The Concept of Neutrality with Regard to Gender and Religion: A Critique Exemplified by the Approach of Martha Nussbaum

2015 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 150-164
Author(s):  
Cornelia Mügge
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Capabilities Approach ◽  
Martha Nussbaum ◽  
Basic Norm ◽  
Equal Respect ◽  
Comprehensive Doctrines ◽  
Political Norms

This article is about the meaning and the plausibility of the concept of neutrality with regard to debates on gender and religion in political philosophy. As an example, it takes the Capabilities Approach of Martha Nussbaum, which is particularly instructive as she advocates neutrality between comprehensive doctrines and, at the same time, attends to the challenges posed by gender and religion. Starting from an explanation of the meaning of the concept of neutrality in Nussbaum’s approach, the article focuses on objections against neutrality raised by feminist approaches. It discusses Nussbaum’s defence of neutrality and asks whether it is convincing or not, and to what extent. The article suggests a differentiation between neutrality as an ideal and the attribution of neutrality to actual political norms. It further argues that, whereas Nussbaum’s approach implies the latter conception, the former better corresponds to the basic norm of equal respect.

scholarly journals Should we Ascribe Capabilities to Species and Ecosystems? A Critical Analysis of Ecocentric Versions of the Capabilities Approach

2021 ◽  
Vol 34 (5) ◽  
Author(s):  
Anders Melin
Keyword(s):  
Critical Analysis ◽  
Political Liberalism ◽  
Capabilities Approach ◽  
Overlapping Consensus ◽  
As Species ◽  
Theories Of Justice ◽  
Comprehensive Doctrines ◽  
Sentient Beings

AbstractMartha Nussbaum’s capabilities approach is today one of the most influential theories of justice. In her earlier works on the capabilities approach, Nussbaum only applies it to humans, but in later works she extends the capabilities approach to include sentient animals. Contrary to Nussbaum’s own view, some scholars, for example, David Schlosberg, Teea Kortetmäki and Daniel L. Crescenzo, want to extend the capabilities approach even further to include collective entities, such as species and ecosystems. Though I think we have strong reasons for preserving ecosystems and species within the capabilities approach, there are several problems with ascribing capabilities to them, especially if we connect it with the view that species and ecosystems are subjects of justice. These problems are partly a consequence of the fact that an ascription of capabilities to species and ecosystems needs to be based on an overlapping consensus between different comprehensive doctrines, in accordance with the framework of political liberalism on which the capabilities approach builds. First, the ascription of capabilities to species and ecosystems presupposes the controversial standpoint that they are objectively existing entities. Second, the ascription of capabilities to ecosystems and species and the view that they are subjects of justice is justified by claiming that they have integrity and agency, but these characteristics have different meanings when applied to collective entities and humans, respectively. Third, the view that species and ecosystems are subjects of justice seems to require the controversial assumption that they have interests of their own, which differ from the interests of the sentient beings that are part of them. However, even if we do not ascribe capabilities to species and ecosystems and regard them as subjects of justice, there are still strong reasons to protect them within the capabilities approach, as the preservation of ecosystems and species is an important precondition for many human and animal capabilities.

Labor Law and the Capabilities Approach

2019 ◽  
pp. 62-81
Author(s):  
Martha C. Nussbaum
Keyword(s):  
Informal Economy ◽  
Political Liberalism ◽  
Labor Law ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Capabilities Approach ◽  
The Political ◽  
Respect For Persons ◽  
Pluralistic Society ◽  
Equal Respect ◽  
Constitutional Right

Labor law scholars often discuss the “Capability Approach” as if it were a single thing with clearly defined content. However, it is best seen as a family of approaches. This paper first clarifies what the different versions of the approach have in common: a commitment to replacing measurement of well-being by gross domestic product (GDP) per capita by a focus on a group of substantial freedoms or opportunities for choice. It then goes on to clarify some deep differences between Amartya Sen’s version of the approach and that used by Nussbaum. Nussbaum’s version is intended to supply a basis for political principles in a pluralistic society, and thus, eschews on grounds of equal respect for persons any commitment to a comprehensive doctrine of freedom or autonomy, given that in a pluralistic society citizens, religious and secular, differ about these values. It also avoids, in consequence, a commitment to maximizing freedom. Even though Sen distinguishes maximizing from optimizing and allows for plural conceptions of the good, he goes further than Nussbaum in prioritizing autonomy and reason-based conceptions. And because he does not endorse a list his maximizing exercise seems fully general; by contrast, Nussbaum’s the political goal is understood to be to secure to all citizens, by constitutional right, an ample threshold amount of (only) ten central opportunities or capabilities as a partial conception. She defends this approach, in terms of Rawlsian “political liberalism,” as more consonant with equal respect for persons. In further clarifying these ideas, the paper also discusses the role of feminist economics in developing the approach, and recommends a focus on the informal economy and the political assignment of financial value to women’s unpaid domestic work.

