Central to Amartya Sen's understanding and defense of political orders that promote equality is his appeal to human capabilities. However, he fails to provide a basis for their selection, weighting, and value. Moreover, the account of ethical reasoning by which he does attempt to respond to basic challenges is highly problematic. It not only conflicts with a view of human flourishing that is individualized, agent-relative, and self-directed but also offers neither justification for nor principled limitation of state (...) imposed solutions. (shrink)

Poland has produced two of the greatest economists of the past century, namely Michal Kalecki and Oskar Lange. Both worked with a wide and penetrating view of the economy and society, more typical of the great classical economists than of those of their own time. During the post-World War II 'Golden Age of Growth', while Keynes was the patron saint of economic theory and policy in the industrialised capitalist countries, Kalecki and Lange had a similar influence and role among the (...) developing nations and – perhaps to a lesser extent – in socialist countries. Kalecki's 'The problem of financing of economic development' (Kalecki, 1954), and Lange's 'Some observations on input-output analysis' (Lange, 1957), in particular,deeply influenced the approach to economic and social development of a whole strand of structural economics, both in terms of economic analysis and practical policy. With the end of the Golden Age and the momentous neoliberal reaction then started, they became almost forgotten. The economics of Kalecki, however, has inspired in the last few decades the renaissance of a genuine – albeit still marginal(ised) – form of Keynesianism, the so called 'post-Keynesianism' ('bastard Keynesianism', as Joan Robinson called it, being the dominant, mainstream form of Keynesianism). Oskar Lange, on the other hand, does not yet seem to have been re-discovered to inspire a similar renaissance of advanced analysis and planning of policies for modern structural change and development. This paper proposes such a re-discovery. The main concern of Lange's 'Observations' is the appropriate intersectoral allocation of investment for efficient output growth. While output growth is still one of the main objectives in most societies, the growth of human capabilities should be an increasingly relevant concern, both in its own right, and in view of the existing ecological constraints. Buzaglo (2014a; b) postulated the existence of an  (aleph) matrix, describing the proportions of the different capabilities necessary for the achievement of every particular capability. The present paper is about introducing capabilities within Lange's framework of analysis. A Lange-inspired analysis investigates the appropriate structures and properties of capability-enhancing growth paths. (shrink)

A preimplantation genetic test to discriminate between severe and mild autism spectrum disorder might be developed in the foreseeable future. Recently, the philosophers Julian Savulescu and Guy Kahane claimed that there are strong reasons for prospective parents to make use of such a test to prevent the birth of children who are disposed to autism or Asperger’s disorder. In this paper we will criticize this claim. We will discuss the morality of selection for mild autism in embryo selection in a (...) hypothetical in vitro fertilization (IVF) situation where preimplantation genetic diagnosis is performed and compare this with a similar selection for congenital deafness. To do this we first discuss relevant human differences. We then introduce the principle of human capabilities (PC) and compare this principle with the principle of procreative beneficence (PB) introduced by Savulescu and Kahane. We apply the two principles to selection for mild autism and selection for congenital deafness. We argue that PC allows for the selection for mild autism but rules out selection for congenital deafness. PB will not give clear answers; the ruling of PB depends to a large extent on expected social, cultural and political developments. We will argue that PC is preferable to PB. We will discuss arguments for the value of mild autism for individuals who have this condition and argue that they are able to lead a life with human dignity provided autism-friendly social circumstances are present. Neither PC nor PB yields strong reasons for prospective parents to seek to prevent the birth of children who are disposed to mild autism spectrum disorder. (shrink)

What does it mean to be truly human? And, relatedly, what does it mean to be treated as truly human, and with dignity, by the state, or community, of which one is a part? To be fully human, Martha Nussbaum has argued for the better part of two decades, and argues in greater detail in “Women and Human Development”, is not only to be rational, and not only to be happy, but also to be capable - (...) capable, for example, of loving others, of thinking rationally about one's own life, of engaging in dignified labor, of interacting with the natural and political environment, of participating in a society's cultural life. A truly human life is defined by, or perhaps constituted by, these capabilities; to lack anyone of them is in some way to lack a fundamental pillar of one's humanity. Therefore, she continues, a citizen in a constitutional government is treated as fully human by the state when that person's fundamental capabilities - the capabilities which define her humanity - are, at least minimally, protected, promoted or nurtured by the state's governing authorities. Constitutional governments, then, whatever else they do, must protect, promote, or create whatever conditions are necessary for citizens to possess these fundamental capabilities... I will highlight and then amplify what I think is missing or underplayed in Nussbaum's treatment of capabilities and women, and that is the role that authority plays - and the role it should and should not play - in guiding states toward a recognition of their obligation to nurture, promote, or protect women's - and men's and children's - human capabilities. (shrink)

