The pertinent mind as one of the conditions for capacity-building

Abstract

The economic interpretive conception of reality is inclined towards evaluating actions’ outcomes in terms of utility, wealth or quality of life. By abandoning this view, one is immediately thrown into a humanist perspective.
The most pressing issue raised by humanism is that of understanding human condition through new interpretive categories—all of them aimed at assuming the person as an end. The “human being” could not be redefined without prioritizing her fulfilment for what concerns the quality of the entities she may become or do as the result of satisfying constructing practices.
In brief, the human being is to be understood in terms of comprehensive capacity building.
With regard to this need, this paper will attempt to argumentatively describe the necessary condition for an individual to accomplish her own task. The starting point of this study will take into account capacity building as what emerges from the intersection of the theories of Sen, Nussbaum and Arendt. In particular, the fulfilment of her tasks is undertaken by the individual whenever capacity building is achieved by the mind. This kind of mind is thus defined as “pertinent”. A new paradigm is thus outlined, which provides a new conception of knowledge by means of pedagogic resilience:
the economic requalification backs up an idea of mind whose features imply the aforementioned new paradigm of knowledge. In order to achieve this positive end, however, economical requalification shall be addressed in terms of human development.