Capabilities and Social Justice: The Political Philosophy of Amartya Sen and Martha Nussbaum

The capability approach to social justice construes a person's well-being in terms of the substantive freedoms people have reason to value beyond mere utility or access to resources. In this book John Alexander engages with the rapidly growing body of literature on the capability approach in economics, inequality and poverty measurement, and development studies, paying particular attention to Amartya Sen and Martha Nussbaum's collaborative work on the capability approach in normative economics, social ethics and political philosophy. Through a critical discussion of Sen and Nussbaum's literature, the book develops a unified vision of the capability approach embodied in the ideal of creating the greatest possible condition for the realization of basic capabilities for all and assesses it as a political theory arguing that capabilities are necessary but not sufficient for overcoming conditions of domination and concluding that the freedom as non-domination calls for a reinforcement of certain basic capabilities under 'constitutional provisions' and for envisioning a more intimate relationship between individual liberty and the freedom of the political community as a whole.