Desai recommended focusing on different criteria of the sort first proposed by Amartya Sen, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in economic science in 1998. "Don't think about just food, but think about what you want people to be able to do in life," Desai said. "And if they can't do that, you call them poor."
Sen's idea, Desai said, found itself somewhere in between utilitarianism and Aristotelian philosophy. For those who may have forgotten their first-year philosophy, utilitarians were interested in maximizing the total well-being across society as a whole. "The greatest happiness of the greatest number," said the 18th-century philosopher Jeremy Bentham, a founder of utilitarianism. Although money is by no means the only way to measure well-being, it is one of the easiest, and therefore has often been favored by utilitarians.
Aristotle, by contrast, conjectured that an individual had to realize his potential to attain the highest levels of happiness. Sen did not ask that poverty be measured solely by income or solely by the fulfillment of potential but rather the capability to participate normally in life.
But what does leading a normal life mean? "In some communities, if you don't have television you may be isolated or excluded, because you can't have a conversation with your neighbors," said Desai. "You may not need a television in India, but you might need one in America. Can you have a full life as a member of the community? You really have to define what is essential."
Cohen of Oxford carried Sen's notion one step further. A person's well-being, he said, depends not only on one's own endowment of resources or abilities but also on one's environment. For example, it is better to live in an area free of malaria, "but that isn't a matter of capability; it's given to you by nature or by policy."
RSS