On “Affluent Philosophy” and Future Generations: Amartya Sen and Tim Mulgan’s “Broken World”

Abstract

In Tim Mulgan’s imaginary “broken world” survivors of catastrophic climate change (or some other disaster) cannot invariably meet their basic needs. Mulgan provides lectures on the moral philosophy of an earlier “affluent age” in which Amartya Sen appears briefly as an “affluent thinker.” I argue that some of Sen’s work is highly relevant to the concerns of survivors in part because it focusses on conditions of extreme deprivation and survival. While Sen has written about sustainability and environmental concerns both at a foundational level as well as in his work on India, critics may argue that he has failed to engage adequately with these issues. I explore this line of criticism and make some points which are relevant to its evaluation including some which count in Sen’s defence. I also argue that Sen’s ideas influenced Derek Parfit’s seminal work, and are relevant to the subsequent philosophical literature, on future generations.

Keywords:

• Capability approach
• sustainability
• well-being
• poverty
• environment
• human development
• inequality
• gender

About the Author

Mozaffar Qizilbash is Honorary Professor in the Departments of Economics and Related Studies and Philosophy at the University of York. His research focusses on topics relating to welfare, development, capability, utilitarianism, incommensurability and related topics at the intersection of economics and philosophy.

Notes

1 Sen’s original text refers to both “partial comparability” as well as the possibility that “our value judgements may be imprecise” (Sen 1979a, 101). The possibility of imprecision here may also be seen as an influence on Parfit’s “rough” or “imprecise comparability” view (see Parfit 1984, 431, 2016). Interest in the possibility of “vagueness” in the subsequent literature in population ethics (see Broome 2004, 2012; as well as Qizilbash, 2005b inter alia) may also, for this reason, be traced to Sen’s influence on, and his critical engagement with, Parfit’s ideas.