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.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
References
Brighouse, H./ Swift A., 2006: Equality, Priority, and Positionality. In: Ethics 116: 471–497.
Daniels, N., 2003: Democratic Equality: Rawls’s Complex Egalitarianism. In: Freeman, S. (ed.): The Cambridge Companion to Rawls. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Frank, R., 1999: Luxury Fever. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Hirsch, F., 1977: Social Limits to Growth. London: Routledge Kegan Paul.
Pogge, T., 2003: Can the Capability Approach be Justified? In: Philosophical Topics 30,2: 167–228.
Rawls, J., 2001: Justice as Fairness. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Sen, A., 1992: Inequality re-examined. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Sen, A., 1999: Development as freedom Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Unterhalter, E., 2003: The capabilities approach and gendered education. An examination of South African complexities. In: Theory and Research in Education 1,1: 7–22.
Unterhalter, E./ Brighouse, H., 2007: Distribution of what for social justice in education? The case of Education for All by 2015. In: Walker, M./ Unterhalter, E. (eds.): Amartya Sen’s capability approach and social justice in education. New York: Palgrave (in press).
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2008 VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften | GWV Fachverlage GmbH, Wiesbaden
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
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
Download citation
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
eBook Packages: Humanities, Social Science (German Language)