This book inquires into the Capability Approach, a value theory of
freedom, which crystalizes the interests of Marx, Welfare Economics,
Social Choice, and Ethics. The capability approach has attracted many
people as a promising interdisciplinary approach to human well-being and
social worlds, finely overarching ethical and economic concerns. It has
well challenged essential characteristics of welfare economics, which
focuses on the criterion of efficiency with the concept of utility, by
explicitly incorporating normative criteria such as agency, well-being
and real freedom into positive analysis. However, it has a bit
operational and methodological difficulties such that how to estimate an
individual capability set which includes potential multi-dimensional
functioning vectors. This book reminds the reader of what traditional
economics has left behind, by examining historical backgrounds,
scrutinizing philosophical foundations and providing an operational
formulation of the capability approach: indispensable for understanding
what the capability approach is about and what it can achieve.