Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-t7fkt Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-28T09:03:45.182Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Sufficiency and the Minimally Good Life

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 March 2021

Nicole Hassoun Open the ORCID record for Nicole Hassoun [Opens in a new window]
Nicole Hassoun*
Affiliation:
Binghamton University, Vestal, USA
*
*Corresponding author. Email: [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

What, if anything, do we owe others as a basic minimum? Sufficiency theorists claim that we must provide everyone with enough – but, to date, few well-worked-out accounts of the sufficiency threshold exist, so it is difficult to evaluate this proposition. Previous theories do not provide plausible, independent accounts of resources, capabilities, or welfare that might play the requisite role. Moreover, I believe existing accounts do not provide nearly enough guidance for policymakers. So, this article sketches a mechanism for arriving at an account of the minimally good life that can help locate the sufficiency threshold.

Type
Article
Information
Utilitas , Volume 33 , Issue 3 , September 2021 , pp. 321 - 336
Check for updates
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press

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

Check, Africa. 2019. FACTSHEET: South Africa's Crime Statistics for 2018/19 (Nairobi: Africa Check), <https://africacheck.org/factsheets/factsheet-south-africas-crime-statistics-for-2018-19/>..' href=https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Check,+Africa.+2019.+FACTSHEET:+South+Africa's+Crime+Statistics+for+2018/19+(Nairobi:+Africa+Check),+.>Google Scholar
Alkire, Sabina. 2002. Valuing Freedoms (Oxford: Oxford University Press).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Angner, Erik. 2011. Current Trends in Welfare Measurement, in The Elgar Companion to Recent Economic Methodology, ed. by Davis, John B. and Wade Hands, D. (Northampton: Edward Elgar Publishing), pp. 121–54.Google Scholar
Arneson, Richard. 1999. Human Flourishing Versus Desire Satisfaction, Social Philosophy & Policy. 16, 113–42.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Arneson, Richard. 2000. Perfectionism and Politics. Ethics, 11, 37–63.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Arneson, Richard. 2006. Distributive Justice and Basic Capability Equality: “Good Enough” Is Not Good Enough, in Capabilities Equality: Basic Issues and Problems, ed. by Kaufman, Alexander (London: Routledge).Google Scholar
Avert. 2020. HIV and AIDS in South Africa. (Brighton, UK: Avert), <https://www.avert.org/professionals/hiv-around-world/sub-saharan-africa/south-africa>..>Google Scholar
Crisp, Roger. 2003. Equality, Priority, and Compassion, Ethics, 113, 745–63.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Braybrooke, David. 1987. Meeting Needs (Princeton: Princeton University Press).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brock, Gillian. 1998. Necessary Goods: Our Responsibilities to Meet Others’ Needs (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield).Google Scholar
Brock, Gillian. 2009. Global Justice: A Cosmopolitan Account (Oxford: Oxford University Press).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Casal, Paula. 2007. Why Sufficiency Is Not Enough, Ethics, 117, 296–327.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chase, Elaine & Bantebya-Kyomuhendo, Grace. 2014. Poverty and Shame: Global Experiences (Oxford: Oxford University Press).Google Scholar
Cohen, Gerald A. 1989. On the Currency of Egalitarian Justice, Ethics, 99(4), 906–44.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cohen, Gerald A. 1994. Amartya Sen's Unequal World, New Left Review, 1(203), 117–29.Google Scholar
Cruft, Rowan. 2015. From a Good Life to Human Rights: Some Complications, in Philosophical Foundations of Human Rights, ed. by Cruft, Rowan, Matthew Liao, S., and Renzo, Massimo (Oxford: Oxford University Press)., pp. 101–16Google Scholar
Darwall, Stephen. 2002. Virtue Ethics (Hoboken: Wiley-Blackwell).Google Scholar
De Cock, N., D'Haese, M., Vink, N., van Rooyen, C. J., Staelens, L., Schönfeldt, H. C., & D'Haese, L.. 2013. Food Security in Rural Areas of Limpopo Province, South Africa. Food Security, 5, 269–82.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dorsey, Dale. 2010. Three Arguments for Perfectionism. Noûs, 44, 59–79.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dorsey, Dale. 2012. The Basic Minimum: A Welfarist Approach (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).Google Scholar
Dworkin, Ronald. 2000. Sovereign Virtue (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press).Google Scholar
Finkelstein, Marni, Wamsley, Mark, & Miranda, Doreen. 2002. What Keeps Children in Foster Care from Succeeding in School? (New York: Vera Institute of Justice), <https://www.vera.org/downloads/Publications/what-keeps-children-in-foster-care-from-succeeding-in-schools-views-of-early-adolescents-and-the-adults-in-their-lives/legacy_downloads/School_success.pdf>..>Google Scholar
