Bentham, Rawls, and Capabilities

Another early paper, ‘Rawls versus Bentham: An Axiomatic Examination of the Pure Distribution Problem’ (Sen 1974)—the axiomatic approach testifying again to Arrow’s influence—once more foretold future direction. The analysis concerns how a given income might best or most justly be distributed according to Benthamite utilitarianism and on ‘Rawlsian’ maximin criteria (but here relating to levels of utility, not to advantage in terms of Rawls’s preferred focal variable of ‘primary goods’— ‘things that every rational man is presumed to want’ (Rawls 1971: 62)). Sen proposes three apparently reasonable axioms, capable of being met simultaneously, and then shows that neither of the leading moral systems he is comparing fulfil them all, both therefore being ‘essentially incomplete’—classical utilitarianism in focusing on the relative magnitude of welfare gains and losses, not on relative welfare levels, Rawlsian maximin in doing the reverse (and with specific concentration on the situation of the worst-off only). Sen concludes: ‘It is not surprising that the utilitarian approach and the maximin approach both run into some fairly straightforward difficulties since each leaves out completely one of the two parts of the total picture’. Then he throws down the gauntlet with his closing remark: ‘[A] more complete theory is yet to emerge’ (Sen 1974: 309).

Enter the new-named ‘capability approach’, derived from the long tradition of concern for human flourishing that extends back through Marx and Smith to Aristotle. This tradition was rescued by Sen from its prolonged era of relative obscurity (overshadowed by utilitarianism) and has been developed through a major series of publications (including Sen 1989, 1999a, 2009).^[1] The prominent factor in his resurrection of this line of thought was recognition of the diversity of individual need.

This recognition was already apparent in On Economic Inequality (Sen 1973: 16-18, 79-81), based on the 1972 Radcliffe Lectures at the University ofWarwick. Here, Sen presented important results on the measurement of inequality, another of the achievements the Nobel committee celebrated. An enlarged edition (1997) reprinted the original but added a substantial annexe After a Quarter Century’, co-authored with Foster, which ‘takes the story...on’ (xii of the 1997 edition of Sen 1973). It updated coverage of the technical literature on measuring inequality and argued for a new index of poverty. The Nobel tribute points up the problem that traditional headcount measures could mask the degree of poverty of the poor?est: the new poverty index devised draws also on description of income distribution and on the Gini coefficient measuring income inequality—conforming to Sen’s general pattern of broadening the information base.

The 1997 edition repeats the original’s stark complaint against utilitarianism. This was that utilitarianism is ‘fundamentally.. .very far from an egalitarian approach’ (ibid.: 18). Sen presented the charge diagrammatically, using what became a familiar leading example—that of a person with disabilities who, it was assumed, might in some circumstances be at a marginal utility disadvantage, needing more resources to achieve the utility level enjoyed by someone else (a further assumption—which Mill might have thought harsh—being that each person’s utility is unaffected by the other’s situation, depending only on their own income). Then while an equal distribution of a given income ‘cake’ would leave the disabled person worse off than the other in terms of his utility level, the maximisation of utility overall compounds his utility deprivation by giving him less income too.^[2] Utilitarianism’s ‘ill-deserved egalitarian reputation’ (ibid.: 16) has links with the all too heroic assumption that individuals’ utility functions were—or at least could reasonably be treated as^[3]—identi- cal: on Sen’s analysis, the doctrine becomes, as the annexe put it, ‘especially counter-intuitive when some people are better “utility producers” than others are’ and the heroic assumption breaks down (ibid.: 110).^[4]

Rejecting utilitarian insistence on maximising the sum total of utility (‘sum-ranking’), the original 1973 text, while retaining exclusive focus on utility information, considered other ways of utilising it.^[5] But the strategic shift away from this ‘welfarist’ framework was imminent. The line of thought is aptly summarised in the later monograph Inequality Reexamined (Sen 1992) which sets out in detail the philosophical dimensions of the case for a focus on capabilities. While maintaining the attack on utilitarianism’s distributional implications, it also recognises a crucial respect in which nevertheless an ‘egalitarian foundation it. ..quite central to the entire utilitarian exercise’: this is that utilitarianism ‘attaches exactly the same importance to the utilities of all people in the objective function’ (ibid.: 14; italics added).^[6] In other words, a marginal gain in the utility of a homeless person would be treated equally with—given just as much weight as—the same marginal utility gain for a princess. Sen observes that in fact ‘a common characteristic of virtually all the approaches to the ethics of social arrangements that have stood the test of time is to want equality of something for all concerned, without which the approaches would ‘tend to...lack social plausibility’—the key discriminator between them then being the question, ‘Equality of what?’ (ibid.: ix; italics in original).

