The Anthropologies of Catholic Social Thought and the Capability Approach

Amartya Sen’s capability approach is designed to be capacious. It can contain practices and interventions that are situated in diverse models of reasoning about justice. This inclusivity is the point: Sen’s approach is by way of prioritizing action rather than perfecting the idea of the institution and its principles. Nevertheless, it still operates in relation to some moral expectations: that the response to injustice should shape action, that humans should be free to choose lives they have reason to value, and that it is meaningful to talk about injustice at all. There may, then, be an implicit philosophical anthropology at play in the capability approach. For those seeking to use this approach as a vehicle for engaging in social, political, and economic change, uncovering such hidden commitments is crucial. What we will discover is a surprising congruence with Catholic Social Thought, rooted in the relational nature of human life understood theologically, where the individual is prized as a constitutive part of the political whole and where public reason itself plays a role in nourishing visions of the good life.