Naslov
The Capability Approach and the Good Life

Autori
Gavran Miloš, Ana

Vrsta, podvrsta i kategorija rada
Sažeci sa skupova, neobjavljeni rad, znanstveni

Skup
Summer School, Equality and Citizenship

Mjesto i datum
Rijeka, Hrvatska, 12.06.2021. - 16.06.2021

Vrsta sudjelovanja
Predavanje

Vrsta recenzije
Nije recenziran

Ključne riječi
capabilitarianism, well-being, contextualism, pluralism, hybrid account

Sažetak
Philosophers debating over well-being start from the big questions: What makes a good life for a person living it? What is in the best interest of a person? What is good for a person? What is considered as a life high in well-being? In answering these questions they typically trying to figure out which thing(s) are ultimately good or bad for us, that is, what are the essential constituents of well-being. Standard philosophical debate distinguishes between three main positions, famously introduced by Derek Parfit in his discussion of “what makes someone’s life go best“ (Parfit 1984: 493). Parfit suggests that there are three possible answers and formulates them as three theories about self-interest: hedonism, desire-fulfilment theory and objective list theories. Although, philosophers so far developed different and to some extant more accurate classifications, what is common to all of them is that they aim to provide a single, monistic, highly abstract and general account of well-being. It has been argued recently that the problem with such attempts is that they are not useful for any other concerns besides strictly philosophical competition over the correctness of one of high well-being theories (Alexandrova 2017, Robeyns 2017, 2020). Namely, well- being is not discussed only in philosophy. Social scientists are trying to measure well-being, while policy makers are trying to figure out proper ways of promoting well-being. In order to be more useful for interdisciplinary research, philosophers should give up on high-level theories and turn to contextualist understanding of well-being (Alexandrova 2017, Robeyns 2020). In this paper I focus on one of the most promising contextualist well-being accounts developed by Robeyns within capabilitarian framework. Robeyns argues that the advantages of the capabilitarian account of well- being are that it is sensitive to different contexts, allows for pluralism and multidimensionality, but also provides useful guidance for social scientists and policy makers. In spite of its attractiveness, I discuss certain problems with Robeyns’ account, namely that as a philosophical theory it lacks normative and descriptive adequacy. Therefore, I propose a different capabilitarian account of well-being, based on Nussbaum’s list of capabilities that keeps advantages of Robeyns’ account but is also normatively and descriptively adequate. The structure of the paper is the following: first I briefly introduce philosophical debate of well- being and standard positions ; next I provide Alexandrova’s and Robeyns’ critique of the standard well- being theories in philosophy. In the third part I present Robeyns’ version of capabilitarian account of well-being and raise some objections against. In the final part I offer a sketch of a more substantive capabilitarian account of well-being.

Izvorni jezik
Engleski

Znanstvena područja
Filozofija

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