Equality of What? had been the title of Sen’s Tanner Lecture at Stanford in 1979. It introduced the idea of seeking equality in basic capabilities and remains a very valuable introduction to the core reasoning behind the capability approach. Using again the case of a person with special needs as the focus of his critique, Sen expands his argument into the thesis that neither utilitarian nor ‘welfarist’ nor Rawlsian approaches are sufficient templates for social arrangements. The charge against utilitarianism is as before. Against other welfarist approaches relying on utility information alone (such as seeking to equalise individual levels of utility), Sen now points out the inadequacy of inferring need simply from mental reaction and emotional response; for what if the person with disabilities has such a ‘jolly disposition’ or perhaps such a ‘low aspiration level’ that in spite of practical difficulties faced in achieving, say, basic mobility, he is not at a disadvantage in terms of (marginal or total) utility after all? We might still want to recognise a special need for resources (just as we might want on the other hand to disallow claims of special need arising from those who ‘have to be deluged in champagne and buried in caviar to bring them to a normal level of utility, which you and I get from a sandwich and a beer’) (Sen 1980b: 217, 214-215). As to Rawls, while he had tellingly exposed the hazard in vesting moral prescription in totting up the mere utilities irrespective of their source, Sen detected an element of ‘fetishism’^[7] in Rawls’s alternative metric of social primary goods, protesting that, although the disabled person on this goods- focused basis would not be penalised, no special provision would be made for him either (ibid.: 215-216). Hence, if the contention was that such provision should be made, ‘despite there being no marginal utility argument (because it is expensive), despite there being no total utility argument (because he is so contented), and despite there being no primary goods deprivation (because he has the goods that others have), the case must rest on something else’. That ‘something else’ is, Sen believes, ‘the interpretation of needs in the form of basic capabilities’, ‘a person being able to do certain basic things [including] the ability to move about.. .to meet one’s nutritional requirements.. .to be clothed and sheltered.. .to participate in the social life of the community’ (ibid.: 218).

Yet protests may be made about Sen’s critique of the rival theories’ treatment of the critical case. ‘Happiness is happiness’, the utilitarian Richard Layard might be heard to say, no matter what gives rise to it; so if a jolly disposition does the trick, well and good. Sen’s rejoinder, identifying deprivation here in all but feelings, would evidently be that the person concerned might yet very reasonably expect more (see Sen 2009: 273-276). Rawlsians might perhaps jib at the allegation of ‘fetishism’ in the primary goods concept, the list including not just income and wealth but also the far from materialistic social goods which may go to the disabled person: ‘[R]ights and liberties, powers and opportunities ...self-respect’ (Rawls 1971: 62). But that would overlook the point, perhaps not immediately transparent in the fetishism term, about interpersonal variation in the effective value of all these ‘goods’. The argument that diversity among human beings and in the situations in which they live leads to ‘conversion of goods into capabilities [varying] from person to person substantially’ (Sen 1980b: 219) will relate to conversion not only of material resources but of social, political, and legal openings as well. In the context of rights, Tawney’s example of a ‘merely formal’ or ‘nominal’ right that has no ‘practical power’ may come to mind—‘the right of all who can afford it to dine at the Ritz’ (Tawney 1931: 234). In the same spirit, but taking into account the impact of a range of conversion factors much wider than ability to pay, Sen is concerned with whether opportunities for an individual are ‘substantive’ across the board.^[8] The approach can be seen then, says Sen, as a ‘natural extension’ of Rawls’s concern with primary goods, ‘shifting attention from goods to what goods do to human beings’ (Sen 1980b: 218-219).

