Nussbaum's Capabilities Approach: A Pragmatist Critique

Women and Human Development: The Capabilities Approach. Martha C. Nussbaum. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000. Pp. xxi + 334. $24.95 h.c. 0-521-66086-6; $19.95 pbk. 0-521-00385-7.

According to the dust jacket of her recent book Women and Human Development: The Capabilities Approach, Martha Nussbaum

Proposes a new kind of feminism that is genuinely international, argues for an ethical underpinning to all thought about development planning and public policy, and dramatically moves beyond the abstractions of economists and philosophers to embed thought about justice in the concrete reality of the struggles of poor women.

If this claim is true, pragmatists and any who believe that reform must be democratically grounded in the experiences of ordinary people ought to take note. Given its apparent emphasis upon ethics, concrete experience, and the continuity of theory and practice, this work represents an opportunity for philosophers to unify our efforts, roll up our sleeves, and get down to the concrete task of social reconstruction. Such an apparent shift in style and focus in mainstream philosophy also represents an opportunity to achieve a better understanding of philosophical resources available for radical cultural critique and reform on such difficult issues as international development and cross-cultural ethics.

Nussbaum's project is a bold attempt to provide a basis for reform while taking cultural differences seriously. In this essay I shall draw upon Dewey's moral theory to explore Nussbaum's capabilities approach. ¹ Both Dewey's and Nussbaum's approaches view ongoing human activity as the central concept in ethical inquiry. Moreover, both are concerned with taking seriously the interests and desires of actual human beings without wanting to foreclose the possibility of reform, as would a superficial relativism. In the final analysis, however, Nussbaum's union of the "empirical" and "platonic" is relatively external and does not resolve deep conflicts between the concepts of "need" and "desire" upon which she bases her analysis. Her account needs a more organic approach, such as the one provided by Dewey's concept of habit, to develop a truly sensitive, internationalist project of reform.

The theoretical and practical basis of Nussbaum's project is the "capabilities approach," which has been developed in recent years by Nussbaum and Amartya Sen. The goal of her project is to articulate a philosophical position that serves as both a basis for assessing development and a tool for social reform that is sensitive to cultural differences. Her project is "based on a universalist account of central human functions, closely allied to a form of political liberalism [that she holds to be] a valuable basis from which to approach the problems of women in the developing world" (5). Nussbaum's primary practical aim is to discover and justify a list of basic constitutional principles that can be the basis for an international human rights movement. Her secondary practical aim is that of developing a tool adequate to measuring human development across cultures (5-6).

The capabilities approach, as articulated by Nussbaum, holds that there are certain functions that are of central importance in human life. This approach is contrasted, on the one hand, with forms of subjective welfarism, which simply ask whether a person feels satisfied and, on the other hand, with forms of Platonism, which measure development by transcendent good, wholly independent of people's desires (116-17). Nussbaum's approach attempts to walk the middle ground with an approach that is based upon Aristotle's understanding of appropriate human functioning. According to this view, "[w]e see the person as having activity, goals, and projects—as somehow awe-inspiringly above the mechanical workings of nature, and yet in need of support for the fulfillment of many central projects" (73).

The capabilities approach next asks whether the human being is capable of fulfilling these central projects. A human who is incapable of fulfilling these central activities, goals, and projects—a question that is...