What's So Special about Rights?

1984 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 61-83 ◽  
Author(s):  
Allen Buchanan
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Social Order ◽  
Moral Rights ◽  
Respect For Persons ◽  
Common Assumption ◽  
Goods And Services ◽  
Positive Rights ◽  
Equal Respect ◽  
Conception Of The Good ◽  
The Right

Future historians of moral and political philosophy may well label our period the Age of Rights. In moral philosophy it is now widely assumed that the two most plausible types of normative theories are Utilitarianism and Kantian theories and that the contest between them must be decided in the end by seeing whether Utilitarianism can accommodate a prominent role for rights in morality. In political philosophy even the most bitter opponents in the perennial debate over conflicts between liberty and equality often share a common assumption: that the issue of liberty versus equality can only be resolved (or dissolved) by determining which is the correct theory of rights. Some contend that equal respect for persons requires enforcement of moral rights to goods and services required for the pursuit of one's own conception of the good, while others protest that an enforced system of ‘positive’ rights violates the right to liberty whose recognition is the essence of equal respect for persons. The dominant views in contemporary moral and political philosophy combine an almost unbounded enthusiasm for the concept of rights with seemingly incessant disagreement about what our rights are and which rights are most basic. Unfortunately, that which enjoys our greatest enthusiasm is often that about which we are least critical.My aim in this essay is to take a step backward in order to examine the assumption that frames the most important debates in contemporary moral and political philosophy – the assumption that the concept of a right has certain unique features which make rights so especially valuable as to be virtually indispensable elements of any acceptable social order.

Norms, Procedures, and Democratic Legitimacy

1992 ◽  
Vol 40 (4) ◽  
pp. 659-678
Author(s):  
Frederick M. Barnard
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Political Science ◽  
Democratic Legitimacy ◽  
Central Theme ◽  
Civic Activity ◽  
Institutional Space ◽  
Political Norms ◽  
Political Mediation

The overall thrust of the argument points in two opposite directions: it pleads for dimming the contrast commonly drawn between political philosophy and political science but calls for a more radical distinction between the activities of politics and of philosophy, and between its rationality and that of political mediation. Within the first strand of the argument, the fact-value problem is re-examined, whilst within the second strand – the central theme of the article - the operatively legitimizing source of political norms is viewed within a procedural locale that is recognizably democratic, in that its validation is a matter of opinion, of appraisal and reappraisal in and through civic activity itself, and not directly the work of extra-political doctrines that substantively predetermine it. Although not thus preconditioned, procedural democracy is portrayed as being governed by a cognitive and institutional ‘space’ in which the ‘conversion’ of doctrinal ‘isms' issues in ‘performative principles, rather than a regime of pragmatic ad hocism.

scholarly journals Reading for the dignity of all: Overcoming the troubling legacy of the Old Testament

2016 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
L Juliana Claassens
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Critical Thinking ◽  
Old Testament ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Martha Nussbaum ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Religious Intolerance ◽  
The World ◽  
Politics Of Fear ◽  
Equal Respect

In light of the numerous instances in the Hebrew Bible in which the dignity of its characters are threatened, violated or potentially violated, this article seeks to identify a number of strategies that may be used to read the Bible for the dignity of all so overcoming the Old Testament’s troubling legacy. These strategies have been inspired by the work of Martha Nussbaum who, in one of her recent books, The New Religious Intolerance: Overcoming the Politics of Fear in an Anxious Age, names three principles that may help a society to become more compassionate in nature and to transcend, what she calls, a narcissistic notion of fear: (1) Political (and I would add religious) principles that express equal respect and dignity for all people (2) Rigorous critical thinking that criticizes inconsistencies that may lead to human rights violations (3) Developing an empathetic or participatory imagination, in which one is able to consider how the world looks from the point of view of a person of a different cultural or religious point of view.

