Freedom and Individual Well-Being

This chapter is concerned with the role of individual freedom in the functioning and capability approach to individual well-being. It discusses the problem of evaluating an individual’s freedom, and in that context, it proves a counterpart of the negative results in this chapter. These negative results are extended to the problem of evaluating an individual’s well-being when individual well-being depends on the individual’s achieved functioning bundle and her freedom to choose her functioning bundle. This chapter also discusses the possibility of making interpersonal comparisons of freedom and of well-being based on weaker criteria for making such comparisons while accommodating the individuals’ own evaluations of their freedom and of their well-being.