# Martha Nussbaum

> *Edited for clarity by the editorial review*

**Contemporary (1947–) | Capabilities Approach / Virtue Ethics**

## 1. First Principles

I start with a single, non-negotiable idea: every human being has inherent dignity — not something granted by the state, tradition, or any personal achievement, but simply by being human. This is my Aristotelian-Kantian core (drawing from two philosophical traditions that emphasize human worth), and it shapes everything that follows. From this foundation, I accept that human existence is fundamentally social, vulnerable, and diverse. We are not isolated individuals; we come into the world helpless, develop through relationships of care, and remain fragile throughout our lives. The fact that humans are vulnerable is not a flaw to be fixed — it is the very basis of ethical concern.

I also believe there is a recognizably *human* form of life, and that we can identify a set of central human capabilities (what people are able to do and be) that form the minimum conditions for a life worthy of that dignity. These capabilities are:

- Life
- Bodily health
- Bodily integrity
- Senses, imagination, and thought
- Emotions
- Practical reason (the ability to form a conception of what is good and plan one's life)
- Affiliation (living with and toward others)
- Other species
- Play
- Control over one's environment (both political and material)

This list is not a complete moral theory. It is a *minimum threshold* for social justice. It is my answer to the question: what is a human being actually able *to do and to be*?

This is not a claim about timeless, unchanging human nature. It is a political and ethical claim, developed through dialogue across different traditions, that every person is entitled to at least a basic level of each capability. Anything less is a failure of justice.

## 2. The Meaning of Life

For me, the meaning of life is not something to be discovered in some hidden spiritual realm or received from a divine authority. It is something we *create together*, by cultivating the capabilities that allow each person to live a life they have reason to value. Meaning is found in the struggle to live well in the face of vulnerability, and in building political and social conditions that make such flourishing possible for everyone.

This idea is Aristotelian in its emphasis on *eudaimonia* — a Greek term meaning "human flourishing," understood as an activity of the soul in line with virtue. But I depart from Aristotle in a crucial way: where he excluded women, slaves, and manual laborers from the full human flourishing he described, I insist that the meaning of life must be available to *every* human being, regardless of sex, class, disability, or nationality. A meaningful life is one in which a person can exercise practical reason, form and revise their own idea of what is good, connect with others on terms of respect and fairness, and take part in the full range of human emotional and creative experience.

In *Women and Human Development*, I argue that the capabilities approach gives us a way to ask: "What are people actually able to do and to be?" The meaning of life, from this angle, is found in the activity of *becoming* — not in passively receiving pleasure or accumulating wealth, but in the ongoing, effortful exercise of one's central capacities alongside others. A meaningful life involves love, grief, laughter, political struggle, care for others, and play. It requires the freedom to say "no" — to oppressive traditions, to exploitation, to any condition that reduces a person to a mere tool for someone else's purposes. And it demands that we pay attention not only to our own flourishing but to the structural conditions that enable or block the flourishing of others.

## 3. Actionable Insights

### Cultivate the capability to care

What does this mean for how to live? First, we must develop the *capability to care*. This means paying attention to our own emotions — especially compassion, grief, and love — as sources of moral wisdom. In *Upheavals of Thought*, I argue that emotions are not irrational forces that overwhelm our judgment. They are *eudaimonistic evaluations* — judgments about what matters to us in a world we do not fully control. To live meaningfully is to let yourself be vulnerable to loss, to love what is fragile, and to let grief teach you what you value.

### Cultivate the narrative imagination

Second, develop the *narrative imagination*. Try to see the world from someone else's perspective — the migrant, the factory worker, the child in a different country. In *Cultivating Humanity*, I argue that the ability to imagine the lives of others is essential for democratic citizenship and for any life that aims to be morally serious. Read novels. Engage with art. Resist the temptation to reduce other people to stereotypes.

### Engage as a citizen of the world

Third, engage with politics as a *citizen of the world* — but not in a way that ignores local obligations. The Stoic ideal of world citizenship (the idea that we belong to a single human community) must be balanced with attention to what is particular: we have special duties to those we love, and yet we must also work to extend our circle of concern to those whose capabilities are threatened by injustice.

### Practical steps

Concretely: ask yourself daily whether your own circumstances depend on the deprivation of others. Act to change what you can. Vote for policies that expand capabilities. Support public education, healthcare, and a strong social safety net. And in your personal life, refuse to separate "the way I live" from "what I owe to others." The personal is deeply political — not in the sense that every choice is an act of resistance, but in the sense that a meaningful life is one lived in awareness of its connection to the lives of others.

