development as freedom
Re-reading development as freedom by Amartya Sen. One slamdunk after the other.
On page 282:
“As competent human beings, we cannot shirk the task of judging how things are and what needs to be done. As reflective creatures, we have the ability to contemplate the lives of others. Our sense of responsibility need not relate only to the afflictions that our own behavior may have caused (though that can be important as well), but can also relate more generally to the miseries that we see around us and that lie within our power to help remedy. That responsibility is not, of course, the only consideration that can claim our attention, but to deny the relevance of that general claim would be to miss something central about our social existence. It is not so much a matter of having exact rules about precisely we ought to behave, as of recognizing the relevance of our shared humanity in making the choices we face.”
Posted in misc
December 8th, 2006 at 6:05 pm
reading somerville’s ideas about the search for a shared human ethics, she quotes:
I cannot be me without you
and we cannot be us without them,
and together we have a future.