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Deneulin, Séverine Recovering Nussbaum's aristotelian roots Revista Cultura Económica Año XXIX, Nº 81-82, diciembre 2011 Este documento está disponible en la Biblioteca Digital de la Universidad Católica Argentina, repositorio institucional desarrollado por la Biblioteca Central “San Benito Abad”. Su objetivo es difundir y preservar la producción intelectual de la Institución. La Biblioteca posee la autorización del autor para su divulgación en línea. Cómo citar el documento: Deneulin, S. (2011). Recovering Nussbaum's aristotelian roots [en línea], Revista Cultura Económica, 29(81-82). Disponible en: http://bibliotecadigital.uca.edu.ar/repositorio/revistas/recovering-nussbaums-aristotelian.pdf [Fecha de consulta:..........] Recovering Nussbaum’s Aristotelian Roots SÉVERINE DENEULIN1 Revista Cultura Económica Año XXIX • Nº 81/82 Diciembre 2011: 31-37 I. The capabilities approach central human capabilities with fundamental entitlements which governments have Creating Capabilities aims at making accessible responsibility to guarantee. She illustrates to a wide, non-academic audience what the reach of her project with the life of Martha Nussbaum and Amartya Sen have Vasanti, an Indian woman from the state of been advocating for more than three decades. Gujarat who is unable to do many things With his concept of ‘capability’, Sen provided she values doing and being, such as having alternative foundations to economics. Wellbeing, bodily integrity, being educated, having a he argued, is best assessed not in the utility decent and stable employment. Nussbaum space but capability space, that is, in the argues that 1) analyzing Vasanti’s life from freedom people have to do or be what they the perspective of her list gives insight about have reason to value (Sen, 1992). deprivations and sufferings that no other Whereas Sen’s concept of capability offers ethico-theoretical framework would have only an alternative space to utility for assessing highlighted, and 2) the capabilities approach states of affairs, Nussbaum has, ever since her gives citizens some framework to hold their first writings on the topic in the late 1980s, governments responsible and accountable offered a stronger programme for political for what they should do, namely to protect a action. She brings the idea of capabilities set of fundamental individual entitlements. beyond an evaluative space to constitutionally Nussbaum’s project to link Sen’s idea of guaranteed fundamental entitlements. First, she capabilities with political action dates back to has specified further the valuable capabilities the 1980s. Her way of doing so was by setting which constitute the evaluation space of state her list of central human capabilities within of affairs. Whereas Sen situates the evaluation the context of a ‘thick vague theory of the space in the ‘capabilities people have reason good’ (Nussbaum, 1990a: 217). She explicitly to choose and value’ and left it to public rejected Rawls’ political liberalism with the debate to specify ‘valuable’ capabilities (Sen, freedom people have to choose their own 2003), Nussbaum argues for an open-ended conception of the good. Acknowledging that list of ten central human capabilities. Second, her position went against the mainstream in whereas Sen limits the idea of capability to political theory (Nussbaum, 1988: 150), she a comparative exercise for evaluating states contended that there were constituents to a of affairs (Sen, 2009), Nussbaum brings the human life that all humans shared as being idea of capability towards a more fully-fledged worthwhile and that the aim of the government theory of justice. was to provide the structuring conditions for She argues that the aim of her capabilities people to live a good human life. approach – she uses the plural to distinguish According to Nussbaum, that governments her approach from that of Sen’s – is to give ought to create the conditions for people to people opportunities to be or do what they live good human lives does not mean that value being or doing. She associates her list of humans have no choice on how they live. Revista Cultura Económica 31 Each of the constituents of a good human the capabilities approach is sufficient to protect life, eating, having bodily integrity, playing, people’s lives from the destruction of what being in relationships, etc. is infused by choice they value being and doing. The remainder and practical reason. Humans choose what, of the paper examines two problematic when and how to eat, with whom and how aspects of a political-liberal account of the to be with others, with what and how to play, capabilities approach. etc. As Nussbaum wrote in the 1980s: Truly human living requires performing all II. Affiliation and the common good one’s natural activities in a way infused by human choice and rationality; and that the The focus of Nussbaum’s capabilities capability to function in this human way is approach is not on groups but on each person not automatically open to all humans, but as an end, for human beings live