ Liberal theories of justice resolve this contradiction, each in their own way,² on the one hand by proposing different criteria for justice, and on the other by giving a stronger or weaker consistency to freedom. Despite this, they all share the same interpretation of freedom based on the self-determination of individuals with regard to their way of life.

Freedom is a primary property of human beings as agents confronting the physical world. It refers to the self-determination of a subject possessing reason and will. This freedom does not only concern the choice of whether to do (or not to do) some daily activity, such as taking the car or walking to go shopping, but more fundamentally, the choice of a specific way of life that reflects ones values about what constitutes the good life.³ For example, one may prefer to devote one's life to surfing or, in contrast, to work;⁴ one may consider that a life worth living displays some specific direction, or reflects some specific value. Freedom is, therefore, above all, the choice of values that reflect the life one is living. Choosing to fast regularly, for instance, can reflect values that motivate an entire life.

However, an essential factor is the ability of individuals to make choices based on the values that direct their lives. This ability can be understood in at least two ways. The first way is that of the mental capacity to make a choice amongst a range of alternatives. The capacity to follow a line of reasoning can limit the choices that can in fact be made. The second way involves the capacity to choose from amongst a limited range of alternatives. If we leave to one side the first understanding, then the second poses a real challenge. As Amartya Sen has pointed out several times, choosing to fast if I am able to do so is very different from not eating because I have nothing to eat. The second situation refers us back to an inequality of capability.

Thus, capability opens the way to a conception of freedom as consisting of opportunities. This conception of freedom alters the understanding of poverty, which is thus understood as being the privation of freedoms, i.e. of opportunities. It makes it possible to make value judgements about social conditions that are much more detailed than is possible by a utility-based approach. It does, however, run the risk of becoming a merely functional conception of freedom by focussing solely on the human condition and leaving aside a transcendental conception of freedom and of Man. Such a definition of the approach in terms of capability is particularly problematic if it becomes a normative project in the organisation of society.

2.1 Freedom in liberal egalitarianism

Self-determination

The various liberal theories may diverge considerably with regard to the nature and forms of redistribution towards individuals, but they are all agreed that individuals are best able to judge for themselves what is good.

One of the essential characteristics of all these theories, is the place given to the principle of self-determination of individuals.⁵ This principle of self-determination is generally synonymous with rational autonomy. Although it is not easy to provide an exact definition of the notion of rational autonomy or self-determination,⁶ we can start from the notion that self-determination refers to the idea that the individual is free to choose the way of life he or she wishes to adopt. John Stuart Mill was certainly one of the first authors to formulate this concept and give it central importance.⁷ He stressed, for example, the right of individuals to interpret their own life experience and to choose the life they wish to live. Self-determination in this sense is fairly remote from the idea of being able to make free and untrammelled choices in everyday life. Instead, it refers to a capacity of individuals to make rational and reasoned choices about their way of life.

Denying this right to self-determination would amount t...