Responsibility for Each Other's Freedom: Agency as the Source of Collective Capability

This paper tries to extend Sen's capability approach by introducing the issues of personal responsibility and collective capability, in addition to those of individual capability and collective responsibility. In addressing the issue of the subject's responsibility, we turn to the phenomenological tradition. This approach uses the concept of the person rather than that of the individual. In the analytical philosophy tradition the individual is defined by a set of freedoms and capabilities. The phenomenological approach, in contrast, views the person as embedded in a network of social relationships that determine a set of rights and obligations. In most situations, personal obligations have to be satisfied before the person can move on to satisfy his/her rights and freedoms. This means that freedom is viewed as being derived from responsibility, thus inversing the order of the capability approach. The subject's responsibility becomes fundamental, and a part of the 'richness' of the person. Responsibility expresses the capability to feel and be responsible, not only ex-post (i.e. once freedom has been exercised), but also ex-ante, by the capacity to exercise self-constraint on a voluntary basis in order to satisfy one's obligations towards others. Within his or her structure of capabilities, the person has to manage the twofold interacting sets of freedoms and responsibilities during the decision-making process. When we consider the person's agency, introducing responsibility leads, via commitment and social interactions, to a stronger vision of agency. However, this vision, which includes responsibility and social interactions, generates a collective capability that can be represented by a structure composed of the various personal capability structures.