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abstract

Thomas Pogge has recently argued that the capability approach cannot be justified, and that John Rawls’s social primary goods way of thinking about the metric of justice that is superior to the capability approach (Pogge 2003). The burden of this paper is to respond to his objections drawing on issues that arise when thinking about distribution and equality in education. We should say at the outset that we do not have a strong view about which of the approaches is superior, all-things-considered. Sometimes the language of capabilities better illuminates what matters than does the language of primary goods. And frequently both approaches are hard to apply.

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Hans-Uwe Otto Holger Ziegler

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© 2008 VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften | GWV Fachverlage GmbH, Wiesbaden

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Brighouse, H., Unterhalter, E. (2008). Primary Goods versus Capabilities: Considering the debate in relation to equalities in education. In: Otto, HU., Ziegler, H. (eds) Capabilities — Handlungsbefähigung und Verwirklichungschancen in der Erziehungswissenschaft. VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-531-90922-6_4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-531-90922-6_4

  • Publisher Name: VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-531-15671-2

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-531-90922-6

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