A cordial to and fro between Rawls and Sen ensued. Rawls (as Sen acknowledged) had himself referred to capabilities in motivating the primary goods concept, and he appeared to feel Sen was underestimating the extent to which what he could say on the matter was very much what Sen was saying. In a protracted series of exchanges about the ‘hard cases’ of special need, there was evidence over the years of some convergence in view— or at least in interpretation. But the meeting of minds on this remained incomplete, and ‘hard cases’ were only illustrative of Sen’s general stress on the variety of human needs (varying with age, sex, bodily size, state of health, season, location, work conditions, social context, etc.) requiring to be centrally addressed, not left as mere discretionary corrections.^[9] The most fundamental divergence from Rawls’s mode of thought, as Sen sees it,^[10] was brought out in The Idea of Justice. Dedicated to Rawls’s memory, perhaps titled with his great book on justice in mind, this pays deep tribute to him personally^[11] and to his ‘far-reaching contributions.. .[as] the leading political philosopher of our time’. However, Sen is also firm in favouring a profound shift in the nature of ideas of justice from those currently dominant in political philosophy—a shift away, as he puts it, from the hypothetical ideal structures of ‘transcendental institutionalism’, ‘aiming only at the characterization of perfectly just societies’ (as in Rawls), and towards ‘realization-focused comparison’, ‘a theory of justice that can serve as the basis of practical reasoning.. .[by including] ways of judging how to reduce injustice and advance justice’ in the world we actually inhabit (Sen 2009: ix, 7-8).

The discussion of the fetishism charge against Rawls may be carried over in part to the ‘basic needs’ approach to development (dating from, and very prominent in, the 1970s), since Sen lodges the same complaint about this; but in a spirited defence, Stewart replies that there is more room for concern with human flourishing and individual achievement in the basic needs approach than Sen allows (Stewart and Deneulin 2002; Stewart 2006). Some have seen the basic needs and capability approaches as complementary, some as having much in common and as having to face some similar problems. But with its focus on the poor, the basic needs approach has no ambition towards ‘completeness’, whereas the capability approach extends beyond concern with basic capabilities to considering capabilities in general. Stewart graciously concedes not only that ‘the capability approach applies to rich as well as poor people. [and is less] broad-brush...[as it] focuses more on individual capacities and needs.. .[including] the special needs of certain groups’, but also that it ‘has a much more elegant philosophical foundation’ (ibid.: 18).

Responding to both basic needs and capability approaches—drawn together in Mahbub ul Haq’s human development approach—from 1990, the United Nation Development Programme’s Human Development Index (HDI) incorporated measures of longevity and education as well as income: Sen was involved in its initial construction. Writing about it in 2006, he explains that while economic expansion in terms of a standard national income measure is important, this is ‘not for its own sake’ but for the sake of human flourishing (Sen 2006b: 257): evidence he cites in ‘Development as Capability Expansion’ (Sen 1989) and later in Development as Freedom shows the two phenomena are far from always going hand in hand. The HDI’s incorporation of additional information marks a strategic but still limited extension, but Sen holds it is its very ‘boorishness’ (Sen 2006b: 257), in deliberately making only a ‘heroic selection’ (ibid.: 259) of factors relevant to well-being, that enables it to pose a punchy challenge to the informational narrowness of the usual performance indicators. He also stresses that ‘no one number can... capture the breadth of the human development approach’ (ibid.: 257, 260). The capabilities metric can in principle offer an alternative, more subtle but complex, perspective on performance. A rival alternative might come in the form of the happiness measure favoured by Layard—but the rivalry here may be to some extent disarmed by the inclusive character of the capabilities concept, which can allow subjective measures of well-being to be accommodated alongside other factors. Sen was Chair Adviser for the Sarkozy Commission on the Measurement of Economic Performance and Social Progress: warning of ‘GDP fetishism’ as the Chair, Stiglitz, dubbed it, the 2009 Report gives a thorough treatment of the issues at stake.

