3.7: Which notion of wellbeing is used in the capability approach?

The capability approach is closely related to notions of wellbeing and the quality of life. Sometimes it is assumed that the capability approach is a theory of wellbeing, which cannot be quite right since the capability approach can be used for many purposes, such as the construction of a theory of justice, poverty measurement or policy evaluation. Yet on the other hand, with its proposition that interpersonal comparisons be made in terms of functionings and/or capabilities, the capability approach is clearly also involved in offering us an account of wellbeing (Sen 1984c, 1985c, 2009a; Alkire 2016; Qizilbash 2013). But what, exactly, is the nature of the account of wellbeing in the capability approach? I will argue in this chapter that the more precise formulation is that the capability approach entails several slightly different accounts of wellbeing, which can be used for different purposes. Different capability theories have different purposes (module B1) and different meta-theoretical commitments (module B7), and the choices made in those modules will require different accounts of wellbeing for such capability theories.

When one looks at the accounts of wellbeing in the various disciplines in which the notion of ‘wellbeing’ plays a central role, one quickly notices that there are a range of quite different accounts proposed in different paradigms or disciplines, and that there is very limited discussion between those fields (Gasper 2010). In particular, there is surprisingly little interaction between the very large philosophical literature on wellbeing (Crisp 2013; Fletcher 2015) and the (theoretical and empirical) literature in psychology and economics, or the uses of the term wellbeing in particular fields, such as development studies or medical care. There are a few scholars who have tried to grasp this discrepancy, as well as explain why the philosophical and theoretical literatures, as well as the debates in different disciplines, are so little connected (e.g. Alexandrova 2013; Rodogno 2015b, 2015a). This is the background against which we must try to understand the place of the capability approach in thinking about wellbeing, and try to understand the accounts of wellbeing used in capability theories. I therefore believe that it is helpful first to try to grasp that scholarly context in somewhat more detail (section 3.7.1). Then we will briefly look at the standard typology of wellbeing theories (section 3.7.2), before analysing the question of which account (or rather, accounts) of wellbeing are entailed in the capability approach (section 3.7.3).

Before we start, one further clarification may be helpful. Recall that the capability approach includes a notion of achieved wellbeing (focussing on functionings) as well as a notion of wellbeing freedom, represented by one’s capability set (Sen 1985c, 1993a). The distinction between achieved wellbeing and wellbeing freedom is virtually absent from the wellbeing literature. In contemporary philosophy, most philosophical accounts focus on how well life is going for a person, hence on achieved wellbeing. But clearly, for policy purposes, we will often focus on wellbeing freedom, since other values, such as respect for personal autonomy or even human dignity, may prevent us from having a specific wellbeing outcome as a legitimate policy goal. When in the capability approach the term ‘wellbeing freedom’ is used, it refers to what philosophers elsewhere would call ‘opportunities for wellbeing’. This notion is especially relevant in moral theories where we try to balance a concern for wellbeing with a concern for individual freedom to choose: the term ‘wellbeing freedom’ tries to bring together and integrate those two values.

3.7.1 The aim and context of accounts of wellbeing

Philosophical discussions of wellbeing typically start out from a rather general definition of wellbeing, stating that wellbeing is about how well the life of a person is going for that person. The addition ‘for that person’ is important, since it means that in the philosophical literature wellbeing is generally conceived as what we could call a personal value, or a first-person value, rather than an institutional value — a value that we have to consider when we think about how to organise our collective life. While this demarcates ‘wellbeing’ from other public values such as ‘justice’ or ‘efficiency’, this is still a very general notion that can be elaborated in many different ways. Moreover, as was already mentioned, if we look at the debates in contemporary philosophy of wellbeing, we notice that they hardly relate at all to the empirical discussions in policy studies and the social sciences (with the exception of the relatively recent boom in subjective wellbeing analysis, which will be discussed in section 3.8).

