Capability Approach of Amartya Sen: An Incentive to Humanization

The capability approach is on of Amartya Sen’s most significant contributions to philosophy and social sciences. His writings on the capability approach are not only of theoretical interest on their own, but also provide concepts used in his work on social choice, freedoms, and development. Moreover, the capability has practical relevance for policy design and assessment. The Capability Approach attempts to address various concerns that Sen had about contemporary approaches to the evaluation of well-being, namely: Individuals can differ greatly in their abilities to convert the same resources into valuable functionings (‘beings’ and ‘doings’). People can internalize the harshness of their circumstances so that they do not desire what they can never expect to achieve. Whether or not people take up the options they have, the fact that they do have valuable options is significant. Reality is complicated and evaluation should reflect that complexity rather than take a short-cut by excluding all sorts of information from consideration in advance