While I wouldn’t necessarily endorse all of it, it’s an interesting read. As I understand it, the capability approach advocates a certain way of drawing lines in practical policy-making. Its emphases are on
‘functionings’ (‘beings’ and ‘doings’)
various states of human beings and activities that a person can undertake
example beings: …being well-nourished, being undernourished, being housed in a pleasantly warm but not excessively hot house, being educated, being illiterate, being part of a supportive social network, being part of a criminal network, and being depressed
example doings: …travelling, caring for a child, voting in an election, taking part in a debate, taking drugs, killing animals, eating animals, consuming lots of fuel in order to heat one’s house, and donating money to charity
‘capabilities’
a person’s real freedoms or opportunities to achieve functionings
Here’s a passage which we can hold alongside the premise of the original post
The ends of well-being freedom, justice, and development should be conceptualized in terms of people’s capabilities. Moreover, what is relevant is not only which opportunities are open to me each by themselves, hence in a piecemeal way, but rather which combinations or sets of potential functionings are open to me.
For example, suppose I am a low-skilled poor single parent who lives in a society without decent social provisions. Take the following functionings: (1) to hold a job...to properly feed myself and my family; (2) to care for my children at home and give them all the attention, care and supervision they need. … (1) and (2) are opportunities open to me, but they are not both together open to me… forced to make some hard, perhaps even tragic choices between two functionings which both reflect basic needs and basic moral duties?
[emphases in source]
Although that summary of the approach and the excerpt I’ve copied don’t articulate this ‘success as enemy of freedom’ idea, I wonder if it would be helpful to consider the idea with the lens of the capability approach? There’s a certain paradoxical symmetry of the examples, which I think is what the OP is drawing attention to. The challenge would be to draw out whether the mechanism is societal or part of human nature or some combination thereof or (...) and what measures we might take (individually or collectively) to mitigate it!
This resonated a lot with me! (And I’m far from as successful as I would ‘like’ to be—or would I??? :angst:)
Speculative and fuzzy comparison-drawing
I was reminded, I’m not sure exactly why, of this interesting entry I recently came across (I recall I was led there by a link buried in a comment in Slate Star Codex somewhere...) https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/capability-approach/
While I wouldn’t necessarily endorse all of it, it’s an interesting read. As I understand it, the capability approach advocates a certain way of drawing lines in practical policy-making. Its emphases are on
‘functionings’ (‘beings’ and ‘doings’)
‘capabilities’
Here’s a passage which we can hold alongside the premise of the original post
[emphases in source]
Although that summary of the approach and the excerpt I’ve copied don’t articulate this ‘success as enemy of freedom’ idea, I wonder if it would be helpful to consider the idea with the lens of the capability approach? There’s a certain paradoxical symmetry of the examples, which I think is what the OP is drawing attention to. The challenge would be to draw out whether the mechanism is societal or part of human nature or some combination thereof or (...) and what measures we might take (individually or collectively) to mitigate it!