Anna Alexandrova (2013) argues that the diversity in scholarship on wellbeing can be explained by the fact that the meaning of the use of the term ‘wellbeing’ differs depending on the context in which it is used. If the word ‘wellbeing’ is used by a medical doctor, or a policy maker, or a sociologist, or an adolescent reflecting on her options for her future life, they all use the term ‘wellbeing’ for different purposes and in a different context. I would like to add that, in particular, the aim or the purpose of our use of the term ‘wellbeing’ is crucial. That is, the term ‘wellbeing’ is never used in a vacuum; each use of that term plays a role in either explanatory or else normative projects. Normative projects always have a purpose, that is, something to judge, evaluate or recommend, which is precisely the choice that has to be made in module B1 in the account of the capability approach presented in chapter 2. Depending on whether we use the term ‘wellbeing’ for policy making, or for purely descriptive work, or for deciding what we owe to each other as fellow citizens, the term wellbeing will play a different function.

Most work on wellbeing in contemporary analytical philosophy is concerned with answering the question “What would be the best for someone, or would be most in this person’s interests, or would make this person’s life go, for him, as well as possible?” (Parfit 1984, 493). This is especially the case for the literature since the publication of Derek Parfit’s typology of theories of wellbeing. While Parfit’s typology is arguably crude, it has been very influential, and still serves an important function as an influential attempt that a philosopher has made to classify accounts of wellbeing.

In the next section, we will consider how (if at all) the capability approach fits into Parfit’s typology. But it is important to note that this highly abstract, very detailed and analytical strand in philosophy is only to a very limited degree concerned with (a) empirical applicability and measurement or (b) practical consequences, in the sense of action-guidance such as the establishment of normatively sound policy making or the question of which social arrangements we should want. The dominant contemporary philosophical literature on wellbeing is concerned with philosophical investigation in the sense of finding truths, and typically focussed on the entire lives of people from their own, first-person, perspective. That literature is much less concerned with wellbeing as an institutional value, with asking which account of wellbeing would be best when deciding what institutions we should implement — a question that can only be answered after taking feasibility considerations into account, or considering what would be best from the point of view of ethically sound policy making. However, as Alexandrova (2013, 311) rightly points out, “the context of an all-things-considered evaluation of life as a whole privileged by philosophers is just that: one of the many contexts in which wellbeing is in question”. Since most uses of the term ‘wellbeing’ in other debates, e.g. in applied philosophy or other disciplines, are concerned with overall evaluations of states of affairs and/or policy making, it shouldn’t surprise us that there is very little cross-fertilisation between those philosophical debates and the policy oriented and empirical literatures in other disciplines. This will have an influence on how we will, in the next section, answer the question how the capability approach fits into the standard typology of theories of wellbeing used in philosophy.

3.7.2 The standard taxonomy of philosophical wellbeing accounts

In Appendix I of his influential book Reasons and Persons, Parfit (1984, 493) suggests that we should make a distinction between three types of philosophical wellbeing theories.

On Hedonistic Theories, what would be best for someone is what would make his life happiest. On Desire-Fulfilment Theories, what would be best for someone is what, throughout this life, would best fulfil his desires. On Objective List Theories, certain things are good or bad for us, whether or not we want to have the good things, or to avoid the bad things.

In interdisciplinary conversations, hedonistic theories are today better known under the label ‘happiness theories’. Interpreted from the perspective of the capability approach, hedonistic theories (or the happiness approach) entail that the only functioning that matters is happiness. The capability approach stresses what people can do and be (module A1) and ‘happiness’ or one’s hedonic state at best refers to one aspect of one’s being, not the various aspects of what we can do. The capability approach and the happiness approach do share some common characteristics, such as the fact that both focus on what they take to be of ultimate value. Yet the two approaches have very different ideas of what that ‘ultimate value’ should be, with the happiness approach defending an exclusive choice for a mental state versus the capability approach defending the focus on a plurality of aspects of our lives. It is therefore not plausible to see the happiness approach, or hedonism, as a specific case of the capability approach. However, more can be said about the precise relation between the capability approach and hedonistic or happiness approaches, which will be done in section 3.8.