The sensitivity of the capability approach to groups with special needs is attracting particular current attention. In a moving and powerful keynote speech at the World Bank’s Disability Conference in 2004, Sen built on his earlier World Bank lectures (which became Development as Freedom) to argue that ‘overlooking or ignoring the plight of the disabled is not an option that an acceptable theory of justice can have’ (Sen 2004: 2).^[12] He shows the importance of allowing for the conversion handicaps as well as the earning handicaps that are likely to affect the ‘truly gigantic’ number of people living with disabilities (estimated by the Bank at 600 million at that time, about 10% of the world’s population). Conversion handicaps—the greater need for resources to help in leading, so far as possible, flourishing lives—substantially magnify the social deprivation of many who are already, in developing countries, ‘the poorest of the poor’, lacking even the most basic capabilities (ibid.: 7). This is very relevant material to the aim of tackling exclusion which has been highlighted as a desirable target for the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals, due at the time of writing (mid-2015) soon to be agreed on—in succession to the Millennium Development Goals, on which Sen had surely also had a notable influence through the human development perspective and also as a result of his disturbing findings on ‘missing women’ (Sen 1990).^[13]

Personal and social conversion factors are central to individuals’ capability to achieve particular ‘functionings’. But, as Sen has increasingly stressed, the capability approach goes beyond concern with achieved functionings, for freedom plays a key part: the focus is on achievable combinations of functionings and on a person freely choosing from among these the combination they most ‘have reason’ to value. A person’s capability set shows, in effect, their scope for choosing among alternative ways of living, and development can be viewed as a process of removal of ‘unfreedoms’.

Sen emphasises the ‘plural features’ of freedom (Sen 2009:101) and indeed alerts us to an almost bewildering array of them. Some can be illustrated through the example of the functioning of being adequately nourished, which also brings out some of the contrasts between the capability and other approaches. The degree to which one achieves this functioning will depend not just on available food but also on size, age, energy expended at work, digestive illness, and so on. This might not be at all apparent in a utilitarian or other welfarist approach (a ‘sunny temperament’ might disguise the degree of hunger, and Sen reports evidence of malnourished Indian women who did not feel themselves to be so, having believed it proper to give their husbands most of the food). Yet just going by achieved nutritional state could itself be misleading. In a case Sen often refers to, a fasting priest who freely rejects the opportunity of nourishment—out of commitment let us say^[14]—importantly still had the capability of being well fed and in his exercise of choice enjoys what Sen calls ‘process freedom’. In contrast, a famine victim, forced to be similarly malnourished, lacks in Sen’s terms both ‘process’ and ‘opportunity’ freedom. (His famous empirical study of famines (Sen 1981) analyses the sources of such suffering, finding it could arise even when food is available, sometimes resulting instead from lack of ‘entitlement’ to it, e.g. through lack of means to buy it.) On the other hand, if a state of being well nourished results from being force-fed against one’s will (say, during a hunger strike), the functioning is achieved but without process freedom. Sen’s capability perspective is in principle sensitive to and inclusive of all these factors, emphasises the importance of individual ‘agency’, and gives the possibility of including at least some process aspects as well as opportunity aspects within the capability concept.^[15] It is in this sense that he sees development both ‘as capability expansion’ (Sen 1989) and ‘as freedom’ (Sen 1999a).

The constructive claim made for the approach by Sen himself has been a moderate one. Though reckoning to have helped to fill the gaps in alternative approaches, he does not claim to have provided a panacea. This is a project in progress, not a full and final system, and in any case emphatically offers a framework of analysis, not a hard and fast set of decision rules. I am given to understand that Sen may prefer to speak of having concern for capabilities, rather than more grandly and exclusively of the capability ‘approach’. From the outset, he explained he did not hold other approaches to be ‘morally irrelevant’ (Sen 1980b: 220). He allows, for instance, that happiness matters,^[16] that gains signify as well as levels, that equality is not the only factor of moral concern, that liberty counts. He is aware that ‘there are many ambiguities in the conceptual framework of the capability approach’, rejects dogmatism about them, and recognises that pragmatic considerations, for example, of data availability, will limit how far practical application can match some of the theoretical sophistications (Sen 1989: 45, 48-51).

