Abstract
This chapter utilizes the accounts of fundamental interests, basic rights and free rational agency from the previous chapters to arrive at a republican principle of social justice, which claims that a just society is a society in which every person enjoys the conditions to realize her fundamental interests and exercise her agency freely and autonomously. Further, it is argued that defining social justice in this way prescribes a sufficientarian distribution of goods and capabilities, namely one in which the conditions of non-domination and non-alienation are fulfilled. Instead of focusing on an outcome of substantial equality with respect to a (set of) good(s) X, then, the principle of justice presented here concentrates on instances of relative deprivation and the nature of social relationships, aiming to protect each and every person from the agency-hampering effects of misrecognition, deprivation and alienation. In order to index instances of social disadvantage the chapter uses Sen’s capability theory and defends this choice against other possible currencies of justice.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
The debate on the proper currency of justice is a complex and difficult one. For different accounts see Daniels (1990), Dworkin (1981a, b), Cohen (1989, 1993), Sen (1979, 1987, 1990, 1993, 1999), Rawls (1971, 1999f), Nussbaum (2000, 2006b; Nussbaum and Sen 1993), as well as Arneson (2000c) and Kaufman (2006a).
- 2.
See the interesting exchange of Cohen and Dworkin in Burley (2004).
- 3.
As most readers will probably know, Rawls’s justification for the primary social goods changed in his later work from a rationality argument to the idea that the primary social goods are things needed by citizens as free and equal persons to live a complete life.
- 4.
In his earlier writings Rawls (1999a, especially Chap. 10) actually stresses the importance of mutual recognition and reciprocity, in order to develop his idea of a duty of fair play. However, Rawls ultimately falls back onto a reading of rational agency as being cooperative and having a rational plan of life, rather than being a socially recognized reason-giver in the shared space of reasons.
- 5.
Throughout this chapter, I will focus on Sen’s theory of capabilities since its scope and aim seems to fit much better with my own republican/Hegelian theory than Nussbaum’s capability theory.
- 6.
- 7.
Considering that what I am interested in is a theory of global justice of course the question arises of whether global justice actually prescribes that if free internet access is a legal right in one country it also ought to become a legal right in other countries. While I will return to the issue of global justice in Chap. 6, let me already point out that arguing for a society-relative index of social disadvantage does not imply that disadvantage cannot be assessed across societies and borders.
- 8.
- 9.
Harry Frankfurt (1987) is often credited for being the first to defend sufficientarian principles. Alas, Frankfurt’s arguments are partially weak, as Frankfurt actually oscillates between rejecting (strict) egalitarian thinking and using it as a useful supplement to sufficientarianism, a fact which has led to the impression that sufficientariansim on its own is insufficient.
- 10.
Prioritarianism in its simplest form holds that priority should be given to the worse-off. Strict prioritarianism defends the priority of the worst-off even if it negatively affects others, while a qualified prioritarianism (also called weighted prioritarianism) asserts that ‘benefiting people matters more the worse off those people are, the more of those people there are, and the greater the benefits in question’ (Crisp 2003, p. 752).
- 11.
Robert Huseby (2010, p. 187) discusses this point in more depth.
- 12.
I will return to this point in one of the following sections.
- 13.
A similar criticism concerning Crisp’s view can be found in Benbaji (2006, pp. 337–338).
- 14.
A detailed defence of the global scope of justice can be found in Chap. 6.
- 15.
For the remainder of this section I will use the term welfare equality, or welfare egalitarianism, whereby it should be clear that the outcome of such policies is not necessarily strict welfare equality, but rather a kind of quasi-egalitarian distribution of welfare.
- 16.
Pettit and Braithwaite (1990) present a similar argument with respect to non-domination, imprisonment and a person’s agency-freedom.
- 17.
The remainder of this section will deal with work in so-called Western advanced capitalist societies. All my statements and observations refer to this particular frame and setting. However, I would like to note that the issue of exploitation in developing countries, for instance through sweatshop labour, is an issue my republican account also can address, since it is able to deconstruct standard pro-sweatshop arguments such as that the workers chose to work in these conditions voluntarily, or that without such work their life would be even worse. On my account what matters is that the workers in the developing world stand in equal social relations and can realize their fundamental interests, two conditions which both clearly seem to be violated by existing practices.
