Capabilities and human rights

Abstract

This chapter examines what the capability approach (CA) can offer to philosophical thinking about human rights. The CA, which was pioneered by Amartya Sen and Martha Nussbaum, has become a widely influential framework for addressing a variety of evaluative questions concerning, among other things, wellbeing, freedom, justice, and equality. It focuses on capabilities (real freedoms to do and be certain things) and sometimes directly on functionings (actual doings and beings). The CA can contribute a number of important things to philosophical thinking about human rights, including (1) directing the focus of human rights philosophy to substance, specifically, to the objects of human rights; (2) making for a human rights philosophy that emphatically includes socio-economic human rights and positive duties. Furthermore, (3) the insistence of the CA that every human being matters makes for a philosophy of human rights with clear deontological aspects and with an emphasis on especially vulnerable people. This chapter also discusses a number of things that one more developed capability theory (CT) in particular, Martha Nussbaum’s influential CT, which Nussbaum explicitly regards as one kind of human rights theory, can contribute to philosophical thinking about human rights.