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

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4. Critiques and Debates 177 But what about the philosophical theories of basic needs? Are there reasons why we should favour them rather than the capability approach? The arguments that were given for the pragmatic basic needs approach apply also to some extent to the questions of the complementarities and differences between the theories. There are, theoretically, close similarities between theories of needs and capabilities, and Soran Reader (2006) has argued that many of the objections that capability scholars have to theories of needs are unwarranted and based on implausibly reductionist readings of theories of needs. According to Reader, theories of needs and capability theories have much more in common than capability scholars have been willing to see. Still, Sen has been notorious in arguing that the capability approach is superior to the basic needs approach, a critique he has reaffirmed in his latest book (Sen 2017, 25). In his paper ‘Goods and people’, Sen (1984a, 513–15) criticised the basic needs approach for being too focussed on commodities, and seeing human beings as passive and needy. Those criticisms were rebutted by Alkire (2002, 166–74), who believed they were based on misinterpretations. However, Alkire did argue that the other two claims by Sen were correct. First, that the basic needs approach confines our attention to the most desperate situations, and is therefore only useful to developing countries. Alkire, however, sees this as potentially a strength of the basic needs approach; one could argue that it helps us to focus our attention on the worst off. Sen’s final criticism was, according to Alkire, the one with most theoretical bite: that the basic needs approach does not have solid philosophical foundations. However, the question is whether that is true. A set of recent papers by basic needs scholars (Brock and Reader 2002; Reader and Brock 2004; Reader 2006) make clear that the philosophical theory of basic needs is sophisticated; moreover, several philosophically highly sophisticated theories of needs have been proposed in the past, both in the Aristotelian tradition but also more recently by contemporary philosophers (e.g. Doyal and Gough 1991; Wiggins 1998). Instead, a more plausible explanation for the basic needs approach losing ground in comparison to the capability approach seems to me that in the case of the basic needs approach, there was less interaction between empirical scholars and policy makers on the one hand, and philosophers on the other. It is hard to find evidence of a clear synergy between basic
178 Wellbeing, Freedom and Social Justice needs philosophers and basic needs development scholars and policy advisors — an interaction that is very present in the capability literature. This may explain why the basic needs approach has been seen as lacking solid conceptual foundations. Yet despite these hypotheses, which may help us understand why the capability approach to a large extent replaced the focus on needs in the practical field and in empirical research, some genuine differences remain. The first difference requires the capability approach to adopt some basic distinctions that are fundamental to philosophical needs theory, and for which the capability approach in itself does not have the resources: the distinction between non-contingent needs on the one hand, and contingent needs, desires, wants, etc. on the other hand. Noncontingent needs are cases in which “the needing being simply cannot go on unless its need is met” (Reader and Brock 2004, 252). This relates to a more common-sense distinction between ‘needs’ and ‘wants’, that has an important relevance to our everyday ethical life and to policy making, but that has no equivalent in the capability approach. For some applications of the capability approach, such as those related to prioritising in conditions of extreme scarcity of resources (whether these resources are money, food, water, the right to emit greenhouse gasses, etc.) theories of needs can provide tools to guide our moral priorities that are lacking in the capability approach. Right now, preferences dominate in public decision making, but the concept of preferences cannot make a distinction between a preference for minimal amounts of water, food, safety, and social interaction, versus a preference for wine and a jacuzzi. The preferences-based approach, which has become very dominant in ethical theory as well as policy analysis by economists, doesn’t have the theoretical resources to make such a distinction, whereas it is central to some of our intuitions of how to prioritise our actions in cases of scarcity (e.g. J. O’Neill 2011; Robeyns 2017a). The second difference follows from the first. The distinction in theories of needs between the morally required (meeting noncontingent or basic needs) and the morally laudable but not required (the other needs, wants, desires, etc.) implies that the needs approach may have a smaller scope than the capability approach. The modular view of the capability approach presented in chapter 2 makes clear that the capability approach can be used for a wide variety of capabilitarian theories and applications. The basic needs approach is more focussed
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Contents Acknowledgements 3 1. Intr
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3. Clarifications 89 3.1 Introducti
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4.7 What about power and political
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Acknowledgements In 1998, when I st
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Acknowledgements 5 the capability a
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1. Introduction Many people who en
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1. Introduction 9 capability approa
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1. Introduction 11 Moreover, it bri
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1. Introduction 13 Countries Outsi
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1. Introduction 15 capabilities of
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1. Introduction 17 their collaborat
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1. Introduction 19 This book has a
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2. Core Ideas and the Framework Th
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Index abortion 15, 145 advantage 25
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Index 253 Fleurbaey, Marc 154 flour
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Index 255 political institutions 14
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