Identifying and promoting ‘valuable’ capabilities: supplementing the

democratic process as structure for development policies

Séverine Deneulin1

Seminar on Social Capital, Poverty and Development

Von Hugel Institute, St Edmund’s College
20th November 2001

Preliminary Draft

1. Introduction

In Sen’s capability approach to development, the aim of development policies is to

increase human well-being seen in terms of a various set of opportunities for functionings,
such as the capability to be healthy, the capability to read and write, the capability to
participate in the life of one’s community, etc.2 Conceiving well-being in a multidimensional
way constitutes one of the core aspects of Sen’s capability approach. Human well-being is
seen as a “constitutive plurality [of capabilities]”, which shows “diverse aspects that
supplement one another without supplanting each other.”3 Sen repeatedly insists that one
should not try to define the valuable capabilities that constitute this multi-dimensional view of
well-being.4 He asserts that the capability approach to development only “specifies a space in
which evaluation is to take place, rather than proposing one particular formula for
evaluation,”5 and he emphasises that the capability approach should remain “inescapably
pluralist”.6
The aim of development policies is to promote “the real freedoms that the citizens
enjoy to pursue the objectives they have reason to value.”7 If “poverty is ultimately a matter
of ‘capability deprivation’”,8 i.e. a restriction on the “choices people have to lead valuable and
valued lives”, then poverty reduction policies should be a matter of expanding those choices
that people have to lead valuable lives, well beyond the freedoms from hunger or from
diseases: “This broader and more foundational view of poverty has to be kept in view while
concentrating on the deprivation of such capabilities as the freedom to lead normal spans of
life (undiminished by premature mortality), or the freedom to read or write (without being
constrained by illiteracy).”9
The privileged way of deciding what capabilities are valuable is through democratic
principles that reflect the underlying social values and concerns of a society. The public
debate is the way through which, in Sen’s capability approach, the freedom of people to live

1
St Antony’s College, University of Oxford, and Queen Elisabeth House, International Development Centre, 21
St Giles, Oxford OX1 3LA, England. E-mail: severine.deneulin@qeh.ox.ac.uk. I thank Flavio Comim for his
insightful comments on a preliminary draft. I am also grateful to David Wiggins and Sabina Alkire for very
helpful discussions.
2
See for example Sen (1980, 1985, 1992, 1993, 1999).
3
Sen (1992:39).
4
“The evaluation of capabilities does not have to be based upon a particular comprehensive conception that
orders ways of life.” [Sen (1992:83)].
5
Sen (1988:18).
6
Sen (1999:77).
7
Dreze and Sen (1995:11).
8
Ibid.
9
Ibid.
the life they value is taken into account.10 Failing to take into account the will of the people is
the door open to autocratic and oppressive governments.

Yet, the praise that is given, in all its due, to democratic principles structuring the
making of public policies, is not without questions. People may not always take decisions
towards their own good and the good of others.11 And the emphasis that Sen puts on the
public debate as a way of deciding what is valuable and what is not shows many resemblances
with the preference approach that Sen’s writings have so long criticized. For example, if we
have to choose between “an economically poor community with breathtaking landscapes and
a moderately prosperous community blanketed with unsightly features and smokestacks, what
is more valuable?”12 Natural beauty or material prosperity? Sen would answer that the
decision of what is more valuable depends on the underlying social concerns and values of the
society in which that decision is being made. But if the society chooses economic prosperity
with environmental destruction, can that choice be accepted on the ground that it reflects the
underlying values of a particular society at a particular time? Referring to the choice between
cultural tradition and poverty and modernity and material prosperity, Sen writes: “If a
traditional way of life has to be sacrificed to escape grinding poverty or minuscule longevity,
then it is the people directly involved who must have the opportunity to participate in
deciding what should be chosen.”13 But one can wonder whether the people directly involved
will always make the decision that is best for them. If the majority ‘prefers’ material
prosperity to cultural identity, is that decision legitimate because it reflects the preferences of
the majority of people? As well, in today’s structures of inequality, one must also ask what
margins people have for ‘free’ decisions.14 If development policies want to be participatory,
not to be imposed from the outside, and take into account people’s agencies, should
development policies be left only to people’s agencies? How to deal with conflicting
decisions that might arise?

To the valuational problem involved in Sen’s capability approach, one might reply
that Nussbaum’s treatment of the capability approach somehow managed to solve Sen’s
problem, through identifying a list of ten valuable capabilities that any government should
promote: the capability to live a life of normal length and not dying prematurely, the
capability to be healthy, nourished, sheltered, to move, capability to avoid avoidable
sufferings, the capability to move freely, to live in a secure environment, free of domestic
violence, the capability of concern for natural environment, the capability to reason and to
think in a way informed by an adequate education, capability to participate in political
choices.15
Yet, even if one accepts her enterprise to build such a conception of the human good,
her treatment of the capability approach does not solve the valuation problem. She underlines
that the components of her list are irreducible to another (it is not a question of furthering one
component while damaging another), that there is no priority (each component is equally

10
See for example Sen (1999: chapter 6).
11
See for example Raz (1994:chapter 4) who discusses the failures of preference-based democracy, because it
ignores the reasons that give rise to people’s decisions. For the need for reason-based public decisions and a
substantive account of the democratic process (i.e. the legitimacy of a decision depends on the goodness of the
outcome rather than the respect of the procedure), see also Bohman (1996), Cohen (1998), Estlund (1997) and
Richardson (2002).
12
Lukes (1997:184).
13
Sen (1999:31).
14
Unesco (2000:34). See for example Bohman (1996: chapter 2, 1997) and Young (2000) for a discussion on
how social inequalities undermine the deliberative process.
15
Nussbaum (2000a: 78-80).
important). But as the fulfilment of those capabilities require resources, and as resources are
scarce, choices will have to be made as to what component of her list of valuable capabilities
should be prioritised. And towards which valuable capabilities resources will need to be
directed? How should economic policies be designed so that those valuable capabilities can
be promoted? Nussbaum does not seem to offer an answer to the problem.16

How should we make choices given the plurality of the components, and the scarcity
of resources? How should we deal with the choice of valuable capabilities that public policies
should target at? This will be the object of this paper, to frame a procedure to identify and
promote valuable capabilities at the macro-policy level, respecting people’s freedom and
aiming at the good life for all.17

The second section of the paper examines how the specific nature of the human good
calls for a specific form of practical rationality. It argues that Aristotle’s account of practical
rationality (phronêsis or practical wisdom) is an illuminating source of inspiration in order to
deal with the valuational problem in which the capability approach is trapped. The argument
will be based on two core features of Aristotle’s practical wisdom: it is oriented towards the
human good (constituted of a plurality of incommensurable components) and it takes its roots
in the particular circumstances in which the human good is being lived.
In the third section, the paper develops in more details the different steps involved in
making decisions according to the structure of practical wisdom. Practical wisdom, being a
practical rationality that aims at the good given the context, will be a rationality deeply rooted
in the perception of the context, the specification of the best ends that ought to be pursued in
that context, and the choice of the most adequate means given those most adequate ends. This
structure of practical rationality will involve particular requirements that development policy-
making needs to respect if it is to aim at providing the conditions for human beings to live
good human lives in the context in which those lives are lived.
Making decisions according to a structure, following certain requirements, throws
some doubts on whether the respect for human freedom and free choice can be retained. The
fourth section discusses how making decisions according to the requirements of practical
wisdom is fully compatible with human freedom.
The paper concludes by arguing that the requirements of practical wisdom provide
another informational basis for policy-making that supplements the informational basis of the
capabilities. That informational basis has priority over the capabilities, and therefore it is not
the central human capabilities that have to be included as constitutional guarantees (as

16
Independently of her capability approach, Nussbaum (1986:chap.10; 1990a) develops, on the basis of the
Aristotelian notion of practical wisdom, a form of public rationality that would guide public leaders in making
‘good’ decisions for people. But she did not link that form of public rationality with the pursuit of valuable
capabilities. In Nussbaum (2000c), she deals with the tragic choices that might emerge from the plurality and
incommensurability of those central human capabilities, but she does not deal with how choices between those
diverse capabilities have to be made.
17
Sen himself underlines that the language of capabilities can be (and certainly needs to be) supplemented by
rules and procedures: “The capability approach does not claim to contain an exhaustive evaluation of what is
relevant for well-being (rules and procedures can for example be as important as freedoms and outcomes).” [Sen
(1999a:77)] In a recent paper, Sen (2000a) defends a ‘broad’ consequentialist approach to decision-making
rather than a proceduralist approach, he argues that the informational basis of evaluation should be broadened (to
include for example freedoms and rights) rather than giving procedures a greater weight. He illustrates his point
by relating the story of an India epic, which shows the limits of procedural decision-making. Yet, as this paper
will try to show, a broad consequentialist approach to decision-making need not be opposed to a proceduralist
approach, but both approaches need to supplemented one another (and this will be the main characteristic of the
Aristotelian structure of decision-making that the paper develops, it combines a teleological with a deontological
approach to decision-making, or a substantive with a procedural approach).
Nussbaum suggests it) but it is the requirements of practical wisdom that have to be included
as constitutional guarantees.

