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In this interconnected political and social situation we are witnessing an increase in social and economic inequalities together with a weakening of democratic values that urgently require a reflection in terms of social justice and equity within democratic societies themselves being at risk the same inviolability of the dignity of the individual. In this critical situation, returning critical to social andpolitical reflection is undoubtedly the central role played by education in the implementation of justice and in the very possibility of social democracy. Having taken note of the context at the time, education must rediscover its social value as a vital space for the construction of knowledge, a critical knowledge of the world and capable of imagining new and fairer worlds in terms of justice and permeated by a democratic format.From this premise that is based on the close relationship between education, justice and democracy, our pedagogical reflection is established, which sees Freire's liberating education as an anticipation and, as we shall see, an enrichment of the critical-emancipatory pedagogical current. A current thatdevelops in the second half of the 20th century and which becomes a valid theoretical, but also practical terrain, in which to develop meta reflections on education itself in its ontological and finalistic foundation by reconstructing an idea of education in its social and political value as place of developmentof the infinite human potentialities that enclose in a sense the value of critical reason and of imagining new worlds. Today, pedagogy, school and education, including their social actors, are called to rethink places, tools, goals that can achieve greater freedom and justice for all, able to positionyoung people with awareness and autonomy in the complexity of the world, able to be aware of the structuring of collective powers and responsibilities in situations of oppression. Because, in the wake of Freire, only a conscious and collectively constructed knowledge will be able to ...

The idea of human development as an increase of capabilities, which is moved away from the utilitarian paradigm, has been introduced, within the framework of a theory of justice, by the theorists of the capability approach Amartya Sen and Martha Nussbaum. This theoretical-normative framework criticizes theutilitarian model for its idea of quantitative human development and focuses on what the individuals are capable to be and to do to have a decent life following their values. The capability approach looks at the real conditions of the individuals in the society and asks itself what the democratic institutions can do to realize a just society. What should be redistributed? Surely not enough, as Rawls asserts, that the institutions redistribute primary goods because they don't show how people really live or how much freedom they can exercise. Sen and Nussbaum propose a new theory of justice that it is based on the combined capabilities development. A just society respects the right of every individual to choose and express their choice of the life they want to lead. The framework of capabilities allows us to examine the real capabilities of the individuals to choose and grab the real opportunity to realize their substantial freedom to beand to do something. The education of substantial freedom is necessary to realize at the institutional and also social level the new horizon of sense proposed by the capability approach. Development needs to be a development of capabilities that can ensure that everyone is able to grasp real opportunities to express one's substantial freedom. The school environment will then be the fertile ground on which one can build and implement an idea of democratic society and citizenship based on a sense of horizon that end humandignity and social justice. In this article, we will therefore seek to understand how education is necessarily linked to justice and how they can structure a pedagogical road at a theoretical and applicative level capable of achieving equally freedom to do and be ...

The present article aims to analyze the ethical perspective of the Capability Approach in its main elements, highlighting however those aspects that are closer to the field of social education that make the approach to skills not only an ethical theory but also a perspective with pedagogical elements hidden. We will start with an introduction to the position of the approach to capabilities, ie an approach that is declined in terms of social and economic justice with a harsh criticism of the neoliberal view of the free market and the failure to achieve a welfare society for all as well as the Twentieth century had promised. The Capability Approach, in fact, starts from an important critique of the economic-financial dimension, arriving at the heart of the problem: the now global fact of economic hegemony over all other institutional and social dimensionssuch as politics, culture, school up to the very nature of human being reduced to being a purely calculating and economic nature. The theory of capacities, on the other hand, while not affirming the elimination of the economic sphere, asserts that institutions should not be dominated by economic logics but must consider the human being in its anthropological richness and fullness. In fact, individuals do not act only for utilitarian ends and happiness itself can not be reduced to the possession of material goods. The human being is much more than a homo oeconomicus and therefore institutions must return to looking at happiness and human well-being as omnilateral and multidimensional respecting the inviolable dignity of each to reach their idea of happiness or good sight. As we can well understand in the Capability there are many elements that are linked to the educational discourse because if justice means to put everyone in the real possibility of doing and being what he wants, expressing his substantial freedom then education, which as Freire says, it is never neutral, it has the social responsibility to guarantee spaces in which to cultivate capacity and ...