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Capability approach seminar
21 May 2013 @ 13:30 - 17:00
|Registration
To register for the meetings please send an email to demaagt@fbw.eur.nl. Papers will be distributed two weeks in advance. During the meeting the speakers will briefly introduce their paper, followed by a commentary and a general discussion. Everyone is expected to have read the papers before the meeting.
Preliminary program
- Ingrid Robeyns – Capabilitarianism
Comments: Govert den HartoghMany contributions to the capability approach assume that the capability approach is a specific theory, such as a theory of freedom, or a theory of justice, or a theory of development ethics, or a theory of well-being. Most of the time, these understandings of the nature of the capability approach have been taken for granted by those who use these particular understandings, and this has lead (a) to a rather confused literature, and (b) to critiques of the capability approach that claim general applicability yet in reality only hold for one particular specification of the capability approach.In this paper, I set myself the task to ask how the capability approach can best be described at the most general level of abstraction. To mark this more abstract understanding of the capability approach, and its structural resemblance with major ethical theories, the capability approach could be called capabilitarianism. The account that is developed and defended in this paper is then used to provide a critique of Martha Nussbaum’s definition in her book Creating Capabilities, which I argue to be both incomplete and too specific. - Rutger Claassen – An Agency-Based Capability Theory of Justice
Comments: Gijs van DonselaarMany have argued that the capability approach is an open approach, which can be further developed for different purposes. These specifications will give us specific capability theories. In this paper I am only concerned with the application of the capability approach in the field of theorizing about justice. My aim is provide an alternative for the leading capability theory of justice, that of Martha Nussbaum. Her theory argues that states should promote a set of basic capabilities for human flourishing. Here I want to present the alternative of a capability theory centered on the promotion of a set of basic capabilities to human agency. I specify a conception of agency and then argue that justice can be understood as an ‘equal right to basic agency’ and that current lists of human rights can be interpreted as lists of capabilities that provide us with the conditions of agency - Martin van Hees – Capabilities, Functionings, and Capability Sets
Comments: Constanze BinderThere has been quite some debate about the difference between Sen’s and Nussbaum’s take on the capability approach. The debate mainly focused on the issue whether or not a list of central human capabilities can be defended. Important as that issue is, another crucial difference between the two approaches concerns the way Sen and Nussbaum use the term `capability’. Starting from Sen’s construction of capability sets, I show how the capabilities that Nussbaum discusses are to be defined in term of capability sets. The resulting analysis reveals that some core assumptions of the capability approach should be abandoned. In particular, the usual stipulation that functionings are doings or beings one `has reason to value’ should be rejected. Furthermore, it will be argued that a society can be unjust according to Nussbaum’s theory of justice even though all individuals possess all of the capabilities on her list.
Organizer
This seminar is organized by the OZSW study group Political Philosophy.
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