However, the capability approach has not gone unchallenged. Doubts have been raised inter alia about whether it is operational, whether (relatedly) it is too broad and embraces contradictory elements (such as conflicting concepts of freedom), whether it is too narrow and misses vital factors (such as collective capabilities and power structures), whether it is paternalistic.^[17]

The question ‘how far Sen’s framework is operational’, sharply posed by Sugden in 1993, was answered unfavourably in the extreme by Dasgupta, who contends that ‘discussions founded on “capabilities” end nowhere’, the approach being ‘open ended’ and as a guide to policy ‘altogether too flabby’ (Dasgupta 2009: 624). Among those more sympathetic to the general direction of thought, some nervousness could still be found over workability, on several scores—including how to cope with the sheer weight of information potentially relevant to capability expansion, how to deal with the counterfactual nature of options not selected but which it was valuable to have, how to treat trivial multiplication of capabilities^[18] and the existence of damaging ones, and, in forming public policy, how to judge between aggregative and distributive concerns (spilling over into the breadth worry) and between different people’s ideas of the good life (spilling over into the paternalism one).

On the other hand, testament to workability comes from a rapidly growing set of empirical findings from researchers who have found it fruitful to relate the capability perspective to a considerable variety of problems (see Clark 2006; Sen 2009: xxiv). Moreover, Atkinson (1999: 185-186) has suggested a deeper defence, writing: ‘[T]here is.. .more than one way in which an idea of this kind can be operationally effective ... [A] concept is effective if it causes people to think in a different way’.

Sen, acknowledging complexities from the beginning, went on to address them—no doubt with some stimulus from debate with his critics. On valuation issues and policy trade-offs, he gives us a lot to digest. Some conceptual conundrums were taken up in The Standard of Living discussion (Sen 1987a: Reply), and some technical matters in Commodities and Capabilities (Sen 1985b) and in Foster and Sen’s annexe to On Economic Inequality (1997 edition of Sen 1973). But I take the central planks in the reply to be on the broad lines that difficult valuation issues are not peculiar to the capability perspective; that putative lack of specificity may turn out to convey versatility; that it is unrealistic to hanker for completeness; that partial comparabilities may sometimes suffice; that ‘fuzzy’ valuation and being ‘vaguely right’ may be better than spurious precision;^[19] that values are typically fact dependent, giving objectivity a role;^[20] that it is for individuals to decide on their own weighting of functionings; and that, while social evaluation depends on some kind of reasoned consensus on trade-offs, which might indeed be elusive as a universal feature, this may well be attainable at least in the pressing cases of ‘outrageously unjust arrangements’ (Sen 2009: 26).

The lines of response are summed up at various points in The Idea of Justice. So, for example, on the issue of judging what weights to attach to capabilities in social assessment, Sen emphasises the role of ‘our own continued scrutiny and.. .the reach of public discussion’ which render it an ‘absurdity’ to claim that the approach is ‘usable.. .only if it comes with a set of “given” weights on the distinct functionings in some fixed list of relevant capabilities’. Moreover, he illustrates how the policy maker’s choice of weights might usefully reflect the exercise in hand—whether assessing poverty in relation to health policy or assessing ‘the inequality of overall advantage of different persons’ (ibid.: 242-243).

Critical demand for muscular policy rules is out of step with Sen’s down- to-earth recognition of ‘the possible plurality of robust and impartial reasons that can emerge from searching scrutiny’, as a result of which there may be ‘a good deal of incompleteness and unresolved conflicts’. Alert to plurality within each of the ideals of equality, freedom, and justice, he does not duck the fact that reasoned resolution strategies are liable to fail from time to time. In connection with competing ideas of justice, he draws on a favourite example to show that three competing claims could be supported by a justification it is hard reasonably to reject.^[21] Each of three children might have a claim on a flute, one because only she knows how to play it (getting happy fulfilment from doing so), a second because he is the poorest, and a third because she made the flute herself. On the information given, each claim has its own claim to validity, and ‘it is quite possible no unanimity may emerge’ (Sen 2009: 12-15, 201, 399).

