IB Philosophy 10.6.1 the Capabilities Approach: a New Metric for Justice and Development Notes

Beyond GDP: Why a New Approach Was Needed

1. Martha C. Nussbaum's Creating Capabilities (2011) presents a philosophical framework for evaluating human well-being and social justice that fundamentally challenges conventional measures of development.
2. Where economists and policymakers have traditionally relied on Gross Domestic Product (GDP) per capita to assess a nation's progress, Nussbaum argues that this metric is deeply inadequate.
3. GDP measures the total monetary value of goods and services produced within a country. As a measure of human flourishing, it suffers from a critical flaw: it tells us nothing about how wealth is distributed, what people are actually able to do and be, or whether basic human dignities are being met.
4. A country can have a high GDP while large portions of its population lack access to education, healthcare, or political participation. Nussbaum uses the example of women in developing nations who may live in economically growing countries yet face severe restrictions on their bodily autonomy and freedom of movement.
5. The capabilities approach was developed in collaboration with the economist Amartya Sen, who first proposed the idea in the 1980s.
6. Sen argued that development should be understood as freedom: the expansion of real opportunities available to people. Nussbaum extended this insight into a comprehensive philosophical theory of justice.
7. Where Sen deliberately left the list of capabilities open and context-dependent, Nussbaum argues for a fixed list of central human capabilities that every just society must guarantee to its citizens. This philosophical commitment to specifying the list is one of the key distinctions between Sen and Nussbaum.
8. Sen's reasoning is that specifying the list in advance risks paternalism (telling people what is good for them, without asking) and overrides local political agency. In Kerala versus rural Bihar, the capability of 'political participation' might require structurally different institutional conditions, and only democratic deliberation within each context can determine what the capability means in practice.
9. Nussbaum counters that without a fixed list, the most vulnerable members of society may find their needs excluded by majoritarian politics. The very people capabilities are meant to protect cannot wait for democratic consensus to establish their basic entitlements.

Challenging Established Frameworks

1. The approach connects directly to political philosophy (Unit 7). Rather than asking "how much wealth does a nation produce?" or "how happy are its citizens on average?", the capabilities approach asks: "what is each person actually able to do and to be?" This shift in question reframes the entire purpose of government and public policy.
2. Nussbaum situates her approach within the tradition of social contract theory but also criticises its limitations. Classical contract theorists such as Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau assume that parties to the contract are roughly equal in power, which excludes those with disabilities, non-human animals, and citizens of less powerful nations.
3. The capabilities approach also challenges utilitarian frameworks (explored in Unit 4.1). Utilitarianism aggregates welfare across a population, which means that the severe suffering of a minority can be outweighed by modest gains for the majority.
4. Nussbaum insists that each individual matters and that justice requires a threshold of capability below which no person should fall.
5. This threshold principle distinguishes Nussbaum from John Rawls, whose difference principle (explored in 7.2.1) permits inequalities only if they benefit the least advantaged. Nussbaum agrees with Rawls that justice requires attention to the worst off, but she argues that Rawls's focus on primary goods (income, wealth, liberties) fails to account for the different conversion rates people face in turning goods into real opportunities.

What Is a Capability?

1. Nussbaum defines a capability as a substantive freedom: a real, effective opportunity to choose and to act. Capabilities are not mere formal rights written on paper; they are the actual conditions that enable a person to function in a fully human way.
2. The distinction between capabilities and functionings is crucial. A functioning is the active realisation of a capability: actually being well-nourished, actually participating in political life.