Creating Capabilities: The Human Development Approach

Overview

Creating Capabilities: The Human Development Approach, published in 2011, is Martha Nussbaum's most accessible and systematic statement of the capabilities approach, a framework for thinking about human development, social justice, and the quality of life. The book argues that the proper measure of a society's success is not economic growth, utility, or resource distribution, but whether its members are able to do and be the things they have reason to value. The approach has become one of the most influential alternatives to mainstream economic and utilitarian thinking about human welfare.

Nussbaum presents the capabilities approach as both a philosophical theory of justice and a practical tool for policy evaluation. She argues that all human beings, regardless of their circumstances, are entitled to a threshold level of a set of central capabilities, and that a just society must secure these capabilities for every citizen. The book is notable for its insistence on the equal dignity of every person and its rejection of approaches that treat individuals as mere means to aggregate social welfare.

Key Ideas

The Capabilities Approach

The capabilities approach holds that the fundamental question of social justice is not "How much utility do people have?" or "How many resources do they possess?" but "What are they actually able to do and to be?" This shift from resources to functioning is the core of the approach. Resources are only valuable insofar as they enable people to function in ways they have reason to value. A person with a disability may need more resources than others to achieve the same functioning, and an approach that focuses only on resources will miss this inequality.

The Ten Central Capabilities

Nussbaum argues that there are ten central capabilities that every society must secure for all its citizens at a threshold level. They are: life; bodily health; bodily integrity; senses, imagination, and thought; emotions; practical reason; affiliation (including both friendship and self-respect); other species; play; and control over one's political and material environment. These capabilities are not derived from any single comprehensive doctrine but are the object of an overlapping consensus among reasonable people. Nussbaum claims that they are universal and plural: they apply to all human beings everywhere, and none can be traded off against another.

Each Person as an End

A central principle of the capabilities approach is that each person is an end, not a means to the ends of others. The approach is therefore resolutely individualist at the level of evaluation: it asks not about the average or aggregate capability in a society, but about whether each and every person has reached the threshold. This distinguishes it from utilitarian approaches that permit the sacrifice of some for the benefit of others, and from approaches that focus on the family or the household as the unit of analysis.

The Distinction from Human Capital

Nussbaum carefully distinguishes the capabilities approach from the human capital approach in economics. The human capital approach treats education, health, and other goods as investments that increase productivity and economic growth. The capabilities approach, by contrast, treats them as valuable in themselves, as aspects of a life worthy of human dignity. A person's education is valuable not only because it makes them more productive but because it enables them to think, imagine, and participate in political life. The capabilities approach insists that the value of these goods is not reducible to their contribution to economic output.

Legacy

Creating Capabilities has been enormously influential in development economics, political philosophy, and international policy. The capabilities approach has been adopted by the United Nations Development Programme as the conceptual framework for the Human Development Index, which measures national development not by GDP alone but by a composite of health, education, and income indicators. The approach has also shaped the design of social policy in many countries, particularly in the areas of education, healthcare, and disability rights.

The book has also generated extensive philosophical debate. Critics have questioned whether the list of ten central capabilities is truly universal or reflects a particular liberal Western conception of the good. Others have argued that the capabilities approach does not give sufficient weight to the importance of economic growth or to the role of markets in generating opportunity. Nussbaum's responses to these criticisms have refined and deepened the approach, and the debate continues. The questions the book raises, about what justice requires and what dignity demands, remain at the center of contemporary political philosophy.

Sources

1. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, "Martha Nussbaum." Comprehensive survey of Nussbaum's work on the capabilities approach and its philosophical foundations.
2. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, "The Capability Approach." Detailed analysis of the capability approach and its applications.