However, as Sen points out, the flute might find its home on a modest change in the children’s circumstances, and the argument should not inhibit the wider quest for partial orderings that he encourages—writing that ‘The agreement to emerge from “a public framework of thought” can be of a partial yet useful kind’ (Sen 2009: 135). Rather, the story of the flute trio indicates his reason to be wary of rules meant to cover all cases. This restraint is evident again in his treatment of the question whether it would be ‘right to presume that we should demand equality of capability?’ (ibid.: 295; italics in original). It may at first seem surprising that Sen writes firmly: ‘[T]he answer is no’ (ibid.).^[22] But Sen argues there is no overriding dictate to pursue equality, because aggregative concerns can matter as well as distributive ones, process freedom can be at odds with opportunity freedom, and so on.^[23] Tidy solutions are not guaranteed.

A further question of how to balance policy aims comes in Sen’s discussion of ‘the Lee thesis’—under which a clutch of democratic freedoms in Singapore were to be forgone for the sake of the rapid economic growth that did in fact ensue. Sen opposes the thesis on the basis of questioning the causal connections it presumed (planting a counterfactual doubt about potentially even higher growth) and placing stress on the exceptional power of those democratic freedoms (through their intrinsic worth as well as for their several instrumental values) (Sen 1999a: 148-154). But again, there are contrary concerns: Sen does not retreat from observing American democracy’s lack of success in easing the severe deprivation in many African American communities. There remain some demanding questions to pursue in this context: for instance, how might his analysis relate to the character of current Rwandan development?

The charge that the capability approach is too broad tends to focus on the wisdom of seeking to encompass such a plurality of, possibly competing, free?doms. One of Gasper and van Staveren’s fears is that too general a celebration of development ‘as freedom’ may tend to mislead, if it obscures the fact that freedoms are heterogeneous and not all benign. They suggest paying more attention to values such as caregiving, which involve patterns of relationship and interactions of individual freedoms. In The Idea of Justice, interfamily distribution of duties is now discussed in terms of ‘cooperative conflict’ (Sen 2009: 166-167).

In that book also, in addition to the freedom concepts already mentioned, Sen explains the republican concept of freedom advocated by Pettit. This might be illustrated again through the functioning of being adequately nourished: freedom in the republican sense would be lacking if the only way of sourcing food for a housebound person was for it to be brought to her by state-funded social workers or charity volunteers, the achievement thus being dependent on the support of others. While accepting another aspect of freedom is identified, Sen is unconvinced it should rule the roost, objecting that Pettit—insufficiently pluralist—is not affording due weight to other freedoms at issue: in our example, being well nourished is achieved (and perhaps with a greater degree of agency, even if small, in comparison with the force-feeding case).^[24] He holds that republican freedom can be seen as adding to the capability perspective, not demolishing it (Sen 2009: 305-308). The book describes yet a further freedom combination for consideration too, in which loss of process freedom combines with success in terms of opportunity and achievement freedom, and where the enforced outcome (but for the enforcing) is just what would anyway have been chosen (to continue our nutrition functioning theme, the uncommon case, say, of a schoolchild who loves eating greens, but who is obliged to eat them by a disobliging dinner lady). Again, there remain some interesting puzzles to pursue here—not neglected by Sen himself—for instance, over how fruitfully the various freedoms might themselves be counted as capabilities and how usefully regarded as distinct.

A number of papers have suggested there are missing elements in Sen’s framework, because its starting point is determinedly with the individual. Some have expressed this as proposing extension rather than overthrow (the framework is a forgiving one). The suggestion would then be that greater allowance be made for the impact of the power structures, global corporations, ‘collective’ capabilities, and so on which are mentioned in this strand of the literature

(see, for instance, Stewart and Deneulin (2002), Evans (2002), Gasper and van Staveren (2003), and Hill (2003)). But Sen protests in The Idea of Justice not only about the dimensions of his work dealing with how society affects the individual but also that he is very far from founding his analysis on the atomised individuals of methodological individualism: rather, he follows Marx in viewing individuals as necessarily social beings (Sen 2009: 244-247).

A remaining challenge came to the fore through the emphasis Sen placed on mental adaptation to deprivation, when arguing against (classic) utilitarianism.^[25] Expanding the ‘jolly disposition’ line of thought, he had described many sets of people—including oppressed minorities, sweatshop workers, subdued housewives—who might adjust desires to adverse conditions ‘to make life bearable’ (Sen 1999a: 62-63). Then (like the malnourished Indian wife above) such an individual—say, a sweatshop worker—may profess herself content (and may believe she is content) in spite of suffering deprivation in terms of what she is able to achieve. While the capability perspective, Sen argues, corrects for welfarist blindness towards her achievement deficit, it might now seem that the same problem of mental adaptation could come to haunt the capability approach itself—as Burchardt has argued, on examining whether youngsters’ recognition of value in entrance to higher education or professional training seemed to be conditioned by social context (Burchardt 2009).

