Frontiers of Justice: Disability, Nationality, Species Membership

Front Cover
Harvard University Press, 2006 M01 31 - 487 pages

Theories of social justice are necessarily abstract, reaching beyond the particular and the immediate to the general and the timeless. Yet such theories, addressing the world and its problems, must respond to the real and changing dilemmas of the day. A brilliant work of practical philosophy, Frontiers of Justice is dedicated to this proposition. Taking up three urgent problems of social justice neglected by current theories and thus harder to tackle in practical terms and everyday life, Martha Nussbaum seeks a theory of social justice that can guide us to a richer, more responsive approach to social cooperation.

The idea of the social contract--especially as developed in the work of John Rawls--is one of the most powerful approaches to social justice in the Western tradition. But as Nussbaum demonstrates, even Rawls's theory, suggesting a contract for mutual advantage among approximate equals, cannot address questions of social justice posed by unequal parties. How, for instance, can we extend the equal rights of citizenship--education, health care, political rights and liberties--to those with physical and mental disabilities? How can we extend justice and dignified life conditions to all citizens of the world? And how, finally, can we bring our treatment of nonhuman animals into our notions of social justice? Exploring the limitations of the social contract in these three areas, Nussbaum devises an alternative theory based on the idea of "capabilities." She helps us to think more clearly about the purposes of