Personhood and Human Richness: Good and Well-Being in the Capability Approach and Beyond

Abstract

This paper aims at developing the Capability Approach's (CA) underlying philosophical anthropology and ethics by focusing on the work of its major exponents, Amartya Sen and Martha Nussbaum. I first discuss CA's critique of happiness as subjective well-being and defend the idea of ‘flourishing’ which ultimately refers to the Aristotelian concept of eudaimonia. I then focus on the notions of ‘good’ and ‘well-being’ and address the problem of the compatibility between a substantive notion of the Good (expressed through universal moral values) and individual preferences. I thus tackle the issue of adaptive preferences (which is investigated both from a methodological and an ethical perspective) and suggest that the process of adaptation should be thought in the dynamic frame of the constitution of the self. Therefore, in the second half of the paper I investigate the CA's idea of personhood and focus on some important assumptions behind its underlying anthropological model – above all the notion of ‘human richness’. As a result, I first point out the dynamic dimension of personhood, according to which individuals are ‘becoming themselves’ in search of self-realisation and construction of their identities. Second, I highlight its relational dimension, according to which every one is the expression of the anthropological richness and at the same time represents the highest possibility of richness for every other one.