Is there paternalism here? To place emphasis on a reason to value that a person does not (yet?) accept as a reason might seem reminiscent of some of the ‘preference laundering’ Sen had questioned (in company with Williams), but he contends that valuations are naturally the subject of critical reappraisal, in a way in which feelings are not (e.g. Sen 1989: 57, fn. 13). The paternalism charge is generally agreed to be stronger^[26] against Nussbaum’s version of the capability approach since, unlike Sen, she believes it necessary to draw up a list of ten capabilities regarded as essential for human flourishing. Resisting calls to follow suit, Sen is surely far from suggesting imposing valuations (though, as with social choices, fairly confident of potential rewards from reasoned scrutiny—citing suggestive evidence, for example, of anti-smoking campaigns, in support: see Sen (1989, 2009: 275)). But Sugden, a long-standing but worthy opponent of Sen, was confident in pouncing on what he seemed to see as paternalism in Sen’s position, protesting, ‘my concern about Sen’s approach is that it allows collective judgements about rational desire to override individuals’ actual desires’ (Sugden 2006: 50). Steeped as he is in the ethos of social choice theory, Sen seemed taken aback by this onslaught, writing, ‘I am surprised by the extent to which Sugden sees an odd picture of despotism in the recognition of the need for critical assessment and public reasoning’ (Sen 2006c: 88-89). In response, Sugden allowed that ‘Given Sen’s emphasis on democratic judgment, it would be wrong to suggest that his concept of ‘reason to value’ is paternalistic or elitist’ but still maintained that ‘Because [Sen’s capability] theory is grounded on the idea of “reason to value”, it does not allow a robust formulation of each individual’s freedom to choose how to live her own life’ (Sugden 2008: 305, 308). Qizilbash, carefully analysing the debate, grants much of the ground to Sen before giving Sugden the last word: ‘Sen’s... [approach] can.withstand much of the force of Sugden’s critique, [but] the unease which motivates [it] cannot be easily dismissed’ (Qizilbash 2011b: 26).

Perhaps ironically, the potential influence of powerful social groupings in distorting personal choice—alongside the susceptibility of mental adjustments to circumstances of deprivation—is a key factor motivating Sen’s emphasis on attending to what a person has ‘reason to value’, rather than simply going by what she values—or seems to value. That valuations are liable to be culture dependent had already been flagged up in Equality of What?; since then, a very substantial and increasing part of Sen’s work on issues of justice, freedom, and well-being has been devoted to exploring the role reasoned scrutiny can play. The weight of the many interlocking arguments now assembled and still being assembled to support that role may begin to take its toll on at least some elements of the mentioned unease.^[27] The Idea of Justice gives more detail than the previous books on how the ideal of impartial public discussion is intended to work. Because of the perceived danger of parochialism, discussion is to be tempered by exposure to the alternative views and experiences of those from elsewhere—engagement with people who may have other values serving a function similar to that of Smith’s ‘impartial spectator’. In order to benefit fully from this ‘participatory freedom’, individuals—of both sexes—should have access to sufficient facilities for learning to equip them with ‘basic educational skills’. Sen then argues that participatory freedom and access to education cannot reasonably be ‘choke[d] off...on grounds of traditional values (such as religious fundamentalism)’ (Sen 1999a: 32). Malala Yousafzai, the fellow Nobel Laureate gunned down on her way to school in Pakistan, would no doubt agree with that.

But some perplexing issues may remain. While overt coercion creates doubt over how genuine apparently chosen behaviours are (except when defied by Malala), in less transparent contexts, where any conditioning is too unobtrusive to detect, is it possible for anyone to tell—even in an open participatory process—how far the individual views we would expect to respect do reflect true agent autonomy?^[28] There may be some special cases to cover too: how satisfactorily will the educational requirement linked with ‘participatory freedom’ relate to members of an ‘uncontacted’ Amazonian tribe whose priority—or whose headman’s priority?—seems to be to remain contactless? Must they lose their unrecoverable status in order to have ‘reason’ to value it?