2. Practical wisdom as public practical rationality

Types of public practical rationality

What ought to be done is the question that practical rationality tries to answer. Three
kinds of practical reasoning can be distinguished:18 1) ends-means reasoning, which starts
from a given end and determines the best means to achieve that given end (instrumental
rationality); 2) revealed preferences approach to determine ends; 3) reasoning about ends
(deliberative rationality). In the field of economics, policy-making has tended to be fashioned
under the two first types of practical rationality.
According to the framework of instrumental rationality, ends are pre-established and
the task of economic policies amounts to finding the most efficient means to achieve that
single pre-established end. Such an instrumental reasoning would be sufficient for decision-
making when there is a clear and well-defined goal, and where there is not significant
disagreement regarding the choices of the best means to achieve that well-defined goal.19
Structural adjustment policies in Latin America in the early eighties were an example of
economic policies taken according to the framework of instrumental rationality. There was a
clear and well-defined goal, to reduce the macro-economic unbalances of Latin American
economies, and there was, in appearance at least, significant (technical) agreement as to how
to achieve that goal. Yet, even in such a perfect context in which instrumental rationality
could apply, the framework soon proved to be largely inadequate because, by acting upon a
single well-defined end that it was necessary to achieve (to reduce macro-economic
unbalances), it failed to take into account other ends (protecting the poor) that were no less
important.20 Given public pressures, adjustment policies moved away at the end of the
eighties from an instrumental type of rationality, they reconsidered their ends, and started to
consider other means to achieve those newly established ends. Their ends were not only to re-
establish macro-economic imbalances, but as well to guarantee that other ends, not worsening
poverty, were met as well. Adjustment policies are an example of economic policies that
cannot be taken according to an instrumental rationality that takes ends as given, but crucially
need to allow a revision of their ends, and consequently of the means to achieve those ends.
Another problem with the instrumental type of rationality is that it fails to take into
account the incommensurable nature of ends. For example, if one sets poverty reduction as
the priority of economic policies, and uses income as a proxy for all the components of
poverty (such as lack of education, lack of empowerment, lack of access to basic health
services), economic policies, according to that framework, would amount to finding the best
means to increase that proxy. But, too often, rising incomes do not go along with higher
educational level or with higher access to basic health services. Failure to take into account
the plural and incommensurable nature of ends is one of the major limits of instrumental
rationality type of economic policies.21

18
Richardson (2002:115).
19
Richardson (2002:chapter 8). See also Wiggins (2000) for a discussion of technical rationality and its failure to
include deliberation about ends in the domain of environmental protection.
20
Stewart (1992, 1995).
21
See for example Anand and Ravallion (1993). Their study show that higher income does not necessarily
translate into higher health outcomes, unless economic policies tackle health as a separate issue from income
growth, and take consequently the necessary public action.
 Adjustment policies shifted in the eighties because of the public pressure to include
other ends of economic policy-making: avoiding a worsening in poverty. Because the
majority of the public raised concerns of pursuing the end of reducing macro-economic
imbalances without paying attention to poverty issues, policies shifted. And we come to our
second type of public practical rationality: consulting the public opinion and implementing
policies according to people’s preferences. Given the plurality of ends that policies ought to
be pursuing, and given the vagueness of those ends (for example, even though reducing
poverty is an issue to tackle, one has to know how we should assess and measure poverty),
taking people’s views has often been a way of implementing policies. Cost-Benefit analysis is
an example to decide about what ought to be done given people’s revealed preferences
(through their willingness to pay).22 One has to note that this seems to be Amartya Sen’s
privileged way of seeing economic policies done: the public debate should decide what ought
to be done. Taking for example the case of a recent public opinion poll in the Dominican
Republic regarding the most pressing issues that the government had to deal with: 30% of the
population cited the electricity shortages as the most pressing issue, 24 % opted for the cost of
living as the most important end that economic policies should care for, 14 % opted for the
high criminality rate, 12 % considered unemployment as the most pressing issue, and 4 %
considered education as the priority of government policies.23 The main problem with such a
type of rationality is that it fails to take into account the reasons that people have for revealing
such or such most pressing issue to their eyes, that it fails to recognise that preferences might
not be good reasons to act upon. For example, the head of a poor household might say that
power cut is the major priority because it prevents him to watch daily his favourite American
soap on television. That man does not see for example that the absenteeism of his son at
school, and the lack of education control, is a major problem that will affect his son’s
education records and his chances to earn a decent living. Because majority has decided that
education is not a major issue, does that entail that the government must devote few resources
to that end? Another problem with such a type of public practical rationality is that it does not
make room for revision of ends once the end has been revealed. If for example a well-off
person expresses that insecurity and a high criminality rate is the major important issue
because her house has been robbed three times this year, and if the government has decided to
tackle the root of criminality, rising inequalities and growing exclusion, by greater
redistribution policies and heavy taxation for high income groups. Given the loss that such
policies will entail for high-income groups, that person might perhaps revise her ends, and
choose to invest instead in security systems.

Is there then a type of practical rationality that could guide economic policies while
making room for the plurality of ends, while seeing ends as good reasons for action rather
than preferences, and while allowing for those ends to be revised?
How should we make decisions then when there is no single defined end, when ends
cannot be commensurated with respect to one another, as is the case with the capability
approach? As has already been stressed earlier, human well-being is conceived as a set of a
plurality of irreducible capabilities – each capability is irreducible to another and, equally
important, a gain in one capability does not compensate for the loss of another— and is
conceived as a set of incommensurable capabilities – there does not exist any measurement

22
For the inadequacies of cost-benefit analysis as a practical rationality to guide policy decisions, see Richardson
(2000).
23
Economist Intelligence Unit (2001).
scale with respect to which the promotion or expansion of basic capabilities can be
measured.24
Given the plural and incommensurable nature of capabilities, undertaking
development policies within the capability approach is difficult within the framework of
instrumental rationality, since in order to choose the best means to achieve a given end, one
will first have to specify which end to target at, something that instrumental rationality cannot
specify. Given that capabilities are not revealed preferences but are components of what is
conceived as an objective conception of the human good, one will need a practical rationality
that takes into account that objective conception of the good. In other words, we would need
to take economic policies according to a type of practical rationality that makes room for the
plurality and incommensurability of ends, for the distinction between good reasons for action
and preferences, and for the revision of ends.

Practical wisdom as deliberative practical rationality

Both Sen and Nussbaum emphasize how the capability approach is deeply rooted in
Aristotelian ethics.25 Nussbaum took a step further than Sen by building an account of the
human good based on Aristotle’s account of the human good. Similarly to situating the human
good in terms of the exercise of a plurality of incommensurable virtues (a virtue being the
best response, the best behaviour, to an event given the circumstances in which that event
takes place), the human good is viewed as a set of plural and incommensurable capabilities (a
capability being seen as the ability to respond the most adequately to given human
experiences in the context in which those experiences take place). But in contrast to the
capability approach, Aristotle’s virtue ethics gives explicit guidelines about making choices
given the characteristics of the good that are being met. Practical wisdom, or phronêsis, is the
virtue that allows one to take the best behaviour in each situation, to discriminate between the
particularities of each situation and to identify what ought to be done in that situation in order
to lead a virtuous life.
That particular virtue of practical wisdom endows Aristotle’s virtue ethics with the
interesting characteristic of being both teleological and deontological. It is a teleological
ethics “in the sense that human flourishing constitutes the standard upon which all moral
evaluations are ultimately based.”26 Yet, insofar as actions are not judged according to their
consequences and successes in promoting human flourishing, but are judged according to
“normative principles that determine an action’s moral worth”,27 Aristotelian ethics can also
be ranged under a deontological ethics. Actions are judged in terms of human flourishing (it is
the virtuous action itself that constitutes the standard of evaluation), and in terms of certain
normative principles oriented towards human flourishing (all virtues, in order to be
undertaken, need to be taken according to the architectonic virtue of practical wisdom, which
provides a kind of ‘rule’ of conduct towards the virtuous life). Having an ethical framework
that combines features of a teleological ethics with features of a deontological ethics will
allow us to frame public policies aiming at certain ends, namely the expansion of capabilities,
while containing in themselves the procedures for choosing the relevant ends. And the

24
Commensurability can be defined as follows: two items are commensurable if there exists a single (numeric)
scale of value, according to which everything can be expressed, and that allows to measure (or commensurate)
those two items (the more an item contains of that common measure, the more value it contains). See Chang
(1997: introduction).
25
Sen (1993), Nussbaum (1988, 1993).
26
Rasmussen and Den Uyl (1991:61).
27
Ibid.
goodness of public policies will lie both in their success at securing citizens with the
conditions for dignified human lives, and in their process at succeeding that aim.
So perhaps, in following the footsteps of Aristotle’s ethics, we might hope to derive a
procedure, a type of practical rationality that will help discern what ought to be done, that will
help solve the valuational problem of the capability approach, a procedure that will give some
guidelines to the framing of economic policies, both in terms of ends and means.