To live in human community is, in part, to owe debts to others and to be owed in return. How should we evaluate, normatively, the varied forms, practices, institutions, and relationships of debt? Which should be constrained and which accepted or encouraged? These questions have far-reaching implications given the pervasiveness of debt within human experience. This paper brings the resources of the capabilities approach developed by Amartya Sen and Martha Nussbaum to bear on normative assessments of debt. (...) Our thesis is that the theoretical resources provided by this approach can help philosophers to examine the wide range of costs and benefits afforded by actual debts. We examine six contemporary examples of debt, arguing that the capabilities approach offers a nuanced and holistic framework for evaluating each. The framework is nuanced in that it provides resources for conducting fine-grained analyses of different cases and related policy proposals. It is holistic in that it takes into account more than a narrow range of either positive or negative considerations, instead encompassing the wide array of debt’s bodily, cognitive, and social impacts upon individuals. (shrink)

The notion of competencies has been a familiar feature of educational reform policies for decades. In this essay, Pádraig Hogan begins by highlighting the contrasting notion of capabilities, pioneered by the research of Amartya Sen and Martha Nussbaum. An educational variant of the notion of capabilities then becomes the basis for exploring venturesome environments of learning: environments that are hospitable to the cultivation of such capabilities among students and their teachers. In this exploration Hogan emphasizes disclosing the (...) kinds of relations that constitute such environments. In particular, he identifies four kinds of relations and investigates the interplay among them. In the second part of the essay, Hogan reviews an ongoing research project in Ireland that has been promoting such environments in postprimary education: Teaching and Learning for the 21st Century. Although the project avoids proffering universal claims about “what works,” its rationale and conduct nevertheless call policymakers' attention to what has worked and to the reasons why. (shrink)

The potential contributions information and communication technology (ICT) can make to advancing human capabilities are acknowledged by both the capability approach (CA) and ICT communities. However, there is a lack of genuine engagement between the two communities. This paper addresses the question: How can a collaborative dialogue between the CA and ICT communities be advanced? A prerequisite to exploring collaboratively the potential use of particular technologies with specific capabilities is a conceptual framework within which a dialogue can (...) be undertaken to advance the operationalization of capabilities through the use of ICT. A communicative connection constituted of a dialogic space consisting of the CA and ICT communities and a set of normative values and objectives is proposed. The normative values of the communicative connection are derived from the human right to communicate (RTC) which serves as axiomatic principle of the communicative connection. The shared objectives are to operationalize through the use of ICT both the capability and the right to communicate, which are distinct but present in and reinforce each other. Alternative concepts of communication and freedom of expression to those held by the two communities is presented along with a comparison of the values embodied in the RTC and found in the CA. (shrink)

ABSTRACT:Promoting dignity is at the heart of the human capability approach to development. We introduce the concept of stakeholder capability enhancement, beginning with a discussion of the capability approach to development proposed by Sen (1985) and further advanced by Nussbaum (1990) to incorporate notions of dignity. Thereafter follows a review of the literature on value creation stakeholder management and convergent stakeholder theory (Freeman, 1984; Freeman, Harrison, Wicks, Palmer, & DeColle, 2010; Harrison & Wicks, 2013; Jones & Wicks, 1999), as (...) the foundation for our concept of stakeholder capability enhancement. The remainder of this article develops a model that integrates stakeholder management with the human capability approach to detail the cooperative advantage that accrues to business and its stakeholders, as well as the gains in social wellbeing and dignity, when stakeholder capability enhancement becomes a common enterprise strategy. The model also explores the risks and boundary conditions firms face when seeking to profit from stakeholder capability tradeoffs. In explaining the model, we explore normative responsibilities and consequences with regard to human capabilities and dignity. We conclude with implications for future research. (shrink)

