Capability and freedom: a defence of Sen

Abstract

In a recent discussion of Amartya Sen’s concept of the capabilities of people for functioning in their society — and the idea of targetting people’s functioning capabilities in evaluating the society — G.A.Cohen accuses Sen of espousing an inappropriate, ‘athletic’ image of the person (Cohen 1993, 24-25). The idea is that if Sen’s formulations are to be taken at face value, then life is valuable only so far as people actively choose most facets of their existence: if they fare well in the material stakes, for example, they must fare well as a result of active choice and effort, not because anyone else looks after them. ‘That’, says Cohen, ‘overestimates the place of freedom and activity in well-being’ (25). I think that if it were accurate, then Cohen’s criticism would be damaging. It amounts to the charge that just as a theorist like Hannah Arendt (1958) may be said to have an overactive image of democracy — an image under which democratic life involves a relentless rondo of meetings and debates — so Amartya Sen suggests an overactive image of social flourishing more generally. People will flourish according to Sen’s formula, so the charge goes, only if they maintain an unyielding control of their affairs and their fortunes. Like healthconscious holidaymakers, they will maintain a stern regime of early rising, hard walking, and brisk swimming; they won’t ever lounge or bask. As against this accusation, however, I believe that Sen (1993, 43-44) is quite right when he says: ‘athleticism was never intended, despite the fact that Cohen has obviously been misled by my use of such words as “capability” and “achieving”’. Nothing in his position entails the athleticism of which he is accused. On the contrary, a proper appreciation and elaboration of that position shows how his invocation of capabilities in the evaluation of social life is consistent with a realistic, decidedly non-athletic picture of flourishing. I try to outline such an account of Sen’s position in this paper and then to use that account to undermine the athleticism charge. My paper is in three sections. First, I go back to the way of thinking about freedom that Sen defended in commentaries on his ‘Liberal Paradox’ and I sketch the salient points of that theory, developing them in a somewhat distinctive way. Then in the second section I explain Sen’s emphasis on the importance of functioning capability in the light of his theory of freedom. And, finally, in the third section I show where Cohen goes wrong in thinking that Sen’s approach implies athleticism. The paper concludes with a comment on the close relationship between Sen’s theory of freedom and capabilities and the conception of freedom as non-domination that I see as republican in character and provenance (Pettit 1997; Skinner 1997). Show more