Before beginning the journey on Aristotle’s footsteps, a little remark has to be made
on the nature of the body making ‘practically wise decisions’, or decisions taken according to
the procedure of phronêsis or practical wisdom. In Aristotle’s ethics, such a body is the
phronimos, the virtuous man that is able to take virtuous actions, to take the ‘right’ actions in
each specific context. In contrast, in the capability approach, the phronimos cannot be
identified as a single individual, to a kind of benevolent (paternalist) public leader taking
decisions on behalf of the people because that public leader would be practically wise. In the
capability approach, the phronimos, the man of practical wisdom, is a deliberative body that
takes decisions according to the structure of practical wisdom. As we will see, practical
wisdom contains implicit principles of decision-making that are breaking the well-known
circularity problem involved in phronêsis (in order to act virtuously one needs phronêsis, but
in order to have phronêsis, one needs to have internalised virtues).

Two main features characterise practical wisdom: the faculty to take decisions in the
realm of contingent and particular realities; and the faculty which aims at what is good for
humans. This is why phronêsis is practical wisdom, practical because it deals with what
actions are to be taken given the particular circumstances in which those actions are
undertaken, and wisdom because it is guided by an overall conception of the good, because it
deals with promoting the good in those particular circumstances. Phronêsis is thus a form of
practical rationality since it deals with what is to be done, but is a special form of practical
rationality since it is oriented towards the good, taking into account all the relevant features of
the particular circumstances in which those actions take place. 28

In Aristotelian ethics, adopting the best behaviour is not a matter of being under the
control of a science characterised by general laws but is a matter of acting in response to the
particular circumstances of each situation. Reasoning has to adapt itself to the uniqueness and
specificities of cases, because it is not possible to establish unchanging laws in decision-
making regarding human matters, the subject of human matters being the contingent.29
General principles, given their inflexibility, do no allow grasping all the complexity and
singularity of concrete situations, because actions only apply to particular cases.
That general laws will always fail in the domain of the contingent does not mean that
principles do not exist, but it means that principles have to be flexible and espouse the shapes
of the context, that is, each principle will have a different meaning and entail different
consequences according to the reality in which that principle is being applied. In the
contingencies of human matters or in the ethical domain, the only possible rule is the “rule of
Lesbos”, an instrument used in architecture in Lesbos that contained curves that could only be
28
Phronêsis has sometimes been translated by ‘prudence’, following Aquinas’s translation of phronêsis as
‘prudentia’, because it is “a knowledge of the particular, that allows to apply the principles of morality, as those
are defined by the moral conscience or synderesis, to the infinite variability of circumstances in which action is
to be undertaken.” [Aubenque (1963:27)]. I have preferred the translation of phronêsis by practical wisdom
(following Gauthier and Jolif’s translation and intellectualist interpretation) because, beyond being practical and
moved in the realm of human contingencies, phronêsis is also knowledge, knowledge of the ends (and hence the
good) that actions are pursuing.
29
NE 1104a1-10, 1107a29-33, 1137b13ff.
measured through a rule that adapted exactly to the walls.30 What the “rule of Lesbos” is all
about is not to discard the guiding role of any principle at all in the taking of decisions
regarding contingent human matters, but is to emphasise that the goodness of the choice does
not lie in its adaptation to the rule but in its adaptation to the context, which does not preclude
a choice made according to a principle. The rule of Lesbos will be exemplified in principles,
which are flexible and which are able to adapt themselves to the many situations in which it is
to be implemented.

Though practical wisdom is a practical rationality that responds to contextual features,

it includes more than context-sensitivity, since it is a particular form of practical rationality
that is guided by some knowledge of what is good within the particular situation. And in order
to know what is good within a situation, one needs to know what is good beyond that
situation.31
Practical wisdom is not knowledge of the universals, since it guides actions, but it
needs knowledge of the universal in order to know the good in the particular situation. The
knowledge of the universal needs to be there to guide actions, to recognise what is at stake in
those particular circumstances. Practical wisdom needs theoretical understanding in order to
judge the situations, but theoretical understanding has limits because it is completely silent
regarding answering the question what ought to be done given the judgement of the particular
situation. For example, as a doctor needs theoretical knowledge of what health is, so the
phronimos (the person making decisions according to practical wisdom) needs theoretical
knowledge of what the good for a human is, and without that prior knowledge of the good, he
would be like an archer who does not know which aim to target at. But a doctor who knows
the theoretical understanding that the human body functions like this or that, and who fails to
recognise what is good or brings health to the particular body of the individual patient would
not be a good doctor.32 Therefore the principles will have to include such a pre-conception of
the human good. Principles of practical wisdom exemplified in the “rule of Lesbos” will then
have the particular feature of aiming at the good given the particular circumstances in which
that good is pursued. Though Aristotle did not explicitly give any principle as to what is to be
counted as a virtuous action, the ‘rule’ or ‘principle’ according to which one has to pursue
what is good in the circumstances in which that good is being pursued can be seen as the
architectonic principle upon which Aristotle’s virtue ethics is based.

Translated into the capability approach, practical wisdom entails that we need the
‘knowledge’ of the human good in terms of human capabilities, but that knowledge (such as
Nussbaum’s list of central human capabilities) is not sufficient to guide actions in order to
promote those capabilities. We ‘know’ that the human good is multi-dimensional, that it
contains this or that capability, but how should we make choices? Therefore, undertaking
public policies within the capability approach will require a “rule of Lesbos”, an architectonic
principle upon which one will be able to design public policies that will promote those central
human capabilities.

That architectonic principle of practical wisdom contains implicit requirements that

will help further specify the procedural framework in which a practically wise decision is
being made. The next section examines further the structure of practical wisdom as found in

30
NE 1137b29-32, Ethique à Nicomaque, transl. J.Tricot, p.108, footnote 1.
31
NE 1141b14-20.
32
NE 1094a22-26, NE 1142a25-29, Metaphysics 981a15-20, NE 1104a1-10. See for example Gatens (1986),
Pellegrino and Thomasma (1981, 1993) for an application of the Aristotelian conception of practical rationality
in the domain of medical ethics.
Aristotle’s ethical and political thought. It derives from its structure requirements that the
deliberative body will need to follow through in order to make (public) ethical choices. The
section will be in great deal inspired by John Finnis’s writings on natural law. To the
architectonic principle of phronêsis (which he translated by practical reasonableness),33 he has
associated requirements. Those requirements will be adapted here to the context of public
practical rationality, linked to the promotion of central human capabilities (rather than the
pursuit of basic human goods which constitute the dimensions of human flourishing in
Finnis’s natural law theory), and linked to the steps involved in Aristotle’s initial account of
phronêsis.34

3. The structure of practical wisdom and its requirements

a) Perception

In Aristotle’s account of practical rationality, the first step of decision-making is not

the decision to undertake some action but the recognition of what is at stake in a particular
circumstance, the perception of whether some action is required or not in that circumstance.
Perception (aisthêsis) is the faculty to understand the characteristics of particular situations
and to understand what is at stake in those situations. Perception will be the way through
which the salient moral features of particular situations will be grasped, the way through
which one will come to discern what action is to be taken in order to hit the target (i.e., what
action will enhance the good human life).35

As emphasised earlier, the object of concern of this paper is not the phronimos as an
individual person but as a practically wise deliberative body. The individual phronimos
started his deliberative process towards the good life, perceiving the salient features of the
context consisted for him in distinguishing ‘what is good for him’ as an individual person,
given some knowledge he has of what a good life is. In contrast, the members of the
deliberative body, the members of the institutional or public phronimos, will not ask
themselves ‘what is good for me as an individual person’, but ‘what is good for us’, as
members of the same community. Perception, in the case of the public phronimos, will be a
matter of perceiving the salient features of a situation in order to act in terms of the ‘good for
us’ as a group of individuals living together, or of the ‘good living together’, and not just what
is ‘good for me’ as an individual, given some knowledge of what constitutes the ‘good human
life for us’ (such as Nussbaum’s central human capabilities).36 For example, one may vote
against a tax cut that would benefit oneself but that would deprive the society as a whole from
resources to help the worst off. Though it would be ‘better for me’ to vote in favour of the tax
33
He named that architectonic principle, the principle of “a rational plan of life”: “In all one’s deliberating and
acting, one ought to choose those and only those possibilities the willing of which is compatible with integral
human fulfilment.” [Finnis et al. (1987b:128), Finnis (1997:225, 1992:137).]
34
Finnis’s natural law theory has undergone many charges of conservatism, see especially Nussbaum (1998,
1999). For a discussion of how those charges are based on a misinterpretation of the fundamentals of his theory,
and for an application of Finnis’s requirements of practical reasonableness to micro-development projects, see
Alkire (2002).
35
NE 1126b2-5, NE 1109b20-23.
36
Nussbaum builds her central human capabilities following Aristotle’s ‘function argument’ – the human good is
derived on the basis of the specific function of a human being [NE 1097b33-1098a17]. That function argument is
introduced, not as way of deriving an ‘ought’ from an ‘is’ so that we would know how a human being should
behave if we knew what is the specific human nature, but the argument is introduced as a justification for what is
a good human life. Aristotle does not ask the question what is a good life for him, but what is a good life for a
human being, so that the outcome of the inquiry about the good life is something that has to be shared among all
human beings. See Nussbaum (1978:Appendix to Essay 1).
cut, it would not be as ‘good for us’, as members of a collectivity, that taxes are cut and that
less resources are available for the poor segments of that collectivity. Therefore, as members
of a collectivity, it is ‘good for us’ that all the members enjoy the same opportunities to live a
decent human life, to have access to the same central human capabilities.
The key element of perception is then the perception of what is missing from the
‘good life for us’, from the central human capabilities. The quality of the lives of people
within the particular situation will be the main contextual features in which the public
phronimos, in which the practically wise deliberative body, will implement development
policies. Perception will be a matter of discerning what is to be done within a particular
situation in order to give each human being the opportunities to exercise the capabilities that
make their lives fully human. It is a matter of discerning who is most lacking of central
human capabilities, and which central capabilities they are the most lacking (and therefore
one needs to have some knowledge about what the human good is).