In this contribution to Text Matters, I would like to introduce gender into my feminist response to Paul Ricoeur’s hermeneutic phenomenology of the capable subject. The aim is to make, phenomenologically speaking, “visible” the gendering of this subject in a hermeneutic problematic: that of a subject’s loss of confidence in her own ability to understand herself. Ricoeurian hermeneutics enables us to elucidate the generally hidden dimensions in a phenomenology of lost self-confidence; Ricoeur describes capability as “originally given” to each lived (...) body; but then, something has happened, gone wrong or been concealed in one’s loss of confidence. Ricoeur himself does not ask how the gender or sex of one’s own body affects this loss. So I draw on contemporary feminist debates about the phenomenology of the body, as well as Julia Kristeva’s hermeneutics of the Antigone figure, in order to demonstrate how women might reconfigure the epistemic limits of human capability, revealing themselves as “a horizon” of the political order, for better or worse. (shrink)

Violence, poverty, and illness are all too prevalent in our world. In order to alleviate their hold systematically, we need normative schemes with a global reach and with definite responsibilities. Martha Nussbaum’s human capabilities theory (Martha Nussbaum 2006) provides us with an insightful example. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (The United Nations 1948), however, already includes most of the human capabilities central to Nussbaum’s theory, and violence, poverty, and illness usually appear as objectionable enough (...) without any additional reference to capabilities. In the current article, the author argues that the primary global responsibilities can mainly be established without Nussbaum’s account of capabilities. The human rights-based approach is more promising for this purpose (Jack Donnelly 2007; Abigail Gosselin, Human Rights Review 8:35–52, 2006; Ivar Kolstad, Human Rights Review, doi:10.1007/s12142-008-0103-1, 2008). However, the author also contends that Nussbaum’s theory may be very instructive as a relatively comprehensive moral approach that supplements the human rights view and inspires its adherents to assume secondary responsibilities in addition to the primary ones. Once we learn to see Nussbaum’s agenda in this way, not as the global program, but as one of the many reasonable and relatively comprehensive views in the global background culture, we can also learn to cultivate the responsibilities it implies in a duly dialogical way. (shrink)

Part 1. Human capability in light of God's power -- Divine power and the creation -- God's will and human destiny -- Part 2. Human capability to understand God -- Human knowledge -- Human knowledge of God -- Part 3. Human capability in relation to doctrinal ordination -- Criteria of Christian authorities -- Philosophical freedom and doctrinal minimalism : two test cases -- Conclusion.

I argue for a conception of health as a person's ability to achieve or exercise a cluster of basic human activities. These basic activities are in turn specified through free-standing ethical reasoning about what constitutes a minimal conception of a human life with equal human dignity in the modern world. I arrive at this conception of health by closely following and modifying Lennart Nordenfelt's theory of health which presents health as the ability to achieve vital goals. Despite (...) its strengths I transform Nordenfelt's argument in order to overcome three significant drawbacks. Nordenfelt makes vital goals relative to each community or context and significantly reflective of personal preferences. By doing so, Nordenfelt's conception of health faces problems with both socially relative concepts of health and subjectively defined wellbeing. Moreover, Nordenfelt does not ever explicitly specify a set of vital goals. The theory of health advanced here replaces Nordenfelt's (seemingly) empty set of preferences and society-relative vital goals with a human species-wide conception of basic vital goals, or ‘central human capabilities and functionings’. These central human capabilities come out of the capabilities approach (CA) now familiar in political philosophy and economics, and particularly reflect the work of Martha Nussbaum. As a result, the health of an individual should be understood as the ability to achieve a basic cluster of beings and doings—or having the overarching capability, a meta-capability, to achieve a set of central or vital inter-related capabilities and functionings. (shrink)

Read Jorge Buzaglo's paper 'Expanding Human Capabilities: Lange's "Observations" Updated for the 21st Century' ›...

. Human capabilities theory has emerged as an important framework for measuring whether various social systems promote human flourishing. The premise of this theory is that human beings share some nearly universal capabilities; what makes a human life fulfilling is the opportunity to exercise these capabilities. This essay proposes that the use of human capabilities theory can be expanded to assess whether a company has organized the work environment in such a (...) way that allows workers to develop a variety of human capabilities. This mode of analysis is put forward as a complement to the work of Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, who has suggested that the key to promoting human well-being in the workplace is the maximization of flow experiences. (shrink)

This chapter sets forth an interpretation of public reason that appeals to our central capabilities as human beings. I argue that appealing to central human capabilities and to the related idea of respect for threshold capabilities is the best way to understand public reason. My defense of this position advances stepwise: first, I consider a central alternative to a capability account, which regards public reason as a matter of contracting; next, I describe central concerns with (...) contract views and show how a capability view can avoid them; lastly, I consider extending public reason beyond national borders and test the two views in this context. (shrink)

