A most influential book by Harvard Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen is Development as Freedom (Knopf, 1999). At first glance the title suggests that Sen shares the late Peter Bauer’s ideas who argued that global free market policies would best help the poor everywhere. But that isn't Sen's message at all. What Sen means by freedom is the capability of people to take active part in politics so they can demand support for their various needs and projects. This is the democratic welfare state. Sen holds that the legal infrastructure of a country is to be decided upon by way of a national conversation. In other words, there are no principles such as the American Founder’s believed in, basic individual rights governments must secure. The principles, if we can even call them that, are conventional, decided upon in a national dialogue. In contrast to this, natural rights or natural laws affirmed by the American Founders are supposed to be discovered and the laws of society should rest on them.
This idea of the American Founders is absent from Sen’s position. Everything is open for debate and discussion and only after the discussion has ended can we talk of constitutional principles, fundamental laws, justice and the like. As he puts it,
“Indeed, the connection between public reasoning and the formulation and use of human rights is extremely important to understand. Any general plausibility that these ethical claims, or their denials, have is dependent, on this theory, on their survival and flourishing when they encounter unobstructed discussion and scrutiny, along with adequately wide informational availability.” (“Elements of a Theory of Rights,” Philosophy & Public Affairs 32.4 [2004] p. 349.)
Now, this idea sounds coherent until one digs a bit into some of what is presupposed in Sen’s position. One thing, for example, that does not appear to rest on debate and discussion is the right of everyone to take part in the discussion! So it appears there is, after all, a natural base for Sen’s idea of freedom—everyone, because of his or her humanity, has the right to take part in political deliberations. Why? The one good answer to this is that by virtue of our human nature we are entitled to have our political ideas aired in a human community. Being human and thus moral agents is what this entitlement or right rests on, not on a discussion or debate. But now other rights could also exist independently of a national discussion.
Such rights that are immediately evident are those to one’s life, one’s liberty of thought and conduct, as well as to private property, meaning that one’s ownership of one’s labor and time, for example, couldn’t be up for public debate—no one has the proper authority to decide that you or I may or may not make decisions respecting the disposition of our labor, our time, indeed, our lives!
Sen’s idea of freedom, however, strongly implies that participants in a democratic discussion and political debate could conclude with the idea that my or your or anyone’s life could be conscripted to serve various goals to which no consent has been given. But then the same could hold for the right of participation in political discussion—that right, too, could be debated away. And in some countries it has been and is, because the foundation of the right to take part in politics is not deemed to be natural but conventional. In the United States Professor Cass Sunstein, a very influential party in the team of President Barrack Obama, holds this view about rights.
In any case, a well integrated theory of freedom cannot accept that some of our rights are firmly grounded while others up for debate. These rights are all unalienable, meaning that democratic debate may not end with conclusions leading to the abrogation of these rights. And that is just the kind of freedom that the classical liberals, like Peter Bauer, believed is fundamental and not up for compromise. It is also the best avenue for development and emergence from poverty because it encourages initiative and voluntary cooperation, not coercion.
Professor Sen’s bifurcated theory of the right to freedom, whereby political participation is an absolute but others, such as property rights, are conventional rights, just will not hold up when fully scrutinized.