To the first step of phronêsis, perception, one can derive a first specification, which
states that public policies need to be oriented towards those who fall the most short of the aim
of a ‘good’ human life, those who suffer the most from a lack of central human capabilities.
The perception of those who fall short of a good human life has sometimes been called the
principle of ‘weighted beneficence’, which holds that when promoting well-being, one should
give priority to promoting the well-being of those who are worse off:37
1. Requirement of weighted beneficence: Actions aiming at giving the opportunities
for people to exercise their central capabilities should be prioritised towards those who fall the
most short of those capabilities.

An important element of perception, which reveals the lack of central human

capabilities, will be the functionings associated with the central human capabilities, expressed
in terms of different indicators, such as infant mortality rate, illiteracy rates, nutrition
deficiency, carbon dioxide emissions, housing indicators, participation at elections, etc.38 The
public phronimos or the deliberative body will discern what is salient in the context it is
facing by looking at what central human capabilities are the most lacking, and who are
lacking the most of those capabilities. For example a public phronimos (or a deliberative
body) faces the following situation: its community faces an ethnic war between different
tribal groups, it is characterised by oppressive structures of domination and exploitation, and
is devastated by an Aids-epidemic. In order to perceive what ought to be done, in order to
understand what is at stake in the situation, the deliberative body will require some data about
how the members of its community are living: the number of refugees, the number of people
not living in their own houses, the number of orphans, infant mortality, the percentage of
people dying prematurely, literacy rates, the percentage of Aids-related deaths, the percentage
of HIV-positive people, etc. Those different statistics will help the deliberative body to
understand the situation, to decide what ought to be done.

37
Parfit (1991). One could say that this requirement recalls Rawls’s maximin principle. Yet, that requirement is
different from the well-known Rawlsian principle for two reasons: first, weighted beneficence is oriented
towards a certain conception of well-being (the aim of distributive justice is to increase people’s well-being),
while the maximin principle is not; second, weighted beneficence does not apply only to the ‘basic structure’ of
society as does maximin but applies as well to institutions outside that basic structure. See especially Murphy
(1998) for a discussion about the need to apply distributive justice outside Rawls’s basic structure.
38
Given the difficulties in getting information regarding the capability set as opposed to the observed
functionings, given that the capability set is often not directly observable in practice, one will have to rely on the
observed functionings: “Ideally, the capability approach should take note of the full extent of freedom to choose
between different functioning bundles, but limits of practicality may often force the analysis to be confined to
examining the achieved functioning bundle only.” [Sen (1992:53)]
 Yet, insofar as the deliberator body is composed of human beings, insofar as it is a
“flesh-and-blood deliberator whose judgment is the last word in reasoning”,39 a reasoning that
contains cognitive as emotional elements because human,40 the emotions naturally come to
play an important role in reasoning. The response as to what ought to be done in order to
promote the good living together is human and cannot be set in mechanical way, like a
machine would respond to some data according to some pre-programmed algorithm.
Perception does not only involve letting oneself be guided by the specificities of the context
that statistics are trying to render account, but it also involves letting oneself be guided by
one’s emotions and one’s concrete sense of humanity. The deliberator should always be aware
that numbers and dots do not take the place of the lives of men and women in all their realities
and complexities.41
Therefore, the role of emotions will play a crucial in that first requirement. Emotions,
such as the “feelings that are revealed in the self by the other’s suffering”,42 the feelings that a
person experience given the lack of central human capabilities in someone else’s life, play a
crucial element in perceiving the salient features in particular situations.43 Beyond the figures
and statistics, there are real lives, real people, that are suffering from a lack of central human
capabilities. Weighted beneficence arises from that painful emotion that someone’s life has
been harmed, an emotion that makes us aware of a person’s lack of human flourishing, that an
injustice has been done to someone’s humanity. In order to understand what is at stake, the
deliberative body will also let itself be guided by the emotions in the face of the reality of the
human lives that the data are trying to reflect. Taking the above example, the deliberative
body might not perceive that Aids is an important issue until the members of the body visit an
orphanage of children whose parents died of Aids, and let themselves be guided by emotions
that tell something about the situation that statistics cannot tell.

Obviously, the danger of the first requirement of practical wisdom is that it fails to be
impartial, failing to treat each person as equal, by giving more importance to the people who
are the most lacking of the central human capabilities. Therefore, we need an additional
requirement, one that rules out arbitrary decisions. In order to prevent arbitrary decisions, the
first requirement of practical wisdom leads to a requirement of non-arbitrariness, among the
components of the good, i.e. among the central human capabilities, and among persons.44
Policies should not favour arbitrarily one central human capability over another, and one
group over another. This means that, if all the central human capabilities cannot be promoted
at the same time, economic policies will need reasons to promote one central human
capability over another, and reasons to promote that central human capability in favour of
some groups rather than others (given the scarcity of resources, a public policy might
sometimes lead to privileging one group over another).
39
Richardson (1994:178-9).
40
NE 1139b3-5.
41
See Nussbaum (1990a, 1991, 1995).
42
Ricoeur (1992:191-2). Ricoeur links that principle of weighted beneficence, what he calls ‘solicitude’, to
moral obligations. Those emotions, those feelings at the sight of someone’s sufferings, entail a moral injunction
to put an end to those sufferings.
43
See NE 1106b21-25, Nusbaum (1978: Appendix to Essay 4, 1986:chap 10, 1990a), Sherman (1989, 1997),
Richardson (1994:185-6, 2002:225-7), for the role of emotions in perception and how those help discern the
important features of situations and what is at stake in those situations.
44
Finnis (1980:105-6) calls that requirement ‘No arbitrary preferences amongst values’: each basic human good
has to be treated as an intrinsic good, whether one prefers it or not (e.g. it is not because one prefers knowledge
to friendship that friendship is of no objective value), and ‘No arbitrary preferences amongst persons’ (1980:106-
7): basic goods are goods that any human being ought to be able to purse, this requires not only impartiality with
respect to basic goods, but also impartiality among the human subjects who partake those goods (no
discrimination with respect to race, gender, age, etc.).
 2. Requirement of non-arbitrariness: in one’s decisions, one must be able to give
reasons to justify one’s choice and one should not arbitrarily devote more resources to a
certain group of people who lack certain capabilities.

The recognition that a group is suffering from a lack of central human capabilities
triggers an obligation to respond and put an end to that lack. There is a moral obligation to
respond to the harm done to a human being, a moral obligation that stems from the political
nature of human life.45 In Aristotle’s moral and political philosophy, justice arises from the
affiliation links between people. Human beings are linked by bounds of philia (‘friendship’ or
affiliation) that makes them mutually accountable and responsible for another – the main
characteristic of friendship being the sharing of the same end and mutual well-wishing for the
friend to fulfil that end.46 The mutual benevolence, the ‘wishing-well’ for one another that
characterises ‘friends’ gives rise to mutual obligations. Justice is the respect of the mutual
standards of obligations that arise in a particular community of ‘friends’ given their mutual
concern for one another.47 In the particular community of the polis, citizens are ‘friends’ with
one another because they share the same end, the end of living a good human life together.48
Citizens of the same polis are bound by ties of ‘friendship’ which gives rise to a sense of
mutual concern for one another so that the end of their association, a good living together, can
be maintained.49 Therefore the particular role that Aristotle assigned to the polis, or the task of
political action, is to make available to each and every citizen the circumstances in which a
good human life for all can be secured. The task of public policy is to give its citizens the
opportunity to function well as human beings.50 The provision of the conditions for humans to
live a good life constitutes a moral obligation that a polis has towards its citizens. And justice
is the fulfilment of that obligation to provide the conditions for each human being to live a
good human life. This leads us to the third requirement of practical wisdom:
3. Requirement of political responsibility: the deliberative entity entitled to frame
economic policies, is responsible for expanding human capabilities.51
The requirement of political responsibility reflects the mutual obligations that human
beings (through institutions) have towards one another, in order to ensure the ‘good living
together’, in order to ensure the conditions for each human being to live a good human life.
This requirement plays a key role in economic policies, because it endows those who are
framing the policies with the responsibilities to take actions. It puts a name behind the
requirement of weighted beneficence. For example, I might agree that more resources should
be devoted to make access to basic health services available for all. But who is to make those
resources available? The requirement of political responsibility assigns to the people who

