Jean-Luc Dubois

Responsibility for Each Other's Freedom: Agency as the Source of Collective Capability

This paper tries to extend Sens capability approach by introducing the issues of personal responsibility and collective capability, in addition to those of individual capability and collective responsibility. In addressing the issue of the subjects responsibility, we turn to the phenomenological tradition. This approach uses the concept of the person rather than that of the individual. In the analytical philosophy tradition the individual is defined by a set of freedoms and capabilities. The phenomenological approach, in contrast, views the person as embedded in a network of social relationships that determine a set of rights and obligations. In most situations, personal obligations have to be satisfied before the person can move on to satisfy his/her rights and freedoms. This means that freedom is viewed as being derived from responsibility, thus inversing the order of the capability approach. The subjects responsibility becomes fundamental, and a part of the ‘richness’ of the person. Responsibility expresses the capability to feel and be responsible, not only ex‐post (i.e. once freedom has been exercised), but also ex‐ante, by the capacity to exercise self‐constraint on a voluntary basis in order to satisfy ones obligations towards others. Within his or her structure of capabilities, the person has to manage the twofold interacting sets of freedoms and responsibilities during the decision‐making process. When we consider the persons agency, introducing responsibility leads, via commitment and social interactions, to a stronger vision of agency. However, this vision, which includes responsibility and social interactions, generates a collective capability that can be represented by a structure composed of the various personal capability structures.

Sustainable Human Development and the Capability Approach: Integrating Environment, Responsibility and Collective Agency

The purpose of this paper is to address three major shortcomings of Sens capability approach with regard to sustainability: (i) First, the weakness of the ecological dimension of the capability framework. This can be overcome by devising a place where it is possible to relate the intrinsic and instrumental values of Nature; (ii) Second, the issue of responsibility, which is only considered from a consequentialist viewpoint by Sen (i.e. ex-post responsibility). Such a restrictive view can be extended by adding the ex-ante dimension of responsibility; (iii) Third, the relationship between the individual and collective levels. This can be overcome by introducing the idea of collective agency. Overcoming these limitations makes it possible to fully integrate the ecological dimension into an extended vision of the capability approach which makes it consistent with strong sustainability, and which leads to a new definition of the agent as a responsible person acting so as to generate sustainable human development.