- 18.
For an excellent discussion of education and its role in a republican society which promotes freedom as non-domination see Laborde (2006, 2008). Highly interesting discussions concerning the role of education in a free society can also be found in feminist and multiculturalist writings, such as Gutman (1987) and MacMullen (2007). Moreover, this point also relates back to the difficulty of finding the balance between pluralism, toleration, freedom and democracy (Castiglione and McKinnon 2003).
- 19.
References
Agarwal, Bina, Jane Humphries, and Ingrid Robeyns (eds.). 2006. Capabilities, freedom, and equality. Amartya Sen’s work from a gender perspective. New Delhi: Oxford University Press.
Alkire, Sabina. 2002. Valuing freedoms. Sen’s capability approach and poverty reduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Arneson, Richard. 2000a. Perfectionism and politics. Ethics 111: 37–63.
Arneson, Richard. 2000b. Luck egalitarianism and priority. Ethics 110: 339–349.
Arneson, Richard. 2000c. Welfare should be the currency of justice. Canadian Journal of Philosophy 30: 497–524.
Arneson, Richard. 2006. Distributive justice and basic capability equality: “Good enough” is not good enough. In Capabilities equality: Basic issues and problems, ed. Alexander Kaufman, 17–43. London: Routledge.
Benbaji, Yitzhak. 2005. The doctrine of sufficiency: A defence. Utilitas 17: 310–332.
Benbaji, Yitzhak. 2006. Sufficiency or priority? European Journal of Philosophy 14: 327–348.
Blake, Michael. 2001. Distributive justice, state coercion, and autonomy. Philosophy & Public Affairs 30: 257–96.
Braverman, Harry. 1974. Labor and monopoly capital: The degradation of work in the 20th Century. New York: Monthly Review Press.
Brown, James. 1954. The social psychology of industry. Harmondsworth: Penguin.
Burley, Justine (ed.). 2004. Dworkin and his critics. Oxford: Blackwell.
Casal, Paula. 2007. Why sufficiency is not enough. Ethics 117: 296–326.
Castiglione, Dario, and Catriona McKinnon (eds.). 2003. Toleration, neutrality and democracy. Dordrecht: Kluwer.
Cohen, Gerald A. 1989. On the currency of egalitarian justice. Ethics 99: 906–944.
Cohen, Gerald A. 1993. Equality of what? On welfare, goods, and capabilities. In The quality of life, ed. Martha Nussbaum and Amartya Sen, 9–29. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Crisp, Roger. 2003. Equality, priority, and compassion. Ethics 113: 745–763.
Daniels, Norman. 1990. Equality of what: Welfare, resources, or capabilities? Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 50: 273–296.
Dworkin, Ronald. 1981a. What is equality? Part 1: Equality of welfare. Philosophy & Public Affairs 10: 185–246.
Dworkin, Ronald. 1981b. What is equality? Part 2: Equality of resources. Philosophy & Public Affairs 10: 283–345.
Dworkin, Ronald. 2000. Sovereign Virtue. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Foucault, Michel. 1978. Discipline and punish: The birth of the prison. New York: Pantheon Books.
Foucault, Michel. 1980. Power/Knowledge: Selected interviews and other writings, 1972–1977. New York: Pantheon Books.
Foucault, Michel. 2001. The subject and power. In Power: Essential works of Foucault, ed. James Faubion, 326–348. London: Allen Lane.
Frankfurt, Harry. 1987. Equality as a moral ideal. Ethics 98: 21–43.
Goodin, Robert, James Rice, Antti Parpo, and Lina Eriksson. 2008. Discretionary time. A measure of freedom. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Gutmann, Amy. 1987. Democratic education. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Holtug, Nils. 2007. Prioritarianism. In Egalitarianism – New essays on the nature and value of equality, ed. Nils Holtug and Kasper Lippert-Rasmussen, 125–156. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Horkheimer, Max, and Theodor Adorno. 1969. Dialektik der Aufklärung. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp.
Hoy, David Couzens. 2004. Critical resistance: From poststructuralism to post-critique. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Huseby, Robert. 2010. Sufficiency: Restated and defended. The Journal of Political Philosophy 18: 178–197.
Kaufman, Alexander (ed.). 2006a. Capabilities equality: Basic issues and problems. London: Routledge.