45
NE 1169b16-22, Politics 1253a1-17.
46
NE 1156a1-5, Rhetoric 1380b36-1381a2. Philia has often been translated by friendship, but our modern
conception of friendship suggests a particular intimacy that the Greek notion of philia does not suggest. It
expresses “any sense of affection, belonging to others, whether spontaneous or reflected, due to the
circumstances or to free choice. It is the social link by excellence, which maintains unity among citizens of the
same city, among companions of a group, among associates in a business.” EN, transl. J.Tricot, p.381, note 2.
See Cooper (1977, 1999), Sherman (1997).
47
NE 1159b25-7, NE 1159b29-1160a8.
48
The Aristotelian polis is not a small Ancient Greek city but whatever entity endowed with a gathering of
people that deliberates about the good in that entity, and that issues actions to ensures that all the members of the
communities can live a good life. This interpretation of the polis is based on the political nature of human life:
what constitutes the political nature of human life is not as much the belonging to a political community as the
ability to make judgements about the good, an ability based on affiliation and speech. See Miller (1995).
49
For the role of civic friendship in the promotion of human well-being, see Schwarzenbach (1996).
50
Pol. 1252a1-6, Pol. 1280b30-40, NE 1103b2-6. See Nussbaum (1990b).
51
In Finnis’s Natural Law, this principle can be found in his requirement of the common good (favouring and
fostering the common good of one’s communities).
decide about fiscal policies the task of making those resources available, bearing in mind that
the government who is granted to design fiscal policies will design policies of a certain kind
according to how I, as an individual person, feel responsible for those who lack basic health
services, and to what extent I am prepared to pay more taxes in order to ensure a capability for
health for all.

Insofar as those who are lacking of central human capabilities are not passive objects
of institutional charity but are actors of their own lives, and insofar as human agency, that is
the ability to make a choice regarding one’s own life, is considered as an important element of
the human good,52 the requirements linked to the first step of practical wisdom, perception,
need to be supplemented by another requirement recognising the agency of people.53 So, the
fourth requirement of practical wisdom will be the requirement of considering people, and
namely those who are lacking central human capabilities, as agents in their own lives, and this
leads us to a requirement of human agency or subsidiarity.54 “The principle of subsidiarity
holds that the most local agent(s) capable of making a choice should make it. [It holds] that
the most local agents whose identity and well-being will be affected by a choice and who are
capable of making it, should do so.”55
4. Requirement of agency: every decision needs to be taken by those whose identity
and well-being will be the most affected by the decision, namely those who fall most short of
central human capabilities.

b) Deliberation

Perception is not done for its own, but for the sake of the best specification of ends
that are to be pursued in particular cases, i.e. valuable capabilities. After perceiving what is at
stake in various situations and perceiving what central human capabilities are most lacking
and who is the most lacking of these, one needs to specify what ought to be done in those
situations in order to promote these central human capabilities that are lacking. Given what
has been perceived, which means should the deliberative entity choose in order to provide the
conditions for all its members to live flourishing human lives?

Aristotle’s account of practical rationality has often been conceived under the form of
a practical syllogism, where one deliberates about the means towards given ends: “We deliberate
not about ends but about what contributes to the ends (ta pros ta tele). For a doctor does not deliberate whether
he shall heal, nor an orator whether he shall convince, nor a statesman whether he shall produce law and
order.”[NE 1112b11ff.] When Aristotle writes that we can only deliberate about what contributes
to the ends, he does not mean that we deliberate only about the means with regard to some
fixed ends. Choices regarding means are linked to the underlying ends, and reciprocally,
choices regarding ends are linked to the means that achieve those ends: “The end, being what we
wish for, the things contributing to the end (ta pros to telos) what we deliberate about and choose, actions
concerning means must be according to choice and voluntary.” [NE 1113b3-5]
The original Greek term ta pros to telos does not mean that we deliberate about the
means, but about what contributes to, or what pertains to, the ends, which includes a
52
“One who is never more than a cog in big wheels turned by others is denied participation in one important
aspect of well-being.” [Finnis (1980:147)].
53
In the capability approach, the person is seen “as a doer and a judge” instead of “as a beneficiary”, see for
example Sen (1992:57, 1993:35). Agency is a central aspect of the notion of ‘capability’.
54
The principle of subsidiarity originates in Aristotle’s critique of Plato’s communism in Pol. 1261b 5-7. See
Finnis (1980:146). This requirement of subsidiarity also entails that “the proper function of association is to help
the participants in the association to help themselves” and that “larger associations should not assume functions
which can be performed efficiently by smaller associations.” [Finnis (1980: 147)]
55
Alkire (2002:160). I thank Sabina Alkire for drawing my attention on the importance of that principle.
deliberation regarding the constituents and specifications of that end as well as the means
regarding that end.56 There are two reasons for interpreting the deliberation about what
contributes to the ends as deliberation about the ends as well as about the means to achieve
those ends. First, given the plural and incommensurable nature of the ends that public policies
ought to be pursuing, those cannot be framed according to an exogenously given end. Hence
what ought to be done cannot be a matter of determining the best means in order to reach that
given end, without involving a previous reflection or deliberation about the end that one is
trying to bring about through choosing the adequate means. There is a deliberation required
about what constitutes the elements of the human good. Deliberation is a search (zetêsis), not
first a search regarding the means but a search regarding the best specification of ends.57
Second, deliberation is about ends and means because the deliberation about the good cannot
be detached from the deliberation about the feasible means regarding that good, because only
what is humanly feasible can be good: “But neither is it wish, though it seems near to it; for choice
cannot relate to impossibles, and if any one said he chose them he would be thought silly; but there may be a
wish even for impossibles, e.g. for immortality. And wish may relate to things that could in no way be brought
about by one’s own efforts; but no one chooses such things, but only the things that he thinks could be brought
about by his own efforts. Again, wish relates rather to the end, choice to what contributes to the end; for
instance, we wish to be healthy, but we choose the acts which will make us healthy, and we wish to be happy and
say we do, but we cannot well say we choose to be so; for, in general, choice seems to relate to the things that are
in our own power.” [NE 1111b20-31] Ends have to be specified and revised given the available
means. If ends appear not to be feasible given the insufficiency of means then ends are to be
revised. Insofar as we have to find ‘the easiest and best’58 means to given ends, this might
invite us to change our ends in order to find other easiest and best means. Deliberation is not a
simple linear process of choice between different means in view of unique ends, but a process
of specification of ends in view of other ends, where ends mutually adjust themselves. For
example, once someone is a doctor, he does not deliberate anymore about being a doctor or
not, but this does not mean that he only deliberates about the means for being a doctor: For
example, if a young man, inhabited by an ideal of justice in front of human sufferings, decides
to become a doctor in order to work for a medical non-governmental organisation. Once the
means have been chosen, they take the appearance of an end (this is why Aristotle says in NE
1112b11 that the doctor does not deliberate about whether to heal). But on the field, that
young man might get aware that being a doctor alleviates sufferings only in a short run and
does not serve justice in the long run, so he might decide to become a diplomat or a
politician.59 Deliberation is not a simple linear process of choice between different means in
view of unique ends, but a process of specification of ends in view of other ends, where ends
mutually adjust themselves. Deliberation is “not so much deciding from the beginning that
something matters to us, but deciding, through successive encounters with the world, in what
way it matters, at what cost, when, and towards whom.”60

To clarify how means and ends mutually adjust themselves, let us consider for
example the following economic policy. A government has decided that literacy for all is the
major goal of its government, and decides to adjust its education budget in consequence.
More funds are released to finance primary schools in rural areas and in slums and to train
new primary teachers, so that more disadvantaged children can exercise their ‘capability to
56
For how the practical syllogism is inadequate to render account of Aristotle’s conception of practical
rationality, and how deliberation is about ends as well as about means, see especially Wiggins (1980),
Richardson (1994, 2002), Sherman (1989, 1997).
57
Wiggins (1980:228).
58
NE 1112b17.
59
For an analysis of how the choice finalities and means involved in phronêsis are interwoven, see Ricoeur
(1990: 209-10).
60
Richardson (1994:87).
access knowledge’, and be more empowered to defend themselves against oppressive and
unjust structures. But once the funds are released and more primary teachers are formed, the
government realizes that disadvantaged children do not attend schools because they often
have to make up the income of their family. As well, very few primary teachers are willing to
go in those disadvantaged areas because too remote, or too dangerous. If the government
keeps allocating those funds to the initial end, such economic policy would end up being
highly inefficient, since the schools will not be much attended, and since the newly trained
teachers are likely to be concentrated in towns. Given the inefficiency of the means to pursue
that end, the government will likely have to revise its end, and to find other more efficient
means. Instead of tackling literacy, it might perhaps better start to tackle criminality in peri-
urban areas, or to tackle rural household poverty that leads to child labour.
And this leads to the fifth requirement of practical wisdom. In order to bring about the
good it pursues, an economic policy should use the most adequate means to bring the central
human capabilities about:
5. Requirement of ethical efficiency: the deliberative entity ought to choose efficient
means towards the adequate ends (i.e. towards the promotion of central human capabilities).61
(This requirement also entails that the deliberative entity will be able to revise its ends if they
do not appear feasible.)62

