能力平等： 第三条道路？

在当代关于平等主义的争论中，问题的焦点集中于“什么的平等”。对此有两种基本的观点，即福利主义和资源主义。一些平等主义者对福利主义和资源主义都不满意，他们试图在两者之间开辟出第三条道路，而这条中间路线似乎既能够避免两者的缺点，又可以保留它们的优点。第三条路线最有影响的代表是森的能力平等理论。可以用三个问题来检验森的能力平等：首先，森所说的能力是指人的基本能力还是所有能力？其次，他的平等理论是多元论、二元论还是一元论？最后，能力是平等的标准还是通货？森的能力平等在这三个问题上都存在一些问题，特别是最后一个问题：即使能力作为平等的标准是合适的，它也无法充当平等的通货，因为这不仅是不可欲的，而且是不可行的。

Equality of Capability: Is It the Third Way?

In the contention of contemporary egalitarian theory, the focus of issue is ″equality of what.″ There are two basic approaches to the issue, that is, welfarism and resourcism. However, some egalitarians are not content with either of them, and try to open up a third way, which may draw on the strengths of both approaches while minimizing its exposure to their weaknesses. The most significant representative of the third way is Amartya Sen's conception of equality of capability. We will put forward three questions to examine Sen's conception of equality of capability. First, what is meant by Sen's capability? There are two possibilities: it may refer to some capabilities of a human being, or it may refer to all his capabilities. In Sen's major works, we can find two different formulations. In some of his earlier works, Sen employed the term ″capability″ to refer to human being's ″basic capability,″ which obviously means some capabilities of a human being. But in his some of his later works, Sen used the term ″capability″ to refer to ″freedom,″ which seems to refer to all the capabilities of a human being. Whichever possibility Sen's formulations provides, his conception of equality of capability would face some serious difficulties. Second, is Sen's conception of equality of capability a pluralism? When Sen commented on welfarism and resourcism, he criticized that both theories only uses one index (welfare or resource) to evaluate things, which is why their respective informational base is too limited. On the contrary, Sen argued that the equality of capability has a pluralist position in evaluating things and uses more indexes to evaluate the equality of things. These indexes are well-being achievement, agency achievement, well-being freedom and agency freedom. However, if we take a further analysis of Sen's major works, we will find that his conception of equality of capability is dualist or monist rather than pluralist. Third, is the capability the standard or the currency of equality? According to Sen, the capability should be not only a standard which is used to evaluate equality or inequality between people, but also a currency with which the disadvantaged could get the compensations based on distributive justice. However, Sen's equality of capability faces a problem here: Ever if the capability can play a role of the standard of equality, it cannot play a role of the currency of equality. We try to prove that it is not only undesirable but also infeasible to use the capability as the currency of equality.