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Description
Achieving social justice is one of the key challenges facing the worldtoday. Scholars of political theory have long grappled with issuesarising from it. However, as the history of ideas shows, the conceptitself has undergone much change over the centuries and there is nowatertight definition of what 'justice' connotes in the contemporarycontext.
Going beyond the existing frontiers of social justice, this uniquevolume aims to develop theoretical concepts able to respond to realdilemmas facing society today. The author closely examines theclassical social contract theory, one of the most widely acceptedapproaches to social justice in the Western tradition. She focuses inparticular on the ideas of one of the greatest names in contemporarypolitical philosophy, John Rawls, whose work developed the theory tonew philosophical depths and complexity.
Nussbaum moves in a fresh direction and suggests that there is aninherent limitation within the social contract theory, even in the workof Rawls - it is premised on the idea of a contract for mutual advantageamong approximate equals. She demonstrates that it is unable to addressquestions of social justice between unequal parties. Instead she goeson to develop a theory of social justice based on the 'capabilitiesapproach', which she places generally within the tradition of liberalconceptions'.
The author analyses three social issues which could not be resolved, oreven really addressed by traditional theories of justice - the problem ofachieving justice for persons with physical and mental disability, ofextending justice to all citizens of the world, and lastly the problemof doing justice in relation to the treatment of 'non-human animals'.She helps us to think more clearly about the purpose of politicalcooperation and the nature of political principles - and to look to afuture of greater justice for all.
This book will be of interest to scholars and advanced students ofpolitical theory, philosophy, jurisprudence, and human rights, as wellas law professionals and informed general readers.
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Contents
1. Social Contracts and Three Unsolved Problems of Justice
The State of Nature
Three Unsolved Problems
Rawls and the Unsolved Problems
Free, Equal, and Independent
Grotius, Hobbes, Locke, Hume, Kant
Three Forms of Contemporary Contractarianism
The Capabilities Approach
Capabilities and Contractarianism
In Search of Global Justice
2. Disabilities and the Social Contract
Needs for Care, Problems of Justice
Prudential and Moral Versions of the Contract;
Public and Private
Rawls's Kantian Contractarianism: Primary Goods, Kantian
Personhood, Rough Equality, Mutual Advantage
Postponing the Question of Disability
Kantian Personhood and Mental Impairment
Care and Disability: Kittay and Sen
Reconstructing Contractarianism?
3. Capabilities and Disabilities
The Capabilities Approach: A Noncontractarian Account of Care
The Bases of Social Cooperation
Dignity: Aristotelian, not Kantian
The Priority of the Good, the Role of Agreement
Why Capabilities?
Care and the Capabilities List
Capability or Functioning?
The Charge of Intuitionism
The Capabilities Approach and Rawls's Principles of Justice
Types and Levels of Dignity: The Species Norm
Public Policy: The Question of Guardianship
Public Policy: Education and Inclusion
Public Policy: The Work of Care
Liberalism and Human Capabilities
4. Mutual Advantage and Global Inequality: The Transnational Social Contract
A World of Inequalities
A Theory of Justice: The Two-Stage Contract Introduced
The Law of Peoples: The Two-Stage Contract Reaffirmed and Modified
Justification and Implementation
Assessing the Two-Stage Contract
The Global Contract: Beitz and Pogge
Prospects for an International Contractrarianism
5. Capabilities across National Boundaries
Social Cooperation: The Priority of Entitlements
Why Capabilities?
Capabilities and Rights
Equality and Adequacy
Pluralism and Toleration
An International "Overlapping Consensus"?
Globalizing the Capabilities Approach: The Role of Institutions
Globalizing the Capabilities Approach: What Institutions?
Ten Principles for the Global Structure
6. Beyond "Compassion and Humanity": Justice for Nonhuman Animals
"Beings Entitled to Dignified Existence"
Kantian Social Contract Views: Indirect Duties, Duties of Compassion
Utilitarianism and Animal Flourishing
Types of Dignity, Types of Flourishing: Extending the Capabilities
Approach
Methodology: Theory and Imagination
Species and Individual
Evaluating Animal Capabilities: No Nature Worship
Positive and Negative, Capability and Functioning
Equality and Adequacy
Death and Harm
An Overlapping Consensus?
Toward Basic Political Principles: The Capabilities List
The Ineliminability of Conflict
Toward a Truly Global Justice
7. The Moral Sentiments and the Capabilities Approach
Notes
References
Index
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Author Details
Martha C. Nussbaum is Ernst Freund Distinguished Service Professor of Law and Ethics at the University of Chicago
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