Martha NussbaumThe “capabilities approach”

PHIL 102, UBCChristina HendricksSpring 2017

Except images licensed otherwise, this presentation is licensed CC BY 4.0

Overall course theme: The examined life and why it matters

What is examined life?

Examined life -> happiness (self & others)

Examining lives as social beings: our responsibilities towards others

Plato (Socrates)

EpicureansMill

Thomson: sacrifice some for the sake of others?

Singer: focus on helping suffering all can agree is bad

Nussbaum: ensure that all have what need to live a life with human dignity.

VasantiStarts her book Creating Capabilities: The Human Development Approach (2011) with the story of Vasanti

India 2011-07-18 at 07-24-24, Flickr photo by José Antonio Morcillo, licensed CC-BY

Common approaches to considering quality of

life“Capabilities Human and Rights”

(1997)What do you think might be good ways to measure people’s quality of life around the

world?

GNP or GDP (280-281)

Problems:

• Need to focus also on distribution

• Too narrow a measure of quality of life

Utilitarian approaches based on preference satisfaction (281-283)

Problems: • Distribution again; focus on aggregate

rather than individuals• “adaptive preferences”—can reinforce

inequalities

Distribution of basic rights and resources (283-284)

John Rawls: focus on distribution of basic rights & resources that all rational individuals would desire, so that even the least well off have a minimum level

Problem: Having the rights & resources is not enough; social circumstances differences in ability & opportunity to use them

The capabilities approach

What Nussbaum advocates

Basics of this approachAsks: what are people “actually able to do and to be?” (285)

There are certain capabilities that are required to live well/flourish as a human, to live a life with human dignity

GroupsPlease discuss and write on the doc:

Start generating a list of things you think people should be able to do, what capacities they should have, to live a full human life.

http://is.gd/phil102nussbaum

Nussbuam’s list of ten central capabilities (287-288)

Life

Bodily health

Emotions

Affiliation

Leisure/play

Other species

Bodily integrity

Practical reason

Senses, imagination, thought

Control over environment:

political & material

Connect to Vasanti’s story

Your views…?

Capabilities vs. Functioning

Combined capabilities • Internal abilities: our own internal ability to act (289)• Social opportunities & freedoms to express those

internal abilities (290)

Functioning: “active realization of one or more capabilities” (Creating Capabilities book, p. 25 (not assigned))• See, e.g., p. 289 of our reading

Why is it important to focus on capabilities rather than functioning?

How differs from utilitarianism?

Distribution: all must have these capabilities

Living a fully human life rather than focusing just on preferences or pleasures

Capabilities and Human Rights

How might you explain the concept of “human rights”?

Any problems with considering quality of life in terms of human rights?

Eleanor Roosevelt & the Universal Declaration on Human Rights (1948); public domain on Wikimedia Commons

Capabilities and Human Rights

• Nussbaum’s definition of human rights (292)

• We can clarify what “human rights” means by thinking of (many of) them as combined capabilities (293-294)

How better than rights/resources approach to

quality of life noted above?