Normative principles freedom and opportunity The CA is underpinned by at least two normative principles (Sen 1992; 1999). Firstly, at an individual level, the CA holds that wellbeing consists in an individual’s freedom to choose, from various options, the kind of life they want to live. Secondly, at a political level, social justice is achieved when individuals have the opportunity to actually live the life they choose. These two normative principles enable us to evaluate individual wellbeing in terms of freedom (to choose the life one lives) and opportunity (to be able to actually live that life). These principles also give rise to two areas of debate that help grasp some of the complexity of this approach. Firstly, it might be asked whether there is a particular choice you ought to make regarding the life you want to live: are there objectively better lives than others, and if so, can you be mistaken about the kind of life you want to live? This concern arises because personal goods, those things we value for ourselves, are part of our internal psychological infrastructure, which is governed by desire as much as it is reason. For this reason, we are not always the best placed to judge how we are faring in life: more often than not we adapt our expectations, preferences, and desires to suit what is conceivable according to the possibilities open to us. Moreover, a concern for this study is whether young people should be responsible for deciding what their own wellbeing consists in. Secondly, it might be asked at the political level whether we ought to give priority to some opportunities instead of others. For example, is the freedom to choose how you live your life in one domain (for instance, what kind of job you want) more important than the freedom to choose how you live your life in another domain (for instance, where you want to live)? This concern arises because, in a practical sense, social goods are typically scarce and exhaustible and it is inevitable that a fair society cannot afford complete freedom or opportunity for all citizens. In this respect, we cannot hope for students to achieve all the things that they have reason to value. Even in the most affluent society we must accept that there are inevitable ‘trade-offs’ that disadvantage some groups of people in some ways (a situation exacerbated by inequality in affluent societies) and all people in different ways (because all people cannot be satisfied all the time). For us to promote fairness, therefore, we must ...
