Abstract

Otto Neurath and Amartya Sen have founded approaches to measure well-being. Their ultimate goal has been to find a measure of well-being that enables us to compare the well-being of different persons. Beitz1 perceives the capability approach as “a solution to the problem of finding an adequate basis for interpersonal comparisons, or, in other words, to the problem of defining well-being.” Thus, a close link can be established between measurement and interpersonal comparisons of well-being.Indeed, the question of interpersonal comparability has been at the centre of their concern right from the beginning and is still present in their advocacy of dominance orderings. The paper follows this line of thought: The first section presents their results of analysing the interdependence between measurability and comparability of utility. The second section introduces and compares their concepts of “conditions of life” and “functionings.” The third section comes back to the question of interpersonal comparisons in their frameworks of conditions of life and bundles of functionings. The fourth section leaves Neurath aside and concentrates on Kurt Grelling’s interpretation of the term life-situation and Gerhard Weisser’s absorption of it. A parallel between Grelling’s view of life-situations and Sen’s idea of a capability-set is drawn. The last section concludes