著者

上山 敬輔

出版者

鹿児島国際大学

雑誌

地域経済政策研究 (ISSN:13458795)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.4, pp.169-186, 2004-03-31

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Amartya Sen has been proposing the capability approach as a new method of evaluating person's well-being. The capability approach differs from the utility-based approach and the commodity-based approach in the basic information for evaluating person's well-being. The capability approach focuses on various ways of life that he or she values on reason. Sen expresses various ways of life that he or she achieves or can achieve as a functioning and a set of those various functionings as a capability. The capability approach bases on Sen's recognition that well-being is concerned with his or her various ways of life that he or she values. Sen himself represents his recognition of well-being as a 'straightforward fact'. Although Sen's expression of 'straightforward fact' gives a person the impression that his recognition of well-being was obtained by intuition, that recognition originates from his pluralistic perspective of human behavior. Sen thinks that each human being has plural idea that governs personal behavior and that plural idea includes the idea of various ways of life that he or she has reason to value in terms of well-being. Therefore Sen recognizes that various ways of life that he or she values in terms of well-being are very important for person's well-being. Two chief purposes of this paper are to illuminate Sen's plural view of humanity by examining his criticism to the modern economics perspective of human behavior and clarify the relationship between the capability approach and Sen's view of humanity.