Using Final Ends for the Sake of Better Policy-Making

This paper argues that in order responsibly to make and to evaluate public policies, including development policies, we should think in terms of final ends. This means going beyond simply listing the important goods (or dimensions of goodness or well-being) that we are about by laying out, as best we can, which of them we seek for the sake of which. The paper analyses what it is to seek something for the sake of something else, and thereby the idea of a final end, sought for its own sake, and distinguishes that idea from that of intrinsic (unconditional) goodness. It then illustrates the deliberative power of thinking in terms of final ends in three disparate development-related contexts: that of developing an overall, capabilities-based indicator of well-being; that of project evaluation; and that of addressing a broad policy issue. Reasonable debate about what is to be sought for the sake of what is possible. Only if we attempt to settle what is to be sought for the sake of what do we begin to access the rich information latent in multidimensional accounts of well-being or the good.