https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.2307%2F3343168.pdf

Development as Freedom

The morality of freedom

The Concept Of Law

Women and Human Development. Martha C. Nussbaum. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000, 303 pp.

Women and Human Development.

The Theory and Practice of Autonomy

This paper is motivated by sustained interest in the capabilities approach to welfare economics combined with the paucity of economic statistics that measure capabilities at the individual level. Specifically, it takes a much discussed account of the normatively desirable capabilities constitutive of a good life, argued to be comprehensive at a high level of abstraction, and uses it to operationalize the capabilities approach by developing a survey instrument to elicit information about capabilities at the individual level. The paper explores the extent to which these capabilities are covariates of a life satisfaction measure of utility and investigates aspects of robustness and subgroup differences using standard socio-demographic variables as well as a relatively novel control for personality. In substantial terms, we find there is some evidence of quantitative, but no qualitative, gender and age differences in the capabilities-life satisfaction relationship. Furthermore, we find that indicators from a wide range of life domains are linked to life satisfaction, a finding that supports multi-dimensional approaches to poverty and the non-materialist view that people do not just value financial income per se. Our most important contribution, however, is primarily methodological and derives from the demonstration that, within the conventions of household and social surveys, human capabilities can be measured with the aid of suitably designed statistical indicators.

/pdf/the-development-of-capability-indicators-3xo196c9cs.pdf

The Development of Capability Indicators

Introduction PART I: JUSTICE AND OVERALL FREEDOM 1. The Concept of Overall Freedom 2. The Value of Freedom 3. The Distribution of Freedom 4. Reflective Equilibrium PART II: VALUE-BASED FREEDOM 5. The Value-Based Approach 6. Self-Mastery PART III: EMPIRICAL FREEDOM 7. Individual Freedom: Actions 8. Individual Freedom: Constraints 9. Group Freedom 10. Indicators of Freedom Conclusion Bibliography

A Measure of Freedom

In what sense are persons equal, such that it is appropriate to treat them as equals? This difficult question has been strangely neglected by political philosophers. A plausible answer can be found by adopting a particular interpretation of the idea of respect. Central to this interpretation is the thought that in order to respect persons we need to treat them as ‘opaque', paying attention only to their outward features as agents. This proposed basis of equality has important implications for the currency of egalitarian justice, ruling out a number of the equalizanda favored by contemporary egalitarians.

/pdf/respect-and-the-basis-of-equality-29ei3rnwpx.pdf

Respect and the Basis of Equality

This paper argues in favour of a distinction between 'freedom' and 'freedom of choice' - a distinction that economists and political phi- losophers have so far either ignored or drawn wrongly. Drawing the dis- tinction correctly may help to resolve a number of disputes in contemporary political philosophy and non-welfarist normative economics regarding the so-called 'preference-based' account of freedom and the relevance, to judgements about freedom, of degrees of similarity between agents' options. The paper begins by setting out three much discussed axioms for the measurement of freedom (of choice?) originally put forward by Pattanaik and Xu. It is suggested that the problems these axioms give rise to can be solved by distinguishing correctly between 'freedom' and 'freedom of choice'. The paper then sets out definitions of 'freedom', 'choice' and 'freedom of choice', justifying these in philosophical terms and arguing their superiority to alternative definitions. Finally, on the basis of these defini- tions and with reference to Pattanaik and Xu's axioms, it is shown that an agent can enjoy freedom without enjoying freedom of choice, and that she can enjoy an increase in one of these without enjoying an increase in the other.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/info/41106593

Choice, freedom, and freedom of choice

Capability theorists have suggested different, sometimes incompatible, ways in which their approach takes account of the value of freedom, each of which implies a different kind of normative relation between functionings and capabilities. This paper examines three possible accounts of the normative relation between functionings and capabilities, and the implications of each of these accounts in terms of degrees of paternalism. The way in which capability theorists apparently oscillate between these different accounts is shown to rest on an apparent tension between anti-paternalism (which favours an emphasis on capabilities) and anti-fetishism (which favours an emphasis on functionings). The paper then advances a fourth account, which incorporates a concern with the content-independent or ‘non-specific’ value of freedom. Only the fourth account would remove all traces of paternalism from the capability approach. Whatever reasons advocates of the capability approach might have had for rejecting this fourth account, those reasons are not internal to the capability approach itself.

Ian Carter

Papers

The Development of Capability Indicators

A Measure of Freedom

Respect and the Basis of Equality

Choice, freedom, and freedom of choice

Is the capability approach paternalist