Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-vdxz6 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-25T13:31:18.920Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

8 - Taking Multidimensionality Seriously

Capabilities, Rawls’s Primary Goods and Guiding Action

from Part I - Historical Antecedents and Philosophical Debates

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 November 2020

Enrica Chiappero-Martinetti
Affiliation:
University of Pavia
Siddiqur Osmani
Affiliation:
Ulster University
Mozaffar Qizilbash
Affiliation:
University of York
Get access

Summary

This essay seeks to get beyond the narrow debate between two candidate grounds for indexing advantage in accounts of justice: the Rawlsian primary goods of income and wealth and capability or capabilities. Rawls is more deeply committed to multidimensionality than this debate has tended to recognize. Commitment to multidimensionality is shallow if each of the multiple dimensions is seen as contributory to something sought only for its own sake that can be adequately represented along a single dimension, such as welfare or well-being as they are sometimes conceived. To avoid treating multidimensionality shallowly — whether within the domain of justice or outside it — defenders of appealing to capabilities would do well to follow Rawls in recognizing a division of moral labour among multiple principles, with the different principles serving different social values and addressing different sets of social institutions. This approach offers an attractive and flexible alternative to single-principle outcome-ranking approaches. Along the way, in reference to the older debates, it is shown that there is, for Rawls, no single currency of justice and that he has serious reasons, grounded in respect for the fact of pluralism, to avoid resting too much theoretical weight on the idea of well-being.

Type
Chapter
Information
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2020

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Alkire, S. 2016. ‘The Capability Approach and Well-Being: Measurement for Public Policy’, in Adler, M. D. and Fleurbaey, M (eds.). The Oxford Handbook of Well-Being and Public Policy. Oxford University Press: 615644.Google Scholar
Alkire, S. and Santos, M. E. 2009. ‘Poverty and Inequality Measurement’, in Deneulin, S and Shahani, L (eds.). An Introduction to the Human Development and Capability Approach: Freedom and Agency. Abingdon: Taylor & Francis: 121161.Google Scholar
Alkire, S., Foster, J. E., Seth, S., Santos, M. E., Roche, J. M. and Ballón, P. 2015. Multidimensional Poverty Measurement and Analysis. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Anderson, E. 2010. ‘Justifying the Capabilities Approach to Justice’, in Brighouse and Robeyns 2010: 81100.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Aristotle, . 1984. The Complete Works of Aristotle (ed. Barnes, J). Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Arneson, R. J. 2013. ‘Equality of Opportunity: Derivative not Fundamental’. Journal of Social Philosophy 44: 316330.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brighouse, H. and Robeyns, I. (eds.) 2010. Measuring Justice: Primary Goods and Capabilities. Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cohen, G. A. 1989. ‘On the Currency of Egalitarian Justice’. Ethics 99: 906944.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cohen, G. A. 1997. ‘Where the Action Is: On the Site of Distributive Justice’. Philosophy & Public Affairs 26: 330.Google Scholar
Dietrich, F. 2015. ‘Aggregation Theory and the Relevance of Some Issues to Others’. Journal of Economic Theory 160: 463493.Google Scholar
Drèze, J. and Khera, R. 2017. ‘Recent Social Security Initiatives in India’. World Development 98: 555572.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Foster, J. E. 2011. ‘Freedom, Opportunity, and Well-Being’, in Arrow, K. J., Sen, A and Suzumura, K (eds.). Handbook of Social Choice and Welfare, vol. II. Amsterdam: North-Holland: 687728.Google Scholar
Katzmann, R. A. 1986. Institutional Disability: The Saga of Transportation Policy for the Disabled. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution.Google Scholar
Kelly, E. I. 2017. ‘The Historical Injustice Problem for Political Liberalism’. Ethics 128: 7594.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nussbaum, M. C. 2000. Women and Human Development: The Capabilities Approach. Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Nussbaum, M. C. 2006. Frontiers of Justice: Disability, Nationality, Species Membership. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Nussbaum, M. C. 2011. Creating Capabilities: The Human Development Approach. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Pogge, T. ‘A Critique of the Capability Approach’, in Brighouse and Robeyns 2010: 1760.Google Scholar
Rawls, J. 1999. A Theory of Justice, rev. ed. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Rawls, J. 2001. Justice as Fairness: A Restatement (ed. Kelly, E). Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Rawls, J. 2005. Political Liberalism, expanded ed. Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
Richardson, H. S. 1992. ‘Degrees of Finality and the Highest Good in Aristotle’. Journal of the History of Philosophy 30: 327352.Google Scholar
Richardson, H. S. 2006. ‘Rawlsian Social Contract Theory and the Severely Disabled’. Journal of Ethics 10: 419462 (repr. in F. Comim and M. C. Nussbaum (eds.). 2013. Capability, Gender, Equality: Towards Fundamental Entitlements. Cambridge University Press: 57–95).Google Scholar
Richardson, H. S. 2012. ‘Mapping Out Improvements in Justice: Comparing vs Aiming’. Rutgers University Law Journal 43: 211241.Google Scholar
Richardson, H. S. 2015. ‘Using Final Ends for the Sake of Better Policy-Making’. Journal of Human Development and Capabilities 16: 161172.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Richardson, H. S. 2016. ‘Intelligence and Transparency in Health Technology Assessment’. International Journal of Technology Assessment in Health Care 32: 36.Google Scholar
Richardson, H. S. 2017. ‘Locating Medical Researchers’ Ancillary-Care Obligations within the Division of Moral Labor’, in Liao, S. M. and O’Neil, C. (eds.). Current Controversies in Bioethics. New York: Routledge: 1528.Google Scholar
Robeyns, I. 2017. Wellbeing, Freedom, and Social Justice: The Capability Approach Re-Examined. Cambridge: Open Book.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Scheffler, S. 2005. ‘Egalitarian Liberalism as Moral Pluralism’. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 79 (suppl. vol.): 229253.Google Scholar
Sen, A. K. 1967. ‘The Nature and Value of Prescriptive Judgments’. Philosophical Quarterly 17: 4662.Google Scholar
Sen, A. K. 1979. Collective Choice and Social Welfare. Amsterdam: Elsevier (first published 1970).Google Scholar
Sen, A. K. 1982. ‘Equality of What?’ in Sen, A. K.. Choice, Welfare, and Measurement. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press: 353369 (first published 1980).Google Scholar
Sen, A. K. 1995. Inequality Reexamined. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Sen, A. K. 1999. Commodities and Capabilities. New Delhi: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Sen, A. K. 2002. Rationality and Freedom. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Sen, A. K. 2009. The Idea of Justice. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Sen, A. K. 2010. ‘The Place of Capability in a Theory of Justice’, in Brighouse and Robeyns 2010: 239253.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Young, M. 1958. The Rise of the Meritocracy. London: Thames and Hudson.Google Scholar

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×