How about the desire-fulfilment theories, or the objective list theories? Can the notion of wellbeing embedded in the capability approach plausibly be understood as either of those? Let us first very briefly describe the two types of theories, and then ask how the capability approach fits in.

Desire-fulfilment theories of wellbeing claim, essentially, that wellbeing is the extent to which our desires are satisfied. These desires could be our current, unquestioned desires. In philosophy, that is a view that cannot count on many defenders, since it is very easy to think of examples of current desires that will harm us in the near future, or else desires for something that is, arguably, not good for us, such as a desire for excessive amounts of food or alcohol. Philosophers have therefore proposed more sophisticated views of desires, called ‘informed desires’ (e.g. Sumner 1996). Those are desires that meet additional conditions, and different proposals have been made for what those conditions should be. Examples of such additional constraints include not being ignorant of facts, but also not being deceived, or not suffering from mental adaptation — which ranges from having adapted one’s aspirations to one’s dire circumstances, to having adapted one’s desires to one’s extremely affluent circumstances, to a more general ‘preference adaptation’ which applies to all of us in societies with social norms and the widespread use of advertisements.

For a philosophical theory of wellbeing, which merely asks the metaphysical question what is wellbeing for the person who is living that life, and which has no consequences for the choice of social arrangements or policy making, the informed desire theory has a very important attraction: it gives the authority to decide what would make life better to the person whose wellbeing we are investigating. We also see this account of wellbeing being helpfully put to work in various other contexts. For example, if the daughter of a family-owned business has no interest at all in continuing that business, and argues that her strongest desire in life is to become a medical doctor, then her parents may, regretfully, decide that it is indeed better for her to study medicine, since that is what she really wants. They may perhaps urge her to talk to a friend who is a medical doctor to get a better understanding of what that profession entails (that is, to ‘test’ whether her preferences are properly informed). Yet in such a context, the desire-fulfilment theory of wellbeing seems apt and appropriate.

The problems with the informed desire-fulfilment theory of wellbeing are especially relevant in other contexts where an account of wellbeing is needed for policy making or social change. The most significant is that our desires are moulded, not fully informed, and subject to social norms and other forms of societal pressures and expectations. For example, critics of capitalism argue that advertisement by profit-seeking companies form our preferences, and make us want things we would be better off without. There are many subtle forms of manipulation possible. Students of marketing learn that the products put at eye-height are more often taken by customers shopping in a supermarket. At the macro-level, the culture of late-modern capitalism tells us to find happiness in material success and in trying to achieve higher status in the dominant social order. We are socialised into these patterns, often not even aware of their existence. But why would those desires give us the highest level of wellbeing? Another interesting case is the standards of beauty that women are expected to meet, which will make them more attractive and ultimately happier. Dominant norms of beauty put a huge pressure on women (and increasingly also on men), leading to anxieties, low self-esteem, and even unhealthy conditions and illnesses such as anorexia (Lavaque‐Manty 2001). What if we could ‘reset’ our cultural and social norms, which would lead to less pressure, stress and fewer anxieties? Some alternative views of living, such as those advanced by deep ecology thinkers (e.g. Naess 1973, 1984), are based on the view that with a different set of desires, and a different appreciation of certain experiences and values, we would be able to live not only in an ecologically sustainable way, but also have higher levels of wellbeing. In sum, the desire-fulfilment theory is interesting and arguably plausible at the individual level, and also at the general level as a theoretical approach to wellbeing, which can make ample use of counterfactual and hypothetical thinking and conditions. But it is much trickier to think about wellbeing from a macro or third-person perspective in the world as it is, in which we don’t have information on how each person’s preferences have been formed and influenced.

How does the objective list theory fare? Objective list theories are accounts of wellbeing that list items that make our lives better, independent of our own view on this. The claim of objective list theories is that there is an irreducible plurality of issues that make up wellbeing; wellbeing is plural and cannot be reduced to a single thing. Secondly, those items are objectively good for us, whether or not we attach any value to (or desire) those items. Hence items such as being healthy, or having friends, or feeling well, are all good for us, whether we personally value them or not.

