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LIT-285: The Impossibility of a Paretian Liberal

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Properties6
StatusActive — read in full 2026-09-28 (NOTE-255); worth reading as the original, six-page statement of the liberal paradox, with a complete and correct proof. Read it knowing two things. Its formal Condition L gives decisiveness over arbitrary pairs, not over a protected personal sphere, which the later rights-as-game-forms literature disputes. And Theorem I as stated tacitly needs at least two individuals.
Version2
Tagssociety-and-governance, mathematics, ethics
Extended byLIT-282 — The Possibility of Social Choice
Cited as “paper” byNOTE-255 — The Impossibility of a Paretian Liberal
Cited as “source” byTHEORY-027 — Two individually decisive people, weak Pareto and an unrestricted domain cannot all hold, even when choice need only yield a best element; unlike Arrow's theorem, the conflict is not removed by interpersonal comparability

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Sen (1970), Journal of Political Economy 78(1), Jan.–Feb. 1970, pp. 152–157 (JSTOR 1829633) — DOI-10.1086/259614

Standing in the record

Filed on 2026-09-28 at the owner’s request, as one of nine texts assembled to represent Amartya Sen’s capability approach without a full reading of The Idea of Justice. published: is the first appearance (ADR-002).

It was filed Deferred, unread. NOTE-255 is the close reading of 2026-09-28, and it placed the work: Active — worth reading as the original, six-page statement of the liberal paradox, with a complete and correct proof. Read it knowing two things. Its formal Condition L gives decisiveness over arbitrary pairs, not over a protected personal sphere, which the later rights-as-game-forms literature disputes. And Theorem I as stated tacitly needs at least two individuals.

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