Capabilities, Freedom, and Severe Poverty

2020 ◽  
pp. 198-213
Author(s):  
Thom Brooks
Keyword(s):  
Global Justice ◽  
Free Choice ◽  
Negative Impact ◽  
Basic Needs ◽  
Capabilities Approach ◽  
Martha Nussbaum ◽  
Human Flourishing

Severe poverty is a key challenge for theorists of global justice. Most theorists have approached this issue primarily by developing accounts for understanding which kinds of duties have relevance and how responsibilities for tackling severe poverty might be assigned to agents, whether individuals, nations, or states. All such views share a commitment to ending severe poverty as a wrongful deprivation with a profoundly negative impact on affected individuals. While much attention has prioritized identifying reasons for others to provide relief, this chapter examines the nature of the wrongful deprivation that characterizes severe poverty. One influential view is championed by Martha Nussbaum in her distinctive capabilities approach. An individual might be considered to experience severe poverty where she is unable to enjoy the use of the capabilities which should be available to her. But this position raises several questions. Take the fact that about 1 billion people are unable to meet their basic needs today. Would the capabilities approach claim the number is much higher given its wider grasp of human flourishing beyond mere material subsistence—and what implications would flow from this? Or would the capabilities approach claim only a portion of those unable to meet their basic needs are in a wrongful state because their circumstances are a result of free choice—and what would this mean? These questions indicate a potential concern about whether the approach is over- or underinclusive and why.

Technik, die begeistert!?

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Melissa Henne
Keyword(s):  
Support System ◽  
Support Systems ◽  
Capabilities Approach ◽  
Technical Support ◽  
Martha Nussbaum ◽  
Ethical Reflection ◽  
Ethical Implications ◽  
System P ◽  
Ethical Reflections ◽  
Social Sectors

The digitalisation of society demands ethical reflection on the use of technical support systems in deaconry and other social sectors. In this study, Melissa Henne presents several approaches which can be used to analyse the deployment of these systems in deaconry. She illustrates how many ethical implications are related to these systems and how complex they are. To handle these implications, the purpose of using technical support systems has to be specified, and this specification has to correspond to the purpose of diaconal work. Henne uses the capabilities approach by Martha Nussbaum, which defines the requirements for a life in dignity, as a basis for determining these purposes, recommends this approach as a conceptual framework for ethical reflections and tests it on an existing technical support system.

Anglican Establishment: How is it Liberal?

2019 ◽  
Vol 33 (2) ◽  
pp. 205-214
Author(s):  
Nigel Biggar
Keyword(s):  
Religious Freedom ◽  
Martha Nussbaum ◽  
Political Equality ◽  
Overlapping Consensus ◽  
Christian Anthropology ◽  
Liberal Rights ◽  
Comprehensive Doctrines ◽  
Religious Establishment

This article argues that the kind of religious establishment that currently obtains in England is sufficiently liberal in the sense that it accommodates rights to religious freedom and is compatible with political equality. What is more, insofar as it expresses a Christian anthropology, established Anglicanism can generate the ‘thick’ set of virtues necessary to make citizens capable of respecting liberal rights. In the course of defending its thesis, the argument disputes John Rawls’s description of the ‘overlapping consensus’ as one that stands free of its supporting comprehensive doctrines; and it reads Martha Nussbaum as, ironically, confirming that an established orthodoxy of some sort is inevitable.

From alienation to capability deprivation: Reconstructing a sociological concept

2014 ◽  
Vol 53 (1) ◽  
pp. 54-75 ◽  
Author(s):  
Spiros Gangas
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Research Program ◽  
Dual Task ◽  
Social Problems ◽  
Explanatory Power ◽  
Capabilities Approach ◽  
Capability Deprivation ◽  
Do So ◽  
Sociological Concept

Among sociology’s normative narratives, alienation figures as one of the most captivating, influential and contested. Anchored in Hegel and Marx, the idea of alienation generated valuable theoretical and empirical tools for explanation as well as offering a normative critique of modernity. However, I argue that the concept of alienation needs to be reconstructed, suggesting that it can be renewed via Amartya Sen’s idea of capability deprivation. The article seeks to accomplish the dual task of showing what capability deprivation can replace in the standard accounts of alienation and what can be productively retained. It reconstructs alienation’s normative core, discussing it within the context of Sen’s and Nussbaum’s versions of capabilities. Having already inaugurated a novel research program in economics and political philosophy, the article proposes that the capabilities approach can contribute to improving sociological reasoning on pressing social problems and can serve as an explanatory partner to sociology’s scientific tools. I argue, therefore, that the explanatory power and normative appeal of the concept of alienation has waned considerably and that whatever correct intuitions about human sociality supported it and gave it its impetus for several decades no longer continue do so.

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