ABSTRACT
The capability approach (CA) is currently in development, and there is significant disagreement about how to conceive its deep theory of freedom and well-being. The paternalism implications of a given view about why capabilities should be the central metric of well-being and justice can thus count as a strike for or against incorporating that view into the CA. In this chapter, I ask how capability theorists should understand the value of the freedom to engage in functionings that are not objectively valuable. I consider four candidate views about why the freedom to engage in such functionings should be protected and assess them relative to two normative commitments widely shared by capability theorists: commitments to treating human beings as agents and nonideal theoretical commitments to opposing oppression and deprivation. Though I do not recommend a particular view, I uncover two general insights about paternalism and the CA: that a coherent justification of protecting freedoms to engage in functionings that are not objectively valuable requires reference to more than first-order constituents of well-being and that there is a tension between nonideal theoretical commitments and thoroughgoing opposition to a certain form of paternalism.
