Concept
Capability approach
Overview
The capability approach (also referred to as the capabilities approach) is a normative approach to human welfare that concentrates on the actual capability of persons to achieve lives they value rather than solely having a right or freedom to do so. It was conceived in the 1980s as an alternative approach to welfare economics.
In this approach, Amartya Sen and Martha Nussbaum combine a range of ideas that were previously excluded from (or inadequately formulated in) traditional approaches to welfare economics. The core focus of the capability approach is improving access to the tools people use to live a fulfilling life. Hence, the approach has a strong connection to intragenerational sustainability and sustainability strategies.
Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).
Possible passages
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Thus the worth of any object which is to be acquired by our action is always conditional. Beings whose existence depends not on our will but on nature's, have nevertheless, if they are irrational beings, only a relative value as means, and are therefore called things; rational beings, on the contrary, are called persons, because their very nature points them out as ends in themselves, that is as something which must…
Immanuel Kant, Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysic of Morals
States what Capability approach is; the author is tied to Capability approach in the knowledge graph.
Now the power and resolved purpose to resist a strong but unjust opponent is called fortitude (fortitudo), and when concerned with the opponent of the moral character within us, it is virtue (virtus, fortitudo moralis). Accordingly, general deontology, in that part which brings not external, but internal, freedom under laws is the doctrine of virtue.
Immanuel Kant, The Metaphysical Elements of Ethics
States what Capability approach is; the author is tied to Capability approach in the knowledge graph.
And such an education will of itself tend to do away with the evils of the existing economic situation. In the degree in which men have an active concern in the ends that control their activity, their activity becomes free or voluntary and loses its externally enforced and servile quality, even though the physical aspect of behavior remain the same. In what is termed politics, democratic social organization makes…
John Dewey, Democracy and Education
States what Capability approach is.
Philosophers who discussed Capability approach
Related ideas
- Ethnicity
- Instrumental and intrinsic value
- Game theory
- Immanuel Kant
- Pleasure
- Happiness
- Paradigm
- Love
- Literacy
- Materialism
- Social relation
- Economic policy
- Freedom of speech
- Species
- Obligation
- Well-being
- Property
- Welfare spending
- Sexual orientation
- Empathy
- Right to property
- Utilitarianism
- Freedom of assembly
- Martha Nussbaum
Place in the tradition
Part of Virtue ethics.