Finally, if the choice of ends and means are deeply intertwined, then the choice of
means has to respect the nature of the ends those means are achieving. Since an important
aspect of the human good that policies are aiming at is the incommensurable and irreducible
nature of the components of the human good, the deliberation process that aims at specifying
the most valuable capability has to respect the nature of the human good and its irreducible
aspect. This entails that a public policy cannot promote one capability, while damaging
(purposively or intentionally) another capability. If, in the above example, the government
had decided that its objective is to allocate the funds to building schools in rural areas, and in
order to motivate the teachers to go in those areas, the government would threaten them with
imprisonment and torture if they refused to teach in those areas, such a policy, though it
would have achieved its end, would have led to losses in other central human capabilities.
Though those policies sound extreme, it uses unfortunately to be a reality to violate basic
human rights in order to achieve one specific goal. For example, the adjustment policies
imposed by the IMF in the Dominican Republic led to high price increases and a significant
rise in poverty, leading to many social unrests that the government dealt with by a bloody
repression in order to comply to the objectives of reducing macro-economic imbalances.63
This leads us to the following requirement, according to which, in framing economic policies,
choosing means towards promoting a certain human capability, cannot damage another
central human capability:64

61
In Finnis (1980:111-18), this requirement has been called ‘Efficiency within reason’: bringing about good in
the world by efficient actions for their purposes (not using inefficient methods in pursuing one’s purposes, trying
to have the lesser damages and greater benefits in the instantiation of a basic good, e.g. choosing the medicine
that will both relieve pain and heal rather than a medicine that only relieves pain).
62
Being able to give up one’s intended end if the means appear unfeasible refers to the requirement of
detachment in Finnis’s natural law: in order to be open to all the basic human goods, one must be detached from
one’s own choices and commitments (avoiding fanaticism).
63
Baud (2001).
64
In Finnis’s Natural Law (1980:118-25), this requirement is named ‘Respect for every basic value in every act
or not choosing directly against a basic value’: one should not choose to do any act which itself does nothing but
damage or impede a realisation or participation of any one or more of the basic forms of human good (yet if the
pursuit of one basic good has unintended effects against another basic value, such a pursuit is legitimate).
 6. Requirement of non-compensation: promoting one dimension of human
flourishing cannot be, intentionally, accompanied by a worsening in another dimension,
acknowledging the impossibility of measuring in a single scale the different capabilities that
characterise human life.

Practically speaking, what does the structure of practical wisdom and its requirements
involve for the framing of public policies? To what extent may the structure of practical
wisdom and its requirements (if they are followed through) allow the government to design
economic policies that promote central human capabilities?

c) An illustrative example in reference to the principles embodied in the World

Bank’s comprehensive development framework.

The World Bank recently issued a new framework for adopting development policies,
the ‘Comprehensive Development Framework’ (CDF). CDF is seen as a procedure for
development policy-making that could help countries better achieve their development goals.
The principles of the procedure are as follows:65
1 . A long-term holistic vision and strategy: interdependence of all elements of
development (social, structural, human, governance, environmental, economic and financial).
Though the importance of macroeconomic fundamentals is recognised, equal weight is given
to the institutional, structural and social underpinnings of a robust economy. CDF recognises
that poverty has multiple facets: income, physical security, environmental sustainability, and
the ability of poor people to confront their future with confidence.
2. Enhance country ownership of development goals and actions: the country is in the
lead, both owning and directing the development agenda (the country is in the driver’s seat).
3. More strategic partnership among stakeholders: CDF establishes mechanisms to
bring people together and build consensus, forges stronger partnerships that allow for
strategic selectivity. An effective consultative process will fully engage with a broad range of
organisations from both civil society and the private sector, and will be institutionalised, i.e.
made a regular and continuing feature of government administration.
4. Accountability for development results: necessity to collect relevant information.

The criterion for judging the success of the CDF is better achievement of development
66
goals. CDF seems almost like a substitute for the above requirements of practical wisdom. It
is both teleological, in the sense that success of CDF is judged according to its achievement in
terms of poverty reduction and human flourishing achievements, and procedural in the sense
that policies are judged good not only in terms of their results but also in terms of their respect
of the procedure. It shares with the requirements of practical wisdom a plural and
incommensurable approach to the human good (poverty is recognised as multi-faceted). It
recognises the fundamental principles of agency (the country in the driver seat). So, what do
the requirements of practical wisdom add to the procedural framework embedded in CDF?
The table below summarizes them:

65
All the information on the Bank’s comprehensive development framework has been taken from the Bank’s
Website: http://www.worldbank.org/cdf
66
Those international development goals are as follows: 1) Promote fast, sustainable growth that benefits the
poor and reduces inequality; 2) Strengthen the participation of poor people in political processes and local
decision-making; 3) Reduce vulnerability to economic shocks, natural disasters, ill health, and violence; 4)
Invest in people through education, health care, and basic social services; 5) Promote gender equity and
eliminate other forms of social exclusion; 6) Forge effective partnerships between civil society, governments and
international agencies; 7) Encourage public discussion of the goals and the means of achieving them.
 CDF Requirements of practical wisdom (RPW)
A holistic long-term vision and strategy Requirement of weighted beneficence
Enhance country ownership of development goals and Requirement of agency
actions
Requirement of non-arbitrariness

More strategic partnership among stakeholders Requirement of political responsibility

Accountability for development results Requirement of non-compensation
Requirement of ethical efficiency

An obvious difference is that CDF totally fails to distinguish means and ends. The first
requirement of CDF fails to distinguish the ends of policies (poverty reduction) with the
means to achieving them (good macro-economic fundamentals). A second limit of CDF is
that there are no clear guidelines as to how poverty should be perceived and assessed. Those
guidelines are given in PRW by the requirement of beneficence. The international
development goals are mentioned in their role of assessing the success of CDF but they do not
enter in the process at the beginning (moreover, those international development goals are as
well mixing ends with means). Third, CDF does not assign clear responsibilities (beyond the
market and economic growth) to achieve the aims, what is given in RPW by the requirement
of political responsibility. Fourth, though CDF and RPW share the same concern for agency,
there is no objective background as to how to assess the goodness of the outcome of
participation (the underlying suggestion is that the goodness of the participation outcome lies
in its compliance with the Bank’s own goals, irrespective of good and objective reasons
behind the chosen outcome). In RPW, the role of the requirement of non-arbitrariness is to
give objective reasons behind one’s decisions. Finally, CDF fails to take into account the
conflicts that might arise in the pursuit of different facets of poverty-reduction, and fails to
distinguish the separateness of each end, what is guaranteed in RPW by the requirement of
non-compensation.

The Dominican Republic is a country that served as a pilot country in the

implementation of the Bank’s CDF. A consultative group (gathering the government, NGO’s,
civil society, academic institutions, unions, companies) met in order to discuss the priorities
of the policies of the Dominican government. The outcomes of the consultative group led to
the following five priority-themes:67 1) social policies to reduce poverty (such as bringing the
public expenditures in health, education and employment creation to one percent of GDP); 2)
economic policies for development (such as reducing the interest rate, liberalising financial
and banking system, and free trade); 3) state reform (such as budgetary reforms and state
decentralisation); 4) environmental policies; 5) development of the Haitian border and
relationships with Haiti. The evaluation of the success of CDF in the Dominican Republic is
still under process, so one cannot yet assess the success of CDF principles in guiding
policies.68 Yet, given the theoretical limits of CDF underlined above, it seems that policies
that follow through the requirements of practical wisdom are likely to lead to better outcomes
in terms of human flourishing than would policies designed according to instrumental
rationality, the public debate, or CDF principles. Indeed, nothing in the CDF principles tells
us for example how to deal with the trade-off that might for example emerge from the respect
of the environment and poverty reduction policies. State reforms or the reduction of the
interest rate are not goals that are to be pursued for their own sake but are means that are

67
Information is taken from the World Bank’s page on the Caribbean region.
68
A complete evaluation of the CDF success in pilot countries is promised for mid-2002.
supposed to bring about more employment opportunities, better allocation of public resources,
but little is said about the links between those means and the ends they serve. Rather, those
means appear to be the ends of policies.