What are some of the main strengths and weaknesses of the objective list theories? Objective list theories are generally criticised for not respecting people’s views about their own lives, and hence taking away the authority to decide the quality of those lives from the agents leading them: in other words, for being paternalistic. Who is to decide that, say, social relationships are good for us? Now, this seems a very valid critique if we use an objective list theory for purely descriptive and first-person truth-seeking purposes, as the vast literature in philosophy does. But if one uses accounts of wellbeing for policy or political purposes, the public nature of the dimensions of wellbeing is rather important. This relates to what political philosophers have called ‘the publicity criterion’: if wellbeing is used for purposes of institutional design or policy making, those principles used need to be capable of being known by all to be satisfied in society (Rawls 2009; Anderson 2010, 85).

Indeed, this directly relates to an advantage of objective list theories: many of the items that have been proposed by such theories have been translated into specific indicators such as health or social policy, or else overall assessments have been made that can be used for an entire population. The long-standing literature on social indicators can be situated in this tradition (Boelhouwer and Stoop 1999; Boelhouwer 2002; Hagerty et al. 2001).

3.7.3 The accounts of wellbeing in the capability approach

So how does the capability approach fit in this standard taxonomy? The capability approach is often categorised as being an objective list theory, since functionings and capabilities are plural and the selection of dimensions gives us a list of items which are judged to be valuable for persons. However, in my view there is not merely one wellbeing account in the capability approach, but several wellbeing accounts.

So why is there not one, but several accounts of wellbeing in the capability literature? As was mentioned in the introduction to this section, the reason is that there are a variety of capability theories in the general capability literature, and those theories need different accounts of wellbeing. If a capability theory is used for a first-person perspective, for example by an adolescent contemplating what to do with her life, she may ask herself what she really wants: to study hard and work hard and become a medical doctor? Or does she have a stronger desire to build a family and search for a job that makes it possible to spend enough time with her children? Does she want to devote her life to fighting for a good cause? In this personal deliberation, the account of wellbeing she then uses can be seen as a desire-fulfilment account in which the desires all refer to functionings.

In the design of institutions, there is also often implicitly a desire-fulfilment account, by trying to create valuable options (capabilities) for citizens, but by not forcing them into those outcomes (functionings). But policy making can’t be done by trying to enlarge a non-specific general account of freedom to realise one’s desires: what would that look like? In policy making, we often assume that what we owe to each other are specific freedoms, not a general vague notion of overall freedom (Anderson 2000b). Therefore, at the policy level we can often see that the implicit account of wellbeing is desire-fulfilment, whereby it is assumed that the desires refer to particular functionings (such as being able to enjoy higher education or leisure activities in green spaces in cities), or, alternatively, policies provide the resources (money, and sometimes time) that are inputs for a wide range of desires that people may have.

If a capability theory is made for macro-level poverty analysis, then the researchers will select a number of functionings that they have reason to believe are good for people, such as their health, educational outcomes, and the kind of shelter in which they can live. The notion of achieved wellbeing entailed in this normative exercise is an objectively good account, although one could also argue that one has reason to assume that these are dimensions of the quality of life that people would want for themselves (hence their desires) and that, given that one is working with very large numbers, it is a safe assumption to proceed this way.

There are at least two interesting things to notice. First, for policy making we often have to choose either an approach that uses resources as a proxy for wellbeing (although this cannot account for differences in conversion factors between people) or else policy makers will try to provide a range of options to us, where ideally the policy maker assumes that these options are things that many people want. Second, the often-heard view that the account of wellbeing given by the capability approach is an objective list theory doesn’t seem to be true. Rather, depending on the kind of capability theory one is pursuing (in particular, the choice in B1) it is more accurate to see this as a desire-fulfilment or an objective list account.