Abstract

Only Dobb encouraged Sen to investigate the mathematical requirements for a rational society—to the dismay of the Cambridge intellectual left. Neoclassical economics had misinterpreted Arrow as proving the impossibility of rational social choice. Crucial for Sen was the nature of the informational basis of choice, and the role of different sorts of freedom: procedural freedom (which fits as naturally into the left's project as it does into the right's) and opportunity freedom. The neoclassical impoverishment of the social choice debate rested on the logical positivist fact/value dichotomy, so Putnam's demolition of this supported Sen's account of social rationality as the reasoned pursuit of values. Aristotle, Wittgenstein, Sraffa, and Gramsci all influenced Sen's respect for natural languages and rejection of formalism. Sen's analysis of reasoned social policy rests crucially on his concept of capability deprivation; it also reveals the incompatibility of even minimal liberty with neoclassical Pareto optimality and Nozick as the real enemy of the latter. Sen's capability theory needs to be embedded in an analysis of the allocation of surplus