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.
58 <strong>Wellbeing</strong>, <strong>Freedom</strong> <strong>and</strong> <strong>Social</strong> <strong>Justice</strong><br />
such as the ontological idea that human beings are individuals who can<br />
live <strong>and</strong> flourish independently of others. However, there is no such<br />
claim in the principle of ethical individualism. <strong>The</strong> claim is rather one<br />
about whose interests should count. And ethical individualism claims<br />
that only the interests of persons should count. Ultimately, we care about<br />
each individual person. Ethical individualism forces us to make sure we<br />
ask questions about how the interests of each <strong>and</strong> every person are served or<br />
protected, rather than assuming that because, for example, all the other<br />
family members are doing fine, the daughter-in-law will be doing fine<br />
too. If, as all defensible moral theories do, we argue that every human<br />
being has equal moral worth, then we must attach value to the interests<br />
of each <strong>and</strong> every one of the affected persons. Thus, my first conclusion<br />
is that ethical individualism is a desirable property, since it is necessary<br />
to treat people as moral equals.<br />
But ethical individualism is not only a desirable property, it is also an<br />
unavoidable property. By its very nature the evaluation of functionings<br />
<strong>and</strong> capabilities is an evaluation of the wellbeing <strong>and</strong> freedom to achieve<br />
wellbeing of individual persons. Functionings are ‘beings’ <strong>and</strong> ‘doings’:<br />
these are dimensions of a human being, which is an embodied being,<br />
not merely a mind or a soul. And with the exception of the conjoined<br />
twins, <strong>and</strong> the case of the unborn child <strong>and</strong> the pregnant mother, bodies<br />
are physically separated from each other. 33 We are born as a human<br />
being with a body <strong>and</strong> future of her own, <strong>and</strong> we will die as a human<br />
being with a body <strong>and</strong> a past life narrative that is unique. This human<br />
being, that lives her life in an embodied way, thus has functionings that<br />
are related to her person, which is embodied. It is with the functionings<br />
<strong>and</strong> capabilities of these persons that the capability approach is<br />
concerned with. 34 However, as I will explain in detail in section 4.6,<br />
from this it does not follow that the capability approach conceptualises<br />
people in an atomistic fashion, <strong>and</strong> thus that the capability approach is<br />
‘individualistic’ — meant in a negative, pejorative way. And it also does<br />
not imply that a capabilitarian evaluation could not also evaluate the<br />
33 As Richardson (2016, 5) puts it, “all capabilities […] are dependent on the body.<br />
Without relying on one’s body there is nothing one can do or be”.<br />
34 Some have argued in favour of what they call ‘collective capabilities’, which I will<br />
discuss in section 3.6.