Fleurbaey, Marc. 1995. Equal Opportunity or Equal Social Outcome?, Economics and Philosophy, 11, 25–55.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fleurbaey, Marc. 2001. Egalitarian Opportunities, Law and Philosophy, 20, 499–530.Google Scholar
Fleurbaey, Marc. 2008. Fairness, Responsibility, and Welfare (Oxford: Oxford University Press).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Frankfurt, Harry. 1988. The Importance of What We Care About: Philosophical Essays (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fried, Charles. 1976. Equality and Rights in Medical Care. The Hastings Center Report, 6, 29–34.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Goodin, Robert E. 2010. Utilitarianism as a Public Policy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).Google Scholar
Graham, Carol. 2009. Happiness Around the World: The Paradox of Happy Peasants and Miserable Millionaires (New York: Oxford University Press).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Griffin, James. 1986. Well-being: Its Meaning, Measurement, and Moral Importance (Oxford: Clarendon Press).Google Scholar
Hassoun, Nicole. 2009. Meeting Need, Utilitas, 21, 250–275.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hassoun, Nicole. 2011. Raz on the Right to Autonomy, European Journal of Philosophy, 22, 96–109.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hassoun, Nicole. 2012. Globalization and Global Justice: Shrinking Distance, Expanding Obligations (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hassoun, Nicole. 2013. Human Rights and the Minimally Good Life, Res Philosophica, 90, 413–38.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hassoun, Nicole. 2017. The Evolution of Wealth; Democracy or Revolution?, in Wealth: NOMOS LVIII, ed. by Knight, Jack & Schwartzberg, Melissa (New York: NYU Press), pp. 125–45.Google Scholar
Hassoun, Nicole. 2018. The Minimally Good Life Account of Health. Working Paper. harvey.binghamton.edu/~nhassoun/.Google Scholar
Hassoun, Nicole. 2020. Global Health Impact: Extending Access on Essential Medicines for the Poor (Oxford: Oxford University Press).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hassoun, Nicole (forthcoming). Good Enough? The Minimally Good Life Account of the Basic Minimum, Australasian Journal of Philosophy.Google Scholar
Haybron, Daniel M. 2007. Do We Know How Happy We Are? On Some Limits of Affective Introspection and Recall, Noûs, 41, 394–428.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Haybron, Daniel M. 2008. The Pursuit of Unhappiness (Oxford: Clarendon Press).Google Scholar
Haybron, Daniel M. 2013. Happiness: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Herlitz, Anders. 2018. The Indispensability of Sufficientarianism, Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy, 22, 929–42.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Huseby, Robert. 2010. Sufficiency: Restated and Defended, The Journal of Political Philosophy, 18, 178–97.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Huseby, Robert. 2020. Sufficiency and the Threshold Question. The Journal of Ethics, 24, 207–23.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kagan, Shelley. 1994. Me and My Life. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society. New Series, 94, 309–24.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kahneman, Daniel & Deaton, Angus. 2010. High Income Improves Evaluation of Life but Not Emotional Well-Being. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 107, 16489–93.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Killmister, Suzy. 2017. Taking the Measure of Autonomy: A Four-Dimensional Theory of Self-Governance (London: Routledge).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kittay, Eva Feder. 2005. At the Margins of Moral Personhood, Ethics, 116, 100–31.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Knight, Carl. 2015. Abandoning the Abandonment Objection: Luck Egalitarian Arguments for Public Insurance, Res Publica, 21 (2015), 119–35.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kraut, Richard. 1994. Desire and the Human Good, Proceedings and Addresses of the American Philosophical Association, 68, 39–54.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Liao, Matthew. 2015. Human Rights as Fundamental Conditions for a Good Life, in Philosophical Foundations of Human Rights, ed. by Cruft, Rowan, Matthew Liao, S., and Renzo, Massimo (Oxford: Oxford University Press).Google Scholar
Lin, Eden. 2017a. Against Welfare Subjectivism, Noûs, 51, 354–77.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lin, Eden. 2017b. Welfare Invariabilism, Ethics, 128, 320–45.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lippert-Rasmussen, Kasper. 2015. Is Health Profiling Morally Permissible?, Journal of Medical Ethics, 42(5), 330.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Locke, John. 1689. Two Treatises of Government (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).Google Scholar