## 4. Contrarian View / Strawman

Here is the strongest objection I know against the capabilities approach, stated as its proponent would say it:

> *"Nussbaum, your capabilities approach is a well-intentioned form of liberal imperialism. You claim to respect pluralism, but then you hand down a universal list of ten capabilities that every nation should adopt. Who made you the judge of the good life? What gives you — a Western liberal academic — the right to tell a devout community in rural India or an Orthodox Jewish neighborhood in Jerusalem that their way of life falls below some threshold of 'central capabilities'? Your list reflects the biases of a particular time and place: the secular, individualistic, Enlightenment liberalism of the contemporary West. You pay lip service to cultural variation, but the whole structure of your theory is a Trojan horse for Western values. Sensitivity to pluralism is not about politely asking which capability matters more; it is about recognizing that 'capability' itself is a culturally specific idea. The meaning of life cannot be dictated from a university office in Chicago."*

It is a powerful charge, and I have spent much of my career trying to answer it. My response is this: the capabilities list is deliberately *thin*. It does not prescribe a complete, detailed picture of the good life. It only specifies a *threshold* of minimum conditions below which a life is not recognizably human — not by *my* standards alone, but by the standards of an overlapping consensus (an agreement people can reach from different religious and cultural backgrounds) that I argue can be achieved through cross-cultural discussion. In *Women and Human Development*, I explicitly base the list on the idea of a political overlapping consensus, inspired by the philosopher John Rawls: the list is "freestanding," not tied to any one religion or comprehensive philosophy. Many of the capabilities — bodily integrity, affiliation, practical reason — have been defended by women from traditions as diverse as Hindu, Muslim, Christian, and secular backgrounds. The list is the product of a *process* of dialogue, not a command from above.

Moreover, the capabilities approach insists on *capability* (having the real option), not *functioning* (actually doing it). It does not demand that everyone *exercise* a capability; it demands only that the option be genuinely available. A woman may choose to live a traditional life of religious devotion and domestic care — so long as she has the real freedom to choose otherwise. That is the heart of the liberal commitment I defend. The critic confuses a universal claim about justice with a universal claim about the good life. I make only the former.

## 5. Final Reflection

I do not offer a theory that promises certainty or eternal truths. What I offer is a *task*: the task of building a world where every person — every single one, with their fragility, their grief, their laughter, their stubborn hope — is able to live a life worthy of their dignity. The meaning of life is not found in escaping our vulnerability, but in loving well, thinking deeply, standing up for justice, and refusing to look away from the suffering of others. That is enough. That is everything.

## Strengthened Through Critique

### Weak Points Identified

**1. The threshold problem.** Nussbaum's central claim is that every person is entitled to a *threshold level* of each of the ten central capabilities, yet she never provides a clear principle for setting that threshold. What counts as "adequate" bodily health? When does access to "play" cross from insufficient to sufficient? Without a way to decide this, the threshold appears arbitrary: if it is set too low, the theory allows serious deprivation; if too high, it becomes impossible to achieve and loses its political force.

**2. The capability/functioning distinction is unstable under real-world pressure.** Nussbaum insists she requires only capability, not functioning. But in situations of severe inequality or oppressive socialization — for example, a woman raised from birth to believe her role is domestic submission — what does it mean for her to "genuinely" have the capability to choose otherwise? "Adaptive preferences" (when people adjust their desires to fit their limited options) poison the distinction: if she says she freely chooses her subordination, on what basis does Nussbaum override that stated preference without secretly imposing the very values she claims to reject?

**3. Overlapping consensus is asserted, not demonstrated.** The Rawlsian "overlapping consensus" that is supposed to justify the list's universality is mentioned but never backed up with evidence. Nussbaum appeals to cross-cultural dialogue but does not explain how actual disagreements — about what a "human" life involves, or whether all humans are equally deserving of dignity — are to be resolved without appealing to the very liberal assumptions under dispute.

### Strongest Counterarguments

A critic pressing weakness (1) can demand: "Define the threshold by reference to what, exactly? If you cannot, your theory is either empty or dogmatic." Against (2): "You rescue the liberal individual only by assuming they are independent of the very social conditions you claim to analyze. Either adaptive preferences collapse your distinction, or you must admit that you are prescribing functioning, not capability." Against (3): "An overlapping consensus that does not yet exist cannot serve as a justification for a list that is to be imposed now. You are justifying universalism by appealing to a hypothetical future agreement — that is not consensus, it is prophecy."

### How Nussbaum Can Strengthen Her Position

**Improvement 1: A procedural account of threshold-setting.** Nussbaum should explicitly tie the threshold to a *democratic deliberative process* operating within constitutional guarantees that protect the capability for political participation. The threshold is not set by philosophical intuition alone but is itself the subject of ongoing democratic debate, limited only by the requirement that deliberation does not undermine any capability's core meaning. This turns the threshold from a philosophical weakness into a political responsibility.

**Improvement 2: Tie capability to substantive freedom, not formal option-set.** She should incorporate Amartya Sen's insight that genuine capability requires *conversion factors* — personal, social, and environmental conditions that turn formal access into real freedom. A woman whose social world punishes deviation does not have the capability to choose otherwise, regardless of formal legal rights. This allows Nussbaum to reject adaptive-preference arguments not by overriding the agent's stated preferences, but by showing that the preference operates under conditions that destroy the capability for practical reason itself — one of her own central capabilities. The argument then becomes internal to her framework rather than an external imposition of liberal values.

## Reading Guide

Martha Nussbaum's work spans moral philosophy, political theory, law, and the emotions. For a general reader new to her ideas, a good starting point is *Creating Capabilities* (2011), a short and accessible book that lays out the capabilities approach clearly. To understand the role of emotions in her thinking — and why she sees feelings like compassion and grief as forms of reasoned judgment — *Upheavals of Thought* (2001) is the key text, though it is denser. For a broader audience, her essay collections such as *Philosophical Interventions* (2012) offer shorter, topic-focused pieces that show how her philosophical commitments apply to real-world issues like education, religion, and social justice.