Justiça e liberdades: a abordagem das capacidades públicas

Abstract

Amartya Sen criticizes the notions of contractualist justice. According to Sen, contractualists have theories of justice that would be primarily a priori “ideal" of justice. Such model aims at guaranteeing perfectly fair institutions. Sen states that the most appropriate for theories of justice would be the comparative method that makes analyzes of the different ways of life that real people can request. The focus is the concept of capabilities: the ability of persons to accomplish things that believes are fundamental to them. More important than the culmination of the goal is the opportunity to choice between alternatives, and have the liberty to decide. The problem in Sen's theory is that it does not set a limit on which institutional policies for capacity are possible to implement. That is why I set out the idea of public capacities, which would be the only ones that a State would be interested in providing to their citizens, increasing their possibilities and their substantial liberties. The improvement of the other capacities would be to individuals to provide themselves.