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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2. Core Ideas <strong>and</strong> the Framework<br />
41<br />
the choices made by one person. Rather, the moral relevance lies in<br />
whether capabilities are truly available to us given the choices made by<br />
others, since that is the real freedom to live our lives in various ways,<br />
as it is truly open to us. For example, if a teenager lives in a family in<br />
which there are only enough resources for one of the children to pursue<br />
higher education, then he only truly has the capability to pursue higher<br />
education if none of his older siblings has made that choice before him. 21<br />
<br />
are value-neutral categories<br />
Functionings <strong>and</strong> capabilities are defined in a value-neutral way. Many<br />
functionings are valuable, but not all functionings necessarily have a<br />
positive value. Instead, some functionings have no value or even have<br />
a negative value, e.g. the functioning of being affected by a painful,<br />
debilitating <strong>and</strong> ultimately incurable illness, suffering from excessive<br />
levels of stress, or engaging in acts of unjustifiable violence. In those<br />
latter cases, we are better off without that functionings outcome,<br />
<strong>and</strong> the functionings outcome has a negative value. Functionings are<br />
constitutive elements of human life, which consist of both wellbeing<br />
<strong>and</strong> ill-being. <strong>The</strong> notion of functionings should, therefore, be valueneutral<br />
in the sense that we should conceptually allow for the idea of<br />
‘bad functionings’ or functionings with a negative value (Deneulin <strong>and</strong><br />
Stewart 2002, 67; Nussbaum 2003a, 45; Stewart 2005, 190; Carter 2014,<br />
79–81).<br />
<strong>The</strong>re are many beings <strong>and</strong> doings that have negative value, but they<br />
are still ‘a being’ or ‘a doing’ <strong>and</strong>, hence, a functioning. Nussbaum made<br />
that point forcefully when she argued that the capability to rape should<br />
not be a capability that we have reason to protect (Nussbaum 2003:<br />
44–45). A country could effectively enable people to rape, for example,<br />
either when rape is not illegal (as it is not between husb<strong>and</strong> <strong>and</strong> wife in<br />
many countries), or when rape is illegal, but de facto never leads to any<br />
21 Arguably, some of that work is being done by social choice theorists <strong>and</strong> others<br />
working with axiomatic methods, but unfortunately almost none of the insights<br />
of that work have spread among the disciplines within the capability literature<br />
where axiomatic <strong>and</strong> other formal methods are not used (<strong>and</strong>, presumably, not well<br />
understood). See, for example, Pattanaik (2006); Xu (2002); Gotoh, Suzumura <strong>and</strong><br />
Yoshihara (2005); Gaertner <strong>and</strong> Xu (2006, 2008).