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
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3. Clarifications<br />
155<br />
focus on ‘refined functionings’ (being the combination of functionings<br />
<strong>and</strong> capabilities).<br />
A third issue which needs to be solved if one hopes to develop a<br />
capability theory of justice is to decide <strong>and</strong> justify which capabilities<br />
matter the most. <strong>The</strong>re are at least two ways of answering this question:<br />
either through procedural approaches, such as using criteria from<br />
which the relevant capabilities are derived, or by defending a specific<br />
list of capabilities. This selection of relevant capabilities for the purpose<br />
of justice can be done at the level of ideal theory (without taking issues<br />
of practical feasibility <strong>and</strong> implementation into account), at the level of<br />
abstract principles (Anderson 1999; Nussbaum 2006b; Claassen 2016) or<br />
at an applied theoretical level, which is useful for practical assessments<br />
of unjust inequalities (e.g. Robeyns 2003; Wolff <strong>and</strong> De-Shalit 2007).<br />
Fourth, a capability theory of justice may need to engage in a<br />
comparison with other ‘metrics of justice’. In the literature on social<br />
justice there are several terms used to indicate what precisely we are<br />
assessing or measuring: the metric of advantage, the currency of justice,<br />
or the informational basis for the interpersonal comparisons for the<br />
purpose of justice. Within theories of justice, the main arguments are with<br />
Rawlsian resourcists 24 <strong>and</strong> with defenders of Dworkinian resourcism. 25<br />
Other possible metrics are basic needs or the many different types of<br />
subjective welfare or preference satisfaction. A full capability theory of<br />
justice would need to show why it serves better as a metric of justice<br />
than these other metrics.<br />
Fifth, a capability theory of justice needs to take a position on the<br />
“distributive rule” (Anderson 2010, 81) that it will endorse: will it argue<br />
for plain equality, or for sufficiency, or for prioritarianism, or for some<br />
other (mixed) distributive rule? Both Martha Nussbaum’s <strong>and</strong> Elizabeth<br />
Anderson’s theories are sufficiency accounts, but from this it does not<br />
follow, as one sometimes reads in the secondary literature, that the<br />
capability approach entails a sufficiency rule. Sen may have given the<br />
(wrong) impression of defending straight equality as a distributive rule,<br />
24 An analysis of this comparison between social primary goods <strong>and</strong> capabilities was<br />
made by the various contributions to the volume edited by Brighouse <strong>and</strong> Robeyns<br />
(2010).<br />
25 For comparisons of the capability view with Dworkin’s egalitarian theory, see Sen<br />
(1984b, 321–23, 2009c, 264–68); Dworkin (2000, 299–303); Williams (2002); Browne<br />
<strong>and</strong> Stears (2005); Kaufman (2006); Pierik <strong>and</strong> Robeyns (2007).