This article argues that while modes of scholarship stressing structural insights into the digital divide and ethnographic insights into online communities each give us important information about current uses of the internet, for the sake of a unified social justice principle it is necessary to interpret these forms of knowledge in terms of what could be. Marx’s formula ‘the development of each as a condition for the development of all’ is put forward as the principle of a socially-just internet actualized (...) from the ground up. It is argued that the most rapidly emerging and important form of constraint upon ‘the development of each’ is the for profit online social media industry in which moments of human communicative creativity become packaged as commodities for commercial purposes. Creative, cultural agency becomes an imposition rather than a liberation as represented in the industry ideology. It is argued therefore that groups that use the internet for serious play – the use of avatars in virtual worlds is discussed as an example – present us with a form of online subjectivity that is rising in importance as a form of cultural agency inasmuch as the play component is premised upon the rejection of pre-packaged forms of agency. Support for a socially-just internet would thus mean supporting the online communities formed in this process. Thus the argument is put forward that the importance of serious online play groups is not due to their potential for forming communities per se but is rather due to their potential for resisting the imposition of agency. Inasmuch as online communities in the midst of such groups can bolster that goal, they can represent the development of human capabilities in a way that expands the theme of social justice. (shrink)

This paper provides a critical exploration of the capability approach to human rights (CAHR) with the specific aim of developing its potential for achieving a synthesis between “humanist” or “naturalistic” and “political” or “practical” perspectives in the philosophy of human rights. Section II presents a general strategy for achieving such a synthesis. Section III provides an articulation of the key insights of CAHR (its focus on actual realizations given diverse circumstances, its pluralism of grounds, its emphasis on freedom (...) of choice, its demand for public reasoning, its context-sensitive universalism, and its broad view of obligations). These insights go some way toward the achievement of the desired synthesis. But, as explained in IV.1, in its current form CAHR faces two serious objections by the defenders of the political perspective: the Gap Between Capabilities-Interests and Rights Objection and the Disconnect From Practice Objection. Answering these criticisms requires some amendments to CAHR. Section IV.2 suggests a response to the first objection based on the introduction of a contractualist framework of justification. Sections IV.3 and IV.4 tackle the second objection by introducing a re-characterization of the cosmopolitan standard underlying the humanist perspective and by identifying the differences and relations between various dimensions of a conception of human rights and their significance for actual political practice. The paper illustrates the practical implications of CAHR, in its modified form, for the pursuit of some important rights. (shrink)

Even after two millennia, through her adherence to the Hegelian/sartrean model of transcendence versus immanence, Simone de Beauvoir perpetuated the valorization of male risk-taking over the creation and nurture of life, obligations she assigned solely to the female. Nonetheless, her dispassionate, meticulous, phenomenological description of women's lived experience in The Second Sex, combined with her insistence that women, in spite of their oppression, must choose to become subjects, to `engage in freely chosen projects', has spurred contemporary feminist theorists to expand (...) the definition of the ethical and the moral to value female experience. The emancipatory discourse, therefore, has been extended by the work of feminists such as Martha Nussbaum, Luce Irigaray and Carol Gilligan, who insist upon the inclusion of marginalized `others' in the definition of `human being' and `ethical activity'. (shrink)

Contemporary global politics is characterized by an increasing trend toward experimental forms of governance, with an emphasis on private governance. A plurality of private standards, codes of conduct and quality assurance schemes currently developed particularly, though not exclusively, by TNCs replace traditional intergovernmental regimes in addressing profound global environmental and socio-economic challenges ranging from forest deforestation, fisheries depletion, climate change, to labor and human rights concerns. While this trend has produced a heated debate in science and politics, surprisingly little (...) attention has been paid on the effects of private governance on questions of distribution and justice. This is highly problematic. At the beginning of the twenty-first century global inequalities are greater than ever before, while rapid economic, social, political, and environmental changes threaten to further derail sustainable development and humanitarian objectives. If private governance creates or intensifies some of the pressing global inequalities (e.g., food security), and alleviates others (e.g., environmental degradation), from a business ethics perspective, we need to know which aspects need to be strengthened and where appropriate interventions are necessary and desirable. This paper proposes a framework to examine and classify the distributive outcomes of private governance institutions through the lenses of one particular approach to distributive justice, the capability approach. Empirically, it focuses on agrifood one area where the controversy regarding the distributive concerns of private governance are particularly pronounced. (shrink)

