The Four Walls of My Freedom Read Online Free PDF Page B

Yet the questions that Sen’s Capability Approach poses about human potential and the barriers to achieving it are the cornerstone of understanding the experience of our family. If Sen’s idea of the capability to live a life worth living is dependent on one’s physical and mental characteristics as well as one’s social opportunities and influences, how could a family like ours possibly survive, much less thrive? My son’s physical characteristics cause him to be completely dependent on others.
    Although Amartya Sen has focused on issues relating to poverty and justice, he has also spoken about disability. At a World Bank Conference on Disability in 2004, he lamented the failure of theories of justice to address the issue of disability adequately. In his keynote speech at that conference, Sen explored the relationship of wealth, disability, freedom and justice:
    Wealth or income is not something we value for its own sake. A person with severe disability need not really be judged to be more advantaged than an able-bodied person, even if he or she has a higher level of income or wealth than the thoroughly fit person. We have to examine the overall capability that any person has to lead the kind of life she has reason to want to lead, and this requires that attention be paid to her personal characteristics (and this includes her disabilities, if any) as well as to her income and other resources, since both can influence her actual capabilities. To ground a theory of justice on the informational foundation of opulence and income distribution would be a confusion of ends and means: income and opulence are things that we seek “for the sake of something else,” as Aristotle put it. 2
    Here, Sen is distinguishing between “earning handicaps” and “conversion handicaps,” or how one is able to convert money into good living. Giving someone with disabilities a million dollars doesn’t give them a good life if the money stays in the bank and the individual sits at home unable to convert his riches into enjoyable living. It is easy to see why, for people with disabilities, this line of thinking is extremely helpful in understanding the injustices that plague them. But Sen does not limit his definition of a conversion handicap to finances. He also points out that social facilities are a “common good,” which are often not accessible to people with disabling conditions. Community centres, schools and churches may exist, but if someone like Nicholas cannot get into these buildings, they will hardly contribute to his wellbeing. For people who require care, it is their loved ones who naturally take it upon themselves to mediate a deal for turning community resources into good living.
    My own experience tells me that converting money into fulfillment requires imagination and self-discipline. Money squandered, like any gift, can lead to misery (as in the case of gambling addicts). But the same could be said of disability. That particular fact of life can be converted into a positive force that reveals the best in human qualities, such as determination, resilience, creativity and compassion. It is a serious misconception to believe that money automatically translates to good living, or that disability converts to misery. Mark Oakley, our priest and old friend, put it best: “It is not circumstances that make or destroy a life. Anyone who has survived the death of a lover, the loss of a position, the end of a dream, the enmity of a friend knows that. …It is the way we live each of the circumstances of life, the humdrum as well as the extraordinary, the daily as well as the defining moments, that defines the quality of our lives. Each of us has the latitude to live life either well or poorly. Ironically enough, it is a matter of decision. And that decision is ours.”
    The American philosopher Eva Feder Kittay has spent most of her professional life writing about what it means