Session V - Challenging Theories of Justice: The Capability Approaches of Amartya Sen and Martha Nussbaum

Further to our discussion last Tuesday, we now move to pages 69-95, from Martha Nussbaum’s 'Social Contracts and Three Unsolved Problems of Justice’.

Date: 14 February 2012 (Tuesday)
Time: 3.00 pm - 5.00 pm
Venue: Library, Department of Philosophy, University of Delhi

Reading/lecture questions: 

• What alternatives to social contract theory do Sen and Nussbaum propose?
• How would public reason support Nussbaum’s 10 capabilities?
• What logic leads from equal human dignity to preventing shortfalls in the 10 capabilities, for all?
• Does Nussbaum succeed in showing that the capability approach does not face the same roadblocks that social contract theory faces at the three frontiers of justice?

Discussion questions: This week Prof. Drydyk invites your questions. Ideally they should be questions that would be challenging for Martha Nussbaum to answer. Please email your questions to him at JayDrydyk@gmail.com, and he will select some to begin the discussion period.

Session IV - Challenging Theories of Justice: The Capability Approaches of Amartya Sen and Martha Nussbaum

We now resume our sessions with Professor Jay Drydyk, and meet tomorrow to read Martha Nussbaum’s 'Social Contracts and Three Unsolved Problems of Justice’ (pages 9-35).

Date: 7 February 2012 (Tuesday)
Time: 3.00 pm - 5.00 pm
Venue: Library, Department of Philosophy, University of Delhi

Reading/lecture questions:

• What challenges do Sen and Nussbaum pose for theories of justice?
• What is Nussbaum’s argument against social contract theories?
• What are the assumptions she attributes to the social contract tradition?
• What problems result from those assumptions at the ‘frontiers of justice’?

Discussion questions:

• Is it not sufficient to treat disabled people with benevolence rather than justice?
• Why can’t a just world simply be a world made up of just countries?
• As Sen noted, equality claims can by made for people because they deserve equal consideration. But if we gave fully equal consideration to all other species, we would not eat any of them, and we as a species would cease to exist. So does it make any sense to discuss justice for other species? Would it be self-defeating for humans to act justly in relation to other species?