Nussbaum’s version of the capability approach is not only a helpful approach to development problems but can also be employed as a general ethical-anthropological framework in ‘advanced’ societies. This paper explores its normative force for evaluating information technologies, with a particular focus on the issue of human enhancement. It suggests that the capability approach can be a useful way of to specify a workable and adequate level of analysis in human enhancement discussions, but argues that any interpretation of (...) what these capabilities mean is itself dependent on (interpretations of) the techno-human practices under discussion. This challenges the capability approach’s means-end dualism concerning the relation between on the one hand technology and on the other hand humans and capabilities. It is argued that instead of facing a choice between development and enhancement, we better reflect on how we want to shape human-technological practices, for instance by using the language of capabilities. For this purpose, we have to engage in a cumbersome hermeneutics that interprets dynamic relations between unstable capabilities, technologies, practices, and values. This requires us to modify the capability approach by highlighting and interpreting its interpretative dimension. (shrink)

When you enrol as a student you are assigned a ‘place’ in education. This assignment will gradually imply an assessment of you as a human being. We argue that these are processes taking place in educational practice. In our orientation in educational research an orientation towards a theory of action has been inspired by the French philosopher Paul Ricoeur. In our search for an educational practice that could describe what it is that makes the student a capable human (...) being we continue in the spirit of Ricoeur. The text is divided in two parts. In the first part, Basic Capabilities in Education, we are asking: Who is the student if education is the process where the student learns to be a capable human being? We try to answer this with the help of Ricoeur’s phenomenology of the capable human being which is structured around the capacity to speak, to act, to tell and finally to impute. In the second part, Institutional Mediations of Capabilities in Education, we try to show how the transmission of the human capacities to an actualization through education at an institutional level, represented by the teacher, is necessary. If the student shall become a capable human being s/he has to have conditions for actualizations of her capacities. A paradigm for this is found in the process of assigning and assessing in education. (shrink)

The starting point of this paper is the need to promote a people-centred corporate social responsibility framework in a context where many human needs and rights remain unsatisfied and where businesses may have both a positive and a negative impact on the quality of life of human beings today and tomorrow and may even lead to irreversible damage. Our normative definition of CSR is consistent with the criteria established by the EU Commission in 2011. We conceive CSR as (...) a responsibility towards human development in two complementary ways: a holistic responsibility shared by companies together with other actors to safeguard humanity and a direct liability of each company for its impact on stakeholders' capabilities. We apply Nussbaum's list of central capabilities and concept of thresholds to specify the nature and extent of corporate responsibilities towards employees, subcontractors, investors, customers, and humanity as a whole. In addition, we leverage fieldwork in developing and developed countries to analyse the effect of business activities on human capabilities. We demonstrate that by quantifying the impact of businesses' activities on various dimensions of stakeholders' lives, and especially on the most vulnerable ones, these businesses can be held accountable for the negative externalities they produce. (shrink)

In this paper I describe a novel application of contemplative techniques to software engineering with the goal of augmenting the intellectual capabilities of knowledge workers within the field in four areas: flexibility, attention, creativity, and trust. The augmentation of software engineers’ intellectual capabilities is proposed as a third complement to the traditional focus of methodologies on the process and environmental factors of the software development endeavor. I argue that these capabilities have been shown to be open to (...) improvement through the practices traditionally used in spiritual traditions, but now used increasingly in other fields of knowledge work, such as in the medical profession and the education field. Historically, the intellectual capabilities of software engineers have been treated as a given within any particular software development effort. This is argued to be an aspect ripe for inclusion within software development methodologies. (shrink)

This book presents the argument that health has special moral importance because of the disadvantage one suffers when subjected to impairment or disabling barriers. Christopher A. Riddle asserts that ill health and the presence of disabling barriers are human rights issues and that we require a foundational conception of justice in order to promote the rights of people with disabilities. The claim that disability is a human rights issue is defended on the grounds that people with disabilities experience (...) violations to their dignity, equality, and autonomy. Because human rights exist as a subset of other justice-based rights, Riddle contends that we must support a foundation of justice compatible with endorsing these three principles. This volume argues that the “capabilities approach” is the best currency of justice for removing the disabling barriers that consistently violate approximately one billion people’s human rights. (shrink)

In this critique, Martha Nussbaum argues that our dominant theories of development have given us policies that ignore our most basic human needs for dignity and self-respect.

