Being human: Nussbaum and capabilities
What is it to be human? This seems a simple question, answerable by biological examination. Check the subject’s DNA — if they’re a hairless ape with bipedal locomotion — then they’re a human.
However, there’s more to say about the topic, since we have varying intuitions about just what a “good” human life looks like. Are Islamic women, restricted in their travel and occupation, living a fully “good” and “human” life? At this point, one might point to religious conceptions of the good life. But, as we know too well, there are a variety of religious approaches, which are in conflict with one another. Goodenough’s biological story doesn’t seem to give us the sense of ought we are after in asking these questions. There seems to be no recourse but a simple relativism, “I cannot criticize another culture because it’s just so different than me.”
Nussbaum’s capabilities approach gives a starting point for this hard task, grounded in biology but augmented with the premise that human beings are rational agents. This means that we are capable of choosing the means to our ends–the methods we utilize to get to a goal. (In philosophical terms, this is “practical rationality”). So, she says, what things do humans do which make them human?
The Capabilities Approach Outlined
The list below is from Sex and Social Justice, pages 41-42, and also from an online discussion of the capabilities (I didn’t feel like typing the list myself!):
1. Life. Being able to live to the end of a human life of normal length . . . ; not dying prematurely . . .
2. Bodily health and integrity. Being able to have good health, including reproductive health; being adequately nourished . . . ; being able to have adequate shelter . . .
3. Bodily integrity. Being able to move freely from place to place; being able to be secure against violent assault, including sexual assault . . . ; having opportunities for sexual satisfaction and for choice in matters of reproduction
4. Senses, imagination, thought. Being able to use the senses; being able to imagine, to think, and to reason–and to do these things in . . . a way informed and cultivated by an adequate education . . . ; being able to use imagination and thought in connection with experiencing, and producing expressive works and events of one’s own choice . . . ; being able to use one’s mind in ways protected by guarantees of freedom of expression with respect to both political and artistic speech and freedom of religious exercise; being able to have pleasurable experiences and to avoid nonbeneficial pain
5. Emotions. Being able to have attachments to things and persons outside ourselves; being able to love those who love and care for us; being able to grieve at their absence, to experience longing, gratitude, and justified anger; not having one’s emotional developing blighted by fear or anxiety. . . .
6. Practical reason. Being able to form a conception of the good and to engage in critical reflection about the planning of one’s own life. (This entails protection for liberty of conscience.)
7. Affiliation. Being able to live for and in relation to others, to recognize and show concern for other human beings, to engage in various forms of social interaction; being able to imagine the situation of another and to have compassion for that situation; having the capability for both justice and friendship. . . . Being able to be treated as a dignified being whose worth is equal to that of others.
8. Other species. Being able to live with concern for and in relation to animals, plants, and the world of nature.
9. Play. Being able to laugh, to play, to enjoy recreational activities.
10. Control over one’s environment. (A) Political: being able to participate effectively in political choices that govern one’s life; having the rights of political participation, free speech and freedom of association . . . (B) Material: being able to hold property (both land and movable goods); having the right to seek employment on an equal basis with others . . .
Analysis
These items are grounded in human biology in one sense: you could tell an evolutionary story about the origin of play, about the development of our emotions, our interaction with other species, etc. The elements Nussbaum selects are ones which are not entailed by each other (it is not, for example, necessary that one must have control over one’s environment in order to play, or to have emotions). However, there are complex relationships between them–certainly the ability to cultivate one’s imagination will expand the ability that one can use practical reason successfully.
There are also gradations in these capabilities–the degree to which I have material control over my environment is different than an earlier time in my life, and also varies among other Americans, some of whom earn much more than I. Yet if I had no political or material control, I would be the equivalent of a slave.
But note that Nussbaum is not saying what someone must do with their practical reason, who they ought to affiliate with, or how they should use their political power. Central to her view (and that of John Rawls and Immanuel Kant, her predecessors) is that human beings must have the ability to make free choices in these important areas. If, for example, the Islamic woman freely chooses to wear a covering and to limit her movement and political participation, then that is her choice.
Of course, this leads to the question of what a free choice looks like. How much education about alternate choices do we need before we can say we’ve freely chosen? Is it true to say that I am freely choosing if my socioeconomic situation constrains my decisions?
Is-Ought and Values?
I’ll expand on the topic of freedom in my next post, and conclude with an analysis of the rationality Nussbaum values. Before I wrap up, however, I must admit that there are difficulties defending the list above. For example, assuming that these broad categories are found universally in humans as biological capabilites, we can ask why we should value them? Aren’t we making a leap from an “is to an ought”?
In one sense, yes. However–and this will become more clear as I talk about rationality–that is what human beings do. We are aware of the world’s components as reasons for our actions. It’s an odd paradox, which Christine Korsgaard is famous for developing (see her Locke Lectures), that we are biologically constituted to be normative creatures. We cannot help but assign value to things–and the items listed above we inherently value. Practical rationality is the core of this paradox, since for us to make any decision at all we are valuing our own reason-making consciousness.
So, at bottom, the reasons for valuing these human capabilities are grounded in biology, as is the capability we have to produce value.