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IS THE CAPABILITY APPROACH PATERNALIST?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 March 2014

Ian Carter
Ian Carter*
Affiliation:
University of Pavia, Italyian.carter@unipv.it
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Abstract

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.

Type
Articles
Information
Economics & Philosophy , Volume 30 , Issue 1: ‘Themes from the Work of Amartya Sen: Identity, Rationality, and Justice’ , March 2014 , pp. 75 - 98
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2014 

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