Animalism is the view that we are primarily living beings of the species Homo sapiens. Being alive consists in the realization of biological processes. Accordingly, our conditions of existence and persistence have nothing to do with things like mental continuity. Hence, mental capabilities seem to be irrelevant to understanding the core of our nature as human beings. In recent years, the debate on animalism has focused on certain intractable ontological puzzles. However important these puzzles may be, they do (...) not get to the heart of the widespread reluctance to accept animalism. One crucial reason lies in the fact that this view does not seem to respect our deeply entrenched understanding of ourselves as mental beings. The aim of my paper is thus to provide a stronger conception of the ontological relevance of our mental capabilities – without giving up the cen- tral claims of animalism. In particular, I discuss three proposals: first, the idea that being a human being involves the potential to develop mental capabilities; second, the idea that it is an essential feature of human beings to have a brain with the natural function of developing mental capabilities; and third, the idea that the ontological relevance of mental capabilities may emerge in the context of specifying something like the general human form of life. (shrink)

The paper presents the two-fold intuitive idea regarding the meaning of being human in the philosophy of Martha Nussbaum which is anchored on Karl Marx's concept of human dignity and Aristotle's eudaimonia, as applied to the concept of human development which was first developed by Amartya Sen in his Capability Approach.

The capability approach is gaining momentum as a theory of corporate responsibility and business ethics at a time when the UN Guiding Principles have become a most important framework. A novel approach is now emerging that seeks to understand and specify human rights obligations of businesses within the framework provided by the capability approach. This article partially examines the triad corporate responsibility–human rights–capability approach by exploring the relationship between human rights and capabilities. Thus, it offers conceptual (...) and practical implications for a human rights perspective on corporate responsibility. The bulk of our thesis focuses on studying Nussbaum’s and Sen’s claim that human rights are entitlements to capabilities by means of a discussion of the notion of human dignity. In particular, we show the capability approach’s ability to dissipate theoretical and practical challenges posed by the notion of dignity. This article does not offer a detailed explanation of the implications of our investigation for human rights responsibilities of business. However, an outline of its potential contribution toward unfolding those obligations, conceptually and practically, is provided. (shrink)

While artificial intelligence (AI) is increasingly applied for decision-making processes, ethical decisions pose challenges for AI applications. Given that humans cannot always agree on the right thing to do, how would ethical decision-making by AI systems be perceived and how would responsibility be ascribed in human-AI collaboration? In this study, we investigate how the expert type (human vs. AI) and level of expert autonomy (adviser vs. decider) influence trust, perceived responsibility, and reliance. We find that participants consider humans (...) to be more morally trustworthy but less capable than their AI equivalent. This shows in participants’ reliance on AI: AI recommendations and decisions are accepted more often than the human expert’s. However, AI team experts are perceived to be less responsible than humans, while programmers and sellers of AI systems are deemed partially responsible instead. (shrink)

There appears to be a tension between two commitments in liberalism. The first is that citizens, as rational agents possessing dignity, are owed a justification for principles of justice. The second is that members of society who do not meet the requirements of rational agency are owed justice. These notions conflict because the first commitment is often expressed through the device of the social contract, which seems to confine the scope of justice to rational agents. So, contractarianism seems to ignore (...) the justice claims of the severely cognitively impaired. To solve this problem, Martha Nussbaum proposes the capabilities approach. The justifiability condition, on this approach, is met by the idea of overlapping consensus. This essay argues that overlapping consensus cannot meet liberalism’s justifiability condition, nor is it more inclusive of the cognitively impaired. Therefore, we have reason to retain the contract device and look for another way to ensure that liberalism respects the justice claims of all. (shrink)

Book Information Women and Human Development: The Capabilities Approach. By Martha C. Nussbaum. Cambridge University Press. Cambridge/New York. 2000. Pp. xxi + 312.

Economist Amartya Sen’s and philosopher Martha Nussbaum’s capabilities approach to economic development enjoys global attention, and there has been considerable interest in connections between it and pragmatism. 1 This paper argues, first, that there are indeed strong, productive affinities between Sen’s and Nussbaum’s understanding of ‘capabilities’ in rethinking how economies are to be developed and measured, on the one hand, and John Dewey’s notion of ‘growth’ and applications of pragmatism to economics, by economists such as Thorstein Veblen, John (...) Commons, and, more recently, Daniel Bromley, to rethink and to reconstruct their discipline, on the other. Second, the paper suggests that Dewey’s notion of ‘growth’ can do much to strengthen and to deepen Sen’s and Nussbaum’s “capabilities approaches” to economics. Third, it suggests that Dewey enriches notions of ‘science’ and ‘democracy’, which are largely underdeveloped in capabilities approaches. (shrink)