Social ethics as an ethics of the future: the capabilities approach of Adela Cortina and the capacity of choosing one self in Kierkegaard

Abstract

The present article explores the possibility of understanding social ethics as an ethics of the future, in the sense that this will be that which allows the time set aside for living to make sense; because this depends on the moral quality of the real future that arises before the ethical question of: what should I do to have a good life? For this it is considered that the approach of capabilities, in a moral sense, as developed by Adela Cortina in her concept of cordial ethics and cordial justice, by which each individual becomes a valid interlocutor to know, estimate and feel values, converges and it requires, the conception of the radical choice of being oneself as Kierkegaard has proposed, so that they are truly capacities with a moral character for time and do not remain only in the instrumental or procedural sphere of ethics. This work exposes first the approach and outline of the moral capacities of a cordial justice in Adela Cortina and, secondly, how is that the conception of the radical choice of becoming oneself in the thought of Kierkegaard, finally gives to these capacities its fundamental ethical sense in time.