Capabilities, Freedom and Sufficiency

Abstract

This chapter utilizes the accounts of fundamental interests, basic rights and free rational agency from the previous chapters to arrive at a republican principle of social justice, which claims that a just society is a society in which every person enjoys the conditions to realize her fundamental interests and exercise her agency freely and autonomously. Further, it is argued that defining social justice in this way prescribes a sufficientarian distribution of goods and capabilities, namely one in which the conditions of non-domination and non-alienation are fulfilled. Instead of focusing on an outcome of substantial equality with respect to a (set of) good(s) X, then, the principle of justice presented here concentrates on instances of relative deprivation and the nature of social relationships, aiming to protect each and every person from the agency-hampering effects of misrecognition, deprivation and alienation. In order to index instances of social disadvantage the chapter uses Sen’s capability theory and defends this choice against other possible currencies of justice.