Kaufman, Alexander. 2006b. Capabilities and freedom. The Journal of Political Philosophy 14: 289–300.
Kurz, Robert, Ernst Lohoff, and Norbert Trenkle. 1999. Feierabend! Elf Attacken gegen die Arbeit. Hamburg: Konkret Literatur Verlag.
Laborde, Cécile. 2006. Female autonomy, education and the Hijab. Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy 9: 351–377.
Laborde, Cécile. 2008. Critical republicanism: The Hijab controversy and political philosophy. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Laborde, Cécile. 2010. Republicanism and global justice: A sketch. European Journal of Political Theory 9: 48–69.
MacMullen, Ian. 2007. Faith in Schools? Autonomy, citizenship, and religious education in the liberal state. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Meyer, Lukas, and Dominic Roser. 2009. Enough for the future. In Intergenerational justice, ed. Axel Gosseries and Lukas Meyer, 219–248. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Miller, David. 1999. Principles of social justice. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Miller, David. 2005. Against global egalitarianism. Journal of Ethics 9: 55–79.
Nagel, Thomas. 2005. The problem of global justice. Philosophy & Public Affairs 33: 113–47.
Nelson, Eric. 2008. From primary goods to capabilities: Distributive justice and the problem of neutrality. Political Theory 36: 93–122.
Nussbaum, Martha. 2000. Women and human development: The capabilities approach. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Nussbaum, Martha. 2006b. Capabilities as fundamental entitlements: Sen and social justice. In Capabilities equality: Basic issues and problems, ed. Alexander Kaufman, 44–70. London: Routledge.
Pettit, Philip. 2001a. A theory of freedom: From the psychology to the politics of agency. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Pettit, Philip. 2001b. Capability and freedom: A defence of Sen. Economics and Philosophy 17: 1–20.
Pettit, Philip, and John Braithwaite. 1990. Not just deserts: A republican theory of criminal justice. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Postone, Moishe. 1996. Time, labor and social domination: A reinterpretation of Marx’s critical theory. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Rawls, John. 1971. A theory of justice. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Rawls, John. 1999a. In Collected papers, ed. Samuel Freeman. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Rawls, John. 1999b. A theory of justice, 2nd ed. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, revised edition.
Rawls, John. 1999c. The law of peoples. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Rawls, John. 1999f. Social unity and primary goods. In Collected papers, ed. Samuel Freeman, 359–387. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Sayer, Andrew. 2009. Contributive justice and meaningful work. Res Publica 15: 1–16.
Sayer, Andrew. 2001. What are you worth? Recognition, valuation and moral economy. Paper presented at the British sociological association annual conference, Manchester, 09 May 2001. http://www.lancs.ac.uk/fass/sociology/papers/sayer-what-are-you-worth.pdf. Accessed 11 Apr 2010.
Scanlon, Thomas. 1975. Preference and urgency. The Journal of Philosophy 72: 655–669.
Sen, Amartya. 1979. Utilitarianism and welfarism. The Journal of Philosophy 76: 463–489.
Sen, Amartya. 1987. Equality of what? In Liberty, equality, and law, ed. Sterling McMurrin. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Sen, Amartya. 1990. Justice: Means versus freedoms. Philosophy & Public Affairs 19: 111–121.
Sen, Amartya. 1993. Capability and well-being. In The quality of life, ed. Martha Nussbaum and Amartya Sen, 30–53. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Sen, Amartya. 1999. Development as freedom. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Sen, Amartya. 2009. The idea of justice. London: Allen Lane.
Smith, Adam. 1976. In An inquiry into the nature and causes of the wealth of nations, ed. R. Campbell and A. Skinner. Oxford: Clarendon.
Temkin, Larry. 2003. Egalitarianism defended. Ethics 113: 764–782.
Watson, Tony. 1980. Sociology, work and industry. London: Routledge.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2014 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Schuppert, F. (2014). Capabilities, Freedom and Sufficiency. In: Freedom, Recognition and Non-Domination. Studies in Global Justice, vol 12. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-6806-2_4
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-6806-2_4
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht
Print ISBN: 978-94-007-6805-5
Online ISBN: 978-94-007-6806-2
eBook Packages: Humanities, Social Sciences and LawPhilosophy and Religion (R0)