separate must be created for them by material and lives from each other. Each person should social conditions (Nussbaum, 1988: 184). be treated as an end in itself. Structures, like the caste system or patriarchy, and groups, Nussbaum’s political activism took another like belonging to a church or self-help group, turn in the mid-1990s when she shifted to are important in determining capability political liberalism. Her list of central human outcomes, but they should be left out from capabilities is no longer a thick vague theory the evaluation space. What matters is not of the good, but a list whose function is what a structure or group is doing, but how similar to Rawls’s list of primary goods. The each individual is doing. central human capabilities are what people As separate as humans are, the person need to have access to in order to pursue is a ‘social being’ (Nussbaum, 2011a: 39) their own conception of the good. Her Nussbaum’s capabilities approach views capabilities approach is no longer based on affiliation as an architectonic capability which a comprehensive vision of the human good influences all other capabilities: ‘Affiliation and of what constitutes good human living organizes the capabilities in which deliberation (performing activities characteristic of human about public policy is a social matter where life according to the exercise of reason). This relationships of many kinds (familial, friendly, political-liberal account accommodates value group-based, political) all play a structuring pluralism and respects people’s freedom to live role’ (Nussbaum, 2011a: 40). a life of their choice, even if one profoundly Nussbaum notes that affiliation can be a disagrees with their choices. One may not ‘fertile’ or ‘corrosive’ capability.2 choose to be a workaholic or have an unhealthy Considering the protagonist of Creating diet for oneself, but one should respect the Capabilities, Vasanti, affiliation both furthers and freedom of others to live such lives. undermines other central human capabilities. Both an Aristotelian and political-liberal Belonging to SEWA, the Self-Employed Women account of the capabilities approach emphasize Agency, one of India and Bangladesh’s biggest the centrality of freedom, but in the former, NGOs, has enabled Vasanti to use a sewing freedom is the expression of practical reason, machine and generate some employment and that is, the outcome of a deliberation of what independence for herself. The good quality constitutes the best decision in the context of the relationships among SEWA members of the human good (Nussbaum, 1990a); in has enabled her to recover a sense of bodily the latter, freedom is no longer constrained integrity through friendship with other women. by concerns for the human good, a life freely But belonging to the scheduled caste, Vasanti chosen is the human good itself. faces racial discrimination and stigma. Given the dominance of liberalism in Affiliation is however treated differently in Anglo-Saxon academic circles, this political- Nussbaum’s Aristotelian and political-liberal liberal move has certainly contributed to the accounts. In the latter, affiliation is a capability capabilities approach being a credible contender whose function is the same as Rawls’s primary as a theory of justice. But it remains to be goods, to provide means for people to pursue proven whether a political-liberal account of whatever conception of the good they have. If 32 Año XXIX • Nº 81/82 • Diciembre 2011 they choose not to make use of that capability, definitions of what a ‘free society’ consists it is their own free choice.3 In the former, of.7 That Germany has different freedom of affiliation is part of what a good human life speech laws regarding the Holocaust than the is. There is no choice about the very fact of United States is a concrete example of the being in relation with other people. Affiliation existence of a common good, of a good which is constitutive of human living, but the ways pertains to a specific set of relationships built one affiliates with other people is subject, to through history but which does not pertain to a lesser or greater extent, to choice. any individual life as such. On an Aristotelian Another difference relates to concerns for account of the capabilities approach, freedom the common good. In the political-liberal of speech is a common end which individuals account, the central human capabilities are pursue together as part of their efforts at enjoyed by separate individuals and not living a good life as members of a specific by individuals who are in relation with one political community. On a political-liberal other and who form something bigger than account, freedom of speech is an all-purpose their sum. There is no common end which good for individuals to pursue their own individuals pursue except establishing the ends. They have no common ends except conditions (the principles of justice) in which establishing the conditions to pursue their people can pursue their chosen ends – this own individual ends.
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