Wellbeing, Freedom and Social Justice The Capability Approach Re-Examined, 2017a

122 Wellbeing, Freedom and Social Justice
the perspective of the capability approach, hedonistic theories (or the
happiness approach) entail that the only functioning that matters is
happiness. The capability approach stresses what people can do and be
(module A1) and ‘happiness’ or one’s hedonic state at best refers to one
aspect of one’s being, not the various aspects of what we can do. The
capability approach and the happiness approach do share some common
characteristics, such as the fact that both focus on what they take to be of
ultimate value. Yet the two approaches have very different ideas of what
that ‘ultimate value’ should be, with the happiness approach defending
an exclusive choice for a mental state versus the capability approach
defending the focus on a plurality of aspects of our lives. It is therefore
not plausible to see the happiness approach, or hedonism, as a specific
case of the capability approach. However, more can be said about the
precise relation between the capability approach and hedonistic or
happiness approaches, which will be done in section 3.8.
How about the desire-fulfilment theories, or the objective list
theories? Can the notion of wellbeing embedded in the capability
approach plausibly be understood as either of those? Let us first
very briefly describe the two types of theories, and then ask how the
capability approach fits in.
Desire-fulfilment theories of wellbeing claim, essentially, that wellbeing
is the extent to which our desires are satisfied. These desires could
be our current, unquestioned desires. In philosophy, that is a view
that cannot count on many defenders, since it is very easy to think of
examples of current desires that will harm us in the near future, or else
desires for something that is, arguably, not good for us, such as a desire
for excessive amounts of food or alcohol. Philosophers have therefore
proposed more sophisticated views of desires, called ‘informed desires’
(e.g. Sumner 1996). Those are desires that meet additional conditions,
and different proposals have been made for what those conditions
should be. Examples of such additional constraints include not
being ignorant of facts, but also not being deceived, or not suffering
from mental adaptation — which ranges from having adapted one’s
aspirations to one’s dire circumstances, to having adapted one’s desires
to one’s extremely affluent circumstances, to a more general ‘preference
adaptation’ which applies to all of us in societies with social norms and
the widespread use of advertisements.