This paper offers a history of the capability approach from its origins to its more recent development. Sen himself refused to be defined as the capability theorist and despite this analysis, we will come to understand that Sen played an essential role in this history because he pioneered the approach, but that his role has probably been overestimated by the available literature. Two further ‘main characters’ provided a relevant contribution to the origins and development of the capability approach, namely Walsh and Nussbaum. Finally, this paper considers the two main groups that have developed since the capability approach, the capability approach centred perspective and the capability approach heuristic value perspective, in order to show how they follow these three main characters in their own development of the capability approach.

中文翻译：

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“谁是能力理论家？”：能力方法的起源和发展的故事

本文介绍了能力方法从起源到最近发展的历史。森本人拒绝被定义为能力理论家，尽管进行了这样的分析，我们还是会明白，森在这段历史中发挥了重要作用，因为他开创了这种方法，但现有文献可能高估了他的作用。另外两个“主角”对能力方法的起源和发展做出了相关贡献，即沃尔什和努斯鲍姆。最后，本文考虑了自能力方法以来发展起来的两个主要群体，即以能力方法为中心的观点和能力方法启发价值观点，以展示他们在能力方法自身发展中如何遵循这三个主要特征。