![]() ![]() The first concerns the respect (in economists’ language, the space) in which people should be accounted equal or unequal: what is the right type of advantage to examine when equality and its absence are at issue? Representative answers to this first question are: utility (some economists and some philosophers), income (other economists and no philosophers), primary goods (John Rawls), and resources, capaciously conceived (Ronald Dworkin). Two questions arise with regard to the measurement of inequality. Finally, I defend Sen against some scepticism about the practical relevance of his work that has recently been expressed by André Béteille. I then take up one of the book’s sub-themes, regarding the connection or lack of it between freedom and control. ![]() In the present appreciation, I first describe the leading idea-‘capability’-which Sen has brought to this field of discourse. The book provides not only an exhilarating tour d’horizon of ideas developed at greater ease elsewhere, but also fresh nuances that are designed to accommodate and deflect some of the extensive criticism and comment which Sen’s magnetic work has attracted. This short work exhibits (often, perforce, only in fleeting cameo) the current state of Amartya Sen’s decades-long engagement with problems of equality and its absence. ![]()
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