• [1] For more commentary on capabilities, see the excellent short summaries in Clark (2006), Atkinson(1999), Riskin (2006), Agarwal et al. (2003), and Robeyns (2011). Morris’s introduction (2009) coversSen’s other work too.
• [2] Sen makes use of an axiom ruling out such a result—the Weak Equity Axiom (Sen 1973, 1974).
• [3] See Meeks (1985).
• [4] The annexe’s comment on ‘profound.. .unconcern with inequalities.. .in.. .individual utilities’ refers toindividual utility levels—their ‘total utility’—not utilities ‘at the margin’ (ibid.: 110).
• [5] By 1997, the annexe had brought capabilities into this book.
• [6] Sen correspondingly here qualifies the 1973 indictment of utilitarianism as not egalitarian with ‘insome important respects’ (Sen 1992: 13, fn. 4).
• [7] Echoing Marx’s concept of ‘commodity fetishism’.
• [8] The standard language of opportunity sets in economics does not bring to the fore this deep-seated roleof non-income factors in giving (or denying) substance to an apparent power of choice.
• [9] Sen (2009: 260).
• [10] For a challenge, see Sugden (1993).
• [11] Rawls similarly acknowledged his debt to Sen.
• [12] See Qizilbash (2011a) and Sen (2009: 258-260).
• [13] See also Atkinson (1999).
• [14] Sen also makes use of distinctions between the concepts ‘well-being achievement’, ‘well-being freedom’,‘agency achievement’, and ‘agency freedom’, which relate back to the discussion in Section 3.
• [15] Sen’s terms ‘culmination’ and ‘comprehensive’ (process-inclusive) outcome can also be applied here.
• [16] See, for example, Sen (2009: Chapter 13) and Bruni et al. (2008).
• [17] A number of leading critical papers are gathered together in Wood and Wood (2007: volume II). See,for instance, Stewart and Deneulin (2002), Evans (2002), Gasper and van Staveren (2003), Hill (2003),and Sugden (1993).
• [18] Williams (in Sen 1987a: 98) discusses the potential triviality of gaining the capability to choose yetanother new laundry product—‘Bloppo’.
• [19] ‘For substantive social theories.it may be.. .both terribly limiting and altogether unnecessary to shunambiguities’ (Sen 1989: 57, fn. 14). See also Sen (1970b, 1986, 1987b).
• [20] As in the original discussion of non-basic value judgements in 1970. The triple ‘entanglement’ of fact,convention, and value is thoroughly explored in Putnam (2002), who specifically relates Sen’s development thinking to these issues. See also the fierce argument on ‘entanglement’ between Putnam and Walsh (2007, 2012) and Dasgupta (2007, 2009).
• [21] Following Scanlon (1998).
• [22] This does not imply that there cannot be particular situations in which equalisation might bejustified.
• [23] He also offers in support the argument that it would not be fair process to seek to reduce the prevailingdisparity in male/female life expectancy rates (a ‘natural masculine handicap’ (Sen 2009: 296)), devotingmore medical attention to men than to women with the same health problem. It is instructive to pinpointhow this could relate to the earlier argument on disabilities.
• [24] Where state-funded provision is concerned, the ‘republican’ view on ‘dependency’ as opposed to entitlement may be at odds with, say, a Scandinavian understanding. Sen considers state provision of educationin this context (Sen 2009: 307-308). In the UK of 2015, with respect to the nourishment functioningset of cases, a stronger sense of unfreedom might perhaps result from enforced reliance on a food bankthan from the personal care of a home help.
• [25] See an illuminating analysis of varieties of adaptation in Clark (2012).
• [26] Though in the view of Qizilbash (2011b), still not very strong.
• [27] Qizilbash concludes that Sen’s recent contributions ‘go quite far in addressing...[the] worry. Sugdenmay not yet be convinced by the moves. But it is clear that in making them Sen.recognize[s] the uneasewhich motivates his critique’ (Qizilbash 2011b: 51).
• [28] See Sumner (1996).