Turning Sen's capability approach operative thanks to Aristotle's ideas
Resumen: The capabilities approaches (CA) have been originated in the work of the economist Amartya Sen on inequality. Sen, born in India in 1933, is currently Emeritus Professor of Harvard University. He is still active in teaching and researching. He was always concerned with the problem of soc...
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Pontificia Universidad Católica Argentina. Facultad de Filosofía y Letras
2019
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Acceso en línea: | https://repositorio.uca.edu.ar/handle/123456789/3604 |
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Universidad Católica Argentina |
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Repositorio Institucional de la Universidad Católica Argentina (UCA) |
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Inglés |
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Aristóteles, 384-322 a. C. Sen, Amartya DESIGUALDAD SOCIAL LIBERTAD FILOSOFIA POLITICA FILOSOFIA ECONOMICA |
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Aristóteles, 384-322 a. C. Sen, Amartya DESIGUALDAD SOCIAL LIBERTAD FILOSOFIA POLITICA FILOSOFIA ECONOMICA Crespo, Ricardo Turning Sen's capability approach operative thanks to Aristotle's ideas |
topic_facet |
Aristóteles, 384-322 a. C. Sen, Amartya DESIGUALDAD SOCIAL LIBERTAD FILOSOFIA POLITICA FILOSOFIA ECONOMICA |
description |
Resumen: The capabilities approaches (CA) have been originated in the work of the
economist Amartya Sen on inequality. Sen, born in India in 1933, is currently
Emeritus Professor of Harvard University. He is still active in teaching and
researching. He was always concerned with the problem of social justice,
poverty and equality. This has led him to hold a broad notion and an ethical
view of economics.
Driven by these concerns, Sen tackled the topics of inequality and quality of
life, and during the 80s he formulated the capability approach. Sen’s capability
approach is a broad normative framework for the evaluation and assessment
of individual well-being, development of countries, present socio-economic
situation and social arrangements in order to implement right policies.
For Sen, human agency is a crucial element of human well-being in a broad
sense that goes beyond utility and that is related to the quality of life. Human
agency entails freedom: Freedoms are capabilities of performing some actions,
called by him “functionings”. These capabilities and functionings compose a
good life. Capabilities, for Sen, are a better way of assessing well-being than
utility or income (for a good survey, see e.g., Sen 1993 and Ingrid Robeyns
2005).
Nobody would deny that this is good news. A concern among scholars,
however, has arisen about the operationality of Sen’s CA. Traits as the incommensurability of capabilities and their ambiguous definition (see Sen 1999: 76-
7) are sufficient reasons for this concern. As Robert Sugden affirms, “it is natural to ask how far Sen’s framework is operational” (1993: 1953). Some arguments for this lack of operationality might be summarized in terms of the
inexact or “vague” character of practical reason, the capacity that lies behind
the whole CA (on the central role of practical reason within the CA see
Nussbaum 1987: 47 and 1995a).
For Sen, indeed, the capabilities’s ambiguity, both in their definition and in
their election, is a positive feature because it reflects and respects the freedom
and the differences of the persons (1993: 33-34): for him, asserting ambiguity and fuzziness is not a weakness but a strength. |
format |
Artículo |
author |
Crespo, Ricardo |
author_facet |
Crespo, Ricardo |
author_sort |
Crespo, Ricardo |
title |
Turning Sen's capability approach operative thanks to Aristotle's ideas |
title_short |
Turning Sen's capability approach operative thanks to Aristotle's ideas |
title_full |
Turning Sen's capability approach operative thanks to Aristotle's ideas |
title_fullStr |
Turning Sen's capability approach operative thanks to Aristotle's ideas |
title_full_unstemmed |
Turning Sen's capability approach operative thanks to Aristotle's ideas |
title_sort |
turning sen's capability approach operative thanks to aristotle's ideas |
publisher |
Pontificia Universidad Católica Argentina. Facultad de Filosofía y Letras |
publishDate |
2019 |
url |
https://repositorio.uca.edu.ar/handle/123456789/3604 |
work_keys_str_mv |
AT cresporicardo turningsenscapabilityapproachoperativethankstoaristotlesideas |
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Repositorios |
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