Let us make the exercise of hypothesising what policies in the Dominican Republic
would look like if they were undertaken following the requirements of practical wisdom. Here
are a few statistics that allows the government to perceive what is at stake in the situation and
to understand what ought to be done. Urban unemployment rate amounts to 13.8 percent of
the population in 1999. 16.2 % of the population is illiterate in 1998 (as compared with 4.4 in
Costa Rica, the country with the best performances in quality of life in the Latin American
region). The government has devoted 2.5 percent of its GDP to education in 1998 (compared
with 5.3 in Costa Rica). Child mortality under 5 amounts to 11 per thousand live births in
1996 (and only 1 per thousand in Costa Rica). Maternal mortality per hundred thousand
childbirths has been 230 (compared with 29 in Costa Rica). In 1995, a Dominican had 51
gram of protein a day, while a Costa Rican had 74 grams. While a 100 percent of the
population in Costa Rica has access to safe drinking water, both in rural and urban areas, only
55 percent of the Dominican population in rural areas has access, and 73 percent has access to
drinking water in urban areas. While again the totality of the Costa Rican population has
access to sanitation facilities in urban area, this figure comes to 89 percent in the Dominican
Republic. And only 68 percent has sanitation facilities in rural areas (compared with 95
percent in Costa Rica). While Costa Rica devoted 7.4 percent of its GDP to health in 1998,
the Dominican Republic only devoted 1.5 percent of its GDP to public health expenditures.69
Real GDP has increased by 7.6 percent in 2000 (this increase followed an increase of 8.3
percent in 1999, 7.3 in 1998, 8.2 in 1997 and 7.3 in 1996, making of the Dominican economy
the fastest growing economy in Latin America in the nineties). Consumer price inflation
amounted to 7.7 percent in 2000 (6.5 in 1999, 4.8 in 1998, 8.3 in 1997 and 5.4 in 1996).70 As
well, given the withdrawal of laws restricting car importation, the number of cars has
increased threefold given in 15 years, but infrastructures have not followed. The lack of
governmental control of old cars, the lack of governmental regulation of traffics (in some
barriers, private companies are providing traffic lights), and the lack of sufficient road
infrastructures has led to important traffic and pollution problems.71 Frequent electricity
blackout is another urgent problem, those shortages can to last 48 hours, and up to weeks in
poor barriers. Shortages have tried to be resolved by privatising the national electric company
but higher prices and unequal distribution have followed, heightening social tensions. This
affects as well the distribution of water in poor households. Only 30 % of poor people have
running water.72 The Central Bank of the Dominican Republic carried out a household survey,
which concluded that less than 25 percent of the population lived in poverty (the poverty line
was drawn at $60 per month), and less than 4 percent was in indigent situation.73 Yet, another
study concluded to higher poverty rates.74 And a study carried out by a university concluded
that 60% of the population perceived itself as belonging to the poor segments of society.75
Economic growth has brought along an increased availability of Western consumption goods.

69
Those data are taken from ECLAC (2001).
70
Economist Intelligence Unit (2001).
71
Baud (2001).
72
Baud (2001).
73
Dominican Central Bank (1999).
74
Cela (1997).
75
Duarte et al. (1998).
Shopping malls have flourished like mushrooms, but the increased consumption choices have
entailed growing frustration and social exclusion.76
Let us suppose that the IFI, instead of imposing their structural adjustment policies or
CDF, have imposed instead that economic policies comply with the requirements of practical
wisdom, what are those economic policies to look like in the Dominican Republic? First, the
requirement of weighted beneficence would require that resources be prioritised to those who
most lack central human capabilities, that is the 16 % of the population which are illiterate,
the 13.8 percent who do not have access to employment, the 50 % of the population in rural
areas who do not have access to drinking water, those who do not have access to basic and
affordable health services, those who suffer from a higher climate of insecurity and
criminality. As well, the government has as information that the population sees electricity
shortages, unemployment, a higher cost of living and a higher criminality rate as the most
pressing issues that the government has to tackle. So, what action ought the government to
take given that information? As the government, the deliberative body, is a ‘flesh-and-blood
deliberator’, it will be guided by its emotions regarding the situation. It might for example be
required from him to spend one week living in a poor barrier in order to have a better grasp of
the poverty situation in the country. Though the statistics report that basic health services are
covered for all, it might find out that the health personnel in poor areas is badly trained and
the quality of services is very poor. It might also get a better grasp of the roots of the
criminality that is arising, and the unfulfilling aspirations of poor people to access Western
consumption goods. Despite the high unemployment rate, it might find out that most of the
people make up their living in the informal economy, hidden from the official statistics, and
so the government might decide that tackling unemployment might not be a major issue. As
well, walking by foot in the streets of the city, members of the government might have a sense
of road insecurity that is arising from a lack of government regulative actions in traffic and
infrastructure building. They might live that sense of insecurity that they will not be able to
grasp through reading traffic accidents statistics. Given the requirement of non-arbitrariness,
the government has to be able to give reasons for its decision to shift resources for a better
quality of basic health services and more security instead of unemployment. The requirement
of political responsibility endows the government (and citizens through their government)
with the responsibility to do something about the situation, and make the necessary correcting
distributive policies (such as less resources to health services in rich areas and more resources
for health services in poor areas, such as to levy taxes for building more road infrastructures,
and for designing infrastructures tackling social exclusion and criminality).
Given the requirement of subsidiarity, people who lack central human capabilities are
not to be seen as ‘mere cog into a wheel’, but active agents of their own development. If
resources are to be allocated to improve basic health services in poor areas, then actions have
to be taken from the bottom, and it is the people directly involved who have to decide what
kind of services are the most suitable for them. Regarding road security, the government can
take the initiative of an inquiry to see how the population perceives road insecurity and what
it says about how security could be improved. Complying with the requirement of ethical
efficiency, the government has to find the most efficient means to reach the ends it has chosen
to pursue. Finally, the requirement of non-compensation forbids economic policies to entail a
76
In a study of consumption patterns in Honduras and Costa Rica, Crocker et al. (1998) discuss the influence of
those malls upon consumption of the poor. They observe that some families even use their spending money in
travelling by taxi to those malls, and have no other option but daydreaming in those. Those malls, selling mainly
expensive Western consumption goods, also increase the sense of a higher cost of living (given that poor people
aspire to buy those goods but cannot afford it). Those malls have also led to a higher criminality rate. Those
findings in Honduras and Costa Rica seem to reproduce themselves in the case of the Dominican Republic,
where there is increased feeling among the population of a higher cost of living (most likely due to the invasion
of Western consumption goods that many cannot afford) and a higher criminality rate.
worsening in a central human capability while promoting another. If, in order to improve
basic health services, resources were taken from the education budget and lead to less
opportunities for children to go to school, such policies would be banned under the
requirement. But this is just a fictive scenario that would need much more thorough policy
research. As the aim of this paper is more theoretical than empirical, let us come back to the
requirements of practical wisdom and to the reasons why policy-makers should adopt those
requirements.

Letting public policies be guided by some requirements seem inconsistent with the
demands of human freedom and with the plurality of different modes of actions. How can
those requirements of practical wisdom be reconciled with the respect for the freedom in
framing one’s actions? The next section examines how making policy decisions according to
the structure of practical wisdom is fully consistent with free human choice.

4. Practical wisdom and free human choice

A first reason for which making choices according to the structure of practical wisdom
is fully compatible with the demands of human freedom, is that the deliberative body is
sovereign in its decision. It is the deliberative body, not any end, principle, or criterion, which
retains the final rational say, which is ‘reflectively sovereign’.77
As the above example shows, though the requirements of practical wisdom might help
the deliberative body in taking policies ‘aiming at the right target’, there is no clear-cut
solutions as to what is the ‘best’ option, what is the ‘best’ outcome of the deliberation
procedure. It is not possible to codify the principles of practical wisdom and set them as an
algorithm for action, and even less possible to codify the complex dialogue between those
principles and the context. The complex Aristotelian deliberation process cannot be rendered
as a machine-like mathematical algorithm because of the very nature of its object. On the one
hand, each requirement calls for a specific interpretation according to the context in which
they apply (for example the requirement of weighted beneficence will mean something
different for different contexts). It is up to the deliberative body to interpret what a specific
requirement entails in a particular situation. And on the other hand, though the decision that
follows all the requirements involved in the procedure of practical wisdom is morally ‘better’
than a decision that violates one or many requirements,78 there is nothing that fixes what is
‘best’, the deliberator is sovereign in its decision. There is no unique ‘best’ policy. The
respect of the requirements of practical wisdom rules out bad policies, but does not provide
any algorithm as to what is to be counted as the ‘best’ outcome. The outcome of the
deliberative process is never clear-cut. The specification of the end to pursue is a dialogue
between those requirements, the universal horizon of a good human life, and the context in
which that human life is being lived. This is why a deliberative type of rationality resists any
formal characterization, since “there is obviously no simple formula for determining which
means is easiest and best”79, since one cannot “spare [oneself] some of the agony of thinking
and all the torment of feeling and understanding that is actually involved in reasoned
deliberation.”80 Practical wisdom, with its emphasis on perception, its emphasis on grasping,

77
Richardson (1994: 178-9).
78
“Because morality is nothing other than integral, unfettered reasonableness, an option which violates one or
more of the above principles and so is morally wrong can always be described as ‘worse’ compared to options
which are not morally wrong.” [Finnis (1997:229)].
79
Richardson (2000: 979).
80
Wiggins (1980:237).
through no universal algorithms, what is salient and relevant to a particular situation, with its
process of specification of ends through a dialogue between the context, the means towards
that end and the feasibility of attaining those ends, seems a poor guide of action, imperfect,
vague, running away from exactness: “No theory, if it is to recapitulate or reconstruct
practical reasoning […] can treat the concerns an agent brings to any situation as forming a
closed, complete, consistent system. For it is of the essence of these concerns to make
competing, inconsistent claims (this is a mark not of our irrationality but of rationality in the
face of the plurality of ends and the plurality of human goods).”81
The requirements of practical wisdom are there to guide the pursuit of valuable
capabilities, to specify what capabilities a public policy has to promote given the particular
circumstances. But the requirements do not have the final say in making decisions, the
deliberative body is sovereign in its decisions. If free human choice is defined as “the
adoption of one amongst two or more rationally appealing and incompatible, alternative
options, such that nothing but the choosing itself settles which option is chosen and
pursued,”82 then a choice made according to the structure of practical wisdom (or a practically
wise choice) cannot be more than a free human choice.

Because a practically wise choice is a free human choice, this entails that there will
inevitably be tragic choices. There will appear tragic choices where one capability cannot be
pursued without a loss in another central human capability for the same group of people
themselves or between different groups of people. For example, if a deliberative body has
decided that pollution is the priority issue to tackle, and if it decides to limit the emissions of
certain companies, limiting as a consequence their activities and their capacity to generate
employment or generate profits, the decision to curtail harmful emissions will entail losers.
One can say that this is not really a ‘tragic’ choice, that “for an agent to be facing a tragic
choice, it is at least necessary for him/her to recognize the validity of each of the claims that
clash, each of the values that pull in opposite directions.”83 But if one remembers the case of
the closure of Tchernobyl nuclear power plant, the main employer in the region, it appeared as
a real tragedy for those who lost their job and were unable to find another source of income.
Those thousands of people who lost their job and were thrown into acute poverty situation
had perhaps to be ‘sacrificed’ for the security of Europe. Nonetheless, the tragic situation of
Ukrainians workers could have been made less tragic if the government (or international
institutions) were offering a compensation scheme, or other employment opportunities.84

A third reason underlying the consistency between the requirements of practical

wisdom and human freedom is that those requirements are internal to human reason. Not that
those principles are inscribed in human nature, they are simply inherent to a life that is lived
in a human (reasonable) way. They are not given ‘from above’, and are not to be conceived as
law-abiding, they are implicit to human reasonableness.85 Those requirements are nothing

81
Wiggins (1998:231).
82
Finnis (1997:220, 1992:136).
83
Richardson (1994:114).
84
A typical example of tragic choice is that of the choice between building a hydro-electric dam in order to
provide electricity to a region (which could provide better equipped health centres, increase agricultural
production… and hence promote basic capabilities to be nourished, to be healthy) and between displacing
villages (capability to express freely one’s culture), that tragic choice could perhaps be ‘rationally’ solved
through a more efficient use of energy (or the use of other sources of energy) in order to prevent the building of a
dam and to preserve an indigenous culture [Crocker (1995)]. Nussbaum (2000c) has stressed the importance of
institutional arrangements in the removal of tragic choices.
85
“The ought is intelligible in a sense which is not moral. Even people quite different or hostile to all moral
claims can and, if they are intelligent, do recognise and use some at least of the first principles of practical
more than principles of reasonableness, that it is always reasonable for a human being to act
upon rather than not, and therefore are self-evident. Let me illustrate.
The first requirement, the requirement of weighted beneficence, asserting that public
actions should be prioritised towards those who most lack central human capabilities, appears
consistent with human reasonableness. If someone had the choice to offer a loaf of bread
between two people, a well-off person coming out of a restaurant and a poor mendicant at the
door of the restaurant, it would seem unreasonable not to give the bread to the most starving
and suffering person. If a public policy were aiming at giving more food or purchasing power
to the well-off and leaving the destitute suffering more would not be reasonable. Or if a public
policy gave the freedom for some to exercise their capability to be healthy by providing
sophisticated heart surgeries possibilities, while curtailing the freedom of many to exercise
their capability to avoid avoidable diseases, this public policy would not stand self-evidently
as reasonable.
The second requirement, the requirement of non-arbitrariness, according to which one
should be able to give reasons for one’s choices, is consistent with human reasonableness. If
for example, moved by his emotions in a visit to a poor hospital in his town of origin, the
minister of health decides to allocate half of the national health budget to improve the health
conditions in his region of origin, such a policy would not stand as reasonable, since there is
no good reasons as to why a particular region should receive more resources than other
regions which are as deprived of resources.
The third requirement, the requirement of political responsibility, might appear as less
straightforwardly self-evident. Why would it be reasonable that human beings are mutually
responsible for each other’s well-being? It has to be noted that the central human capabilities
are not basic human goods to be pursued, and not because they are good for me as an
individual. And my choice not to care for other people’s well-being and other people’s central
human capabilities directly destroys the very conditions for my own well-being, since one of
the condition for my own well-being is that others care for me. Caring for human well-being
is always caring for the common well-being of all humans.86
The fourth and the fifth requirement, human agency and ethical efficiency, stand
obviously as self-evident to human reason. A mother who decides everything for her child
until late adulthood, and denies him any human agency as to how to lead his life, appears to
the eyes of psychologists as an unbalanced and unhealthy mother. Human agency, and the
ability to be a doer, rather than a passive agent of institutional mothering, is a requirement that
stands as self-evident. Similarly with ethical efficiency, it would appear as unreasonable to
allocate huge and expensive resources to provide medication that stabilise the HIV-virus,
while devoting no resources, that are cheaper, to prevent the spread of HIV (such as
campaigns regarding the use of condoms, or adequate sexual education teaching the
consequences and meaning of sexuality).
Finally, the requirement of non-compensation is perhaps the most controversial of all
the requirements. Though it is a common practice in economic analysis to measure the
dimensions of human life against a single scale like utility or money, it seems a quite
unreasonable practice.87 For example, computing the monetary costs of destroying an
indigenous tribe (the loss of a culture, the mental health of displaced persons who cannot
accommodate to another environment…) and comparing them with the monetary benefits of
building a dam appears as a quite humanly unreasonable practice. It would appear more

reason. The moral sense of ‘ought’ is reached when the absolutely first practical principle is followed through, in
its relationship to all the other first principles.”[Finnis (1998:86-87)]
86
See Finnis (1998:111-7) for that argument in relation to Aquinas’s notion of friendship and the common good.
87
Regarding the neglect for the plurality and incommensurability of ends in economic analysis, and especially
cost-benefit analysis, see Sen (2000b), Richardson (2000).
reasonable to look at all the dimensions of human life, and preserve all the dimensions, while
damaging none.

Finally, though following the requirements of practical wisdom permits the policy-
maker to distinguish reasonable from less reasonable choices, following the requirements
cannot be ‘imposed’, but have to be freely endorsed by the public deliberative body. To
endorse or not those reasonable requirements requires a free decision from the part of the
body upon which those principles shall apply.

5. Conclusion

And this final reason as to why the structure of practical wisdom and its requirements
are fully compatible with free human choice leads us to the conclusion that, if practically wise
decisions are to be taken, the procedure of practical wisdom needs to be inserted into an
implementation framework. In order to give its members the opportunities to live a human
life, a society has to build those requirements into constitutional guarantees.
In her capability approach, Nussbaum urged the point that the central human
capabilities should be seen as constitutional guarantees that governments should secure to its
citizens. Yet, given the plurality and incommensurability of those central human capabilities,
given the scarcity of resources to secure them all, it would perhaps be more realistic or
sensible to propose a procedure of specification of central human capabilities and a procedure
of achieving the provision of those capabilities. There needs to be an enforcement framework
not only with respect to the content of the good but also with respect to a procedure that
allows that good to be implemented. Though no actions can be proposed ex ante, actions can
follow a certain procedure that will provide a better guarantee of fulfilling those central
human capabilities. If the central human capabilities are one day to be provided to all citizens,
one should perhaps re-think the way and procedures through which public policies are
undertaken. If the human good understood as central human capabilities constitutes a kind of
universal horizon that policies should aim at, one needs also to know how to pursue that
universal horizon, what actions to take and how actions should be taken in view of that
horizon. The structure of practical wisdom seems to provide an adequate framework for that
aim. Building central human capabilities into constitutional guarantees is not sufficient if no
action is specified to secure them. These central capabilities need to be supplemented by
additional constitutional guarantees that will indicate the way to get there, and the
requirements of practical wisdom appear as good supplements that will guarantee the
provision of central human capabilities for all.

Similarly to archers who have a target in view, policy-makers need to have a mark to
aim at under the eyes so that policies are more likely to hit upon what they ought to. They
need to have some knowledge of the human good in terms of central human capabilities in
order to hit upon what they should: “Will not the knowledge of it [eudaimonia or good human life], then,
have a great influence on life? Shall we not, like archers who have a mark to aim at, be more likely to hit upon
what we should?” [NE 1094a22-26] But central human capabilities as constitutional guarantees only
judge the target to aim at, and this judgement would be left incomplete without t h e
requirements of practical wisdom that issue commands as to how reach the target: “For
understanding […] is about things which may become subjects of questioning and deliberation. Hence it is about
the same objects as practical wisdom; but understanding and practical wisdom are not the same. For practical
wisdom issues commands, since its end is what ought to be done or not to be done; but understanding only
judges.”[NE 1143a4-9] And similarly to archers who need in addition to a target under the eyes a
procedure that issues command to reach the target, so perhaps do public policy-makers.
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