Wellbeing, Freedom and Social Justice The Capability Approach Re-Examined, 2017a
Wellbeing, Freedom and Social Justice The Capability Approach Re-Examined, 2017a
Wellbeing, Freedom and Social Justice The Capability Approach Re-Examined, 2017a
Create successful ePaper yourself
Turn your PDF publications into a flip-book with our unique Google optimized e-Paper software.
3. Clarifications<br />
143<br />
interventions are possible. <strong>The</strong> same is done for other functionings — not<br />
surprisingly, since explaining the determinants of valuable social states<br />
is one of the main aims of social scientists.<br />
This raises the question of whether the capability approach should<br />
aspire to do this kind of explanatory capabilitarian analysis. <strong>The</strong> answer<br />
depends on a further question: whether the capability approach would<br />
have any added value in conducting explanatory capability analyses. If<br />
not, then it is unclear why this should be part of the capability approach,<br />
since there seems to be very little value in doing what others are already<br />
doing successfully.<br />
But this pessimistic dismissal of the potential of explanatory<br />
capability analyses may be too quick. Perhaps the capability approach<br />
has a role to play in synthesising <strong>and</strong> connecting these field-specific<br />
lines of explanatory research; since it is a strongly interdisciplinary<br />
approach, it may perhaps also have a role to play in bringing different<br />
disciplines within the social <strong>and</strong> behavioural sciences together. Another<br />
very important task of the capability approach is to reach out to those<br />
disciplines in order to make bridges between the normative <strong>and</strong><br />
the explanatory analyses — one valuable element of the truly postdisciplinary<br />
agenda to which the capability approach aims to contribute.<br />
all normative questions?<br />
<strong>The</strong> capability approach is primarily a normative theory, but are there<br />
also restrictions on which normative questions it can help to address?<br />
Or is it suitable for all normative questions?<br />
In order to answer this, it is helpful to remind us of the key distinction<br />
in philosophical ethics between the right <strong>and</strong> the good. Questions about<br />
the good focus on what makes life valuable <strong>and</strong> include discussions<br />
about wellbeing, autonomy, freedom, <strong>and</strong> love. Questions about the<br />
right focus on how we should act in order for that action to be morally<br />
sound, as well as discussions about how institutions <strong>and</strong> policies should<br />
be designed so as not to violate universal moral rules. Here, the central<br />
issues concern fairness, respect <strong>and</strong> the avoidance of harm. Different<br />
moral theories give different answers to the question of how the good<br />
<strong>and</strong> the right relate to each other.