Miller, David. 2001. Principles of Social Justice (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nickel, James. 2007. Making Sense of Human Rights (Berkeley: University of California Press).Google Scholar
Nielsen, Lasse. 2016. Sufficiency Grounded as Sufficiently Free: A Reply to Shlomi Segall, Journal of Applied Philosophy, 33, 202–16.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nozick, Robert. 1974. Anarchy State and Utopia (New York: Basic Books).Google Scholar
Nussbaum, Martha C. 2000. Women's Capabilities and Social Justice. Journal of Human Development, 1, 219–47.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nussbaum, Martha C. 2006. Frontiers of Justice: Disability, Nationality, Species Membership (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press).Google Scholar
Nussbaum, Martha C. 2011. Creating Capabilities (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press Harvard University Press).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
OECD. 2019. Education at a Glance 2019: Country Note South Africa, OECD Indicators, (Paris: OECD Publishing), <https://www.oecd.org/education/education-at-a-glance/EAG2019_CN_ZAF.pdf>..>Google Scholar
Parfit, Derek. 2011. On What Matters, 2 vols (Oxford: Oxford University Press).Google Scholar
Rawls, John. 1971. A Theory of Justice (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press).Google Scholar
Rawls, John. 1980. Kantian Constructivism in Moral Theory, The Journal of Philosophy, 77, 515–72.Google Scholar
Raz, Joseph. 1986. The Morality of Freedom (Oxford: Clarendon Press).Google Scholar
Rosati, Connie. 1995. Persons, Perspectives, and Full Information Accounts of the Good, Ethics, 105, 296–325.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ruger, Jennifer P. 2016. The Health Capability Paradigm and the Right to Health Care in the United States, Theoretical Medicine and Bioethics, 37(4), 275–92.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Scanlon, Thomas Michael. 1975. Preference and Urgency, Journal of Philosophy, 72, 655–69.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Segall, Shlomi. 2014. What is the Point of Sufficiency?, Journal of Applied Philosophy, 33, 36–52.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sen, Amartya. 1980. Equality of What? in Tanner Lectures on Human Values, ed. by McMurrin, S. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).Google Scholar
Sen, Amartya. 1999. Development as Freedom (New York: Anchor Books).Google Scholar
Sher, George. 2014. Equality for Inegalitarians (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Shields, Liam. 2018. Just Enough Sufficiency as a Demand of Justice (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press).Google Scholar
Smith, Adam. 1904. An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, 5th ed. (New York: P. F. Collier & Son). (Original work 1776.)Google Scholar
Smith, Adam & Haakonssen, Knud. 2002. The Theory of Moral Sentiment (New York: Cambridge University Press). (Original work 1759.)CrossRefGoogle Scholar
South African Government. 2020. Water and Sanitation (Cape Town: South African Government), <https://www.gov.za/about-sa/water-affairs>..>Google Scholar
Tan, Kok-Chor. 2004. Justice Without Borders (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tasioulas, John. 2013. Human Dignity and the Foundations of Human Rights, in Understanding Human Dignity, ed. by McCrudden, Christopher (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), pp. 293–314.Google Scholar
Tiberius, Valerie. 2008. The Reflective Life (New York: Oxford University Press).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. 2016. Child Welfare Outcomes 2016: Report to Congress (Washington D.C.: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services), <https://www.acf.hhs.gov/cb/resource/cwo-2016>..>Google Scholar
Waldron, Jeremy. 1993. Rights in Conflict, in Liberal Rights: Collected Papers 1981–1991, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), pp. 203–25.Google Scholar
Wertheimer, Richard. 2002. Youth Who “Age Out” of Foster Care: Troubled Lives, Troubling Prospects. PsycEXTRA Dataset. (Washington D.C.: Child Trends), <https://www.childtrends.org/publications/youth-who-age-out-of-foster-care-troubled-lives-troubling-prospects>.CrossRef.>Google Scholar
Winderquist, Karl. 2010. How the Sufficiency Minimum Becomes a Social Maximum, Utilitas, 22, 474–80.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wolff, Jonathan & de-Shalit, Avner. 2013. On Fertile Functionings: A Response to Martha Nussbaum, Journal of Human Development and Capabilities, 14, 161–65.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
World Bank. 2019. Life Expectancy at Birth, Total (Years) – South Africa (Washington D.C.: The World Bank), <https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.DYN.LE00.IN?end=1999&locations=ZA.-ZA&start=1960>..>Google Scholar