The implicit future orientation of the capability approach

Whilst the future is an important, almost constitutive aspect of the capability approach developed primarily by Sen and Nussbaum, the usual versions of the approach do not make the future orientation of the approach explicit. By making explicit the future orientation of the capability approach, the entire approach acquires a different flavour and offers new directions for development. The paper presents an array of ideas, such as the certainty of capabilities, the difference between the nature of values and the capacity to see them, the dynamic nature of agents, the distinction among three different acceptations of the category ‘person’, the idea of dynamic disease and the generation and consumption of futures, and futures literacy. As soon as the future is understood as an active force that is able to influence the present, it becomes one of the most relevant value-generating, sense- making force. The futures embedded in the agents’ space of liberty act therefore as an active force which modifies the agents’ present through their explicit and implicit anticipation. Three recommendations summarize the paper’s main conclusions, respec- tively, on the capacity of agents (1) to generate their future; (2) to generate a future wide enough to appear unbounded; and (3) to generate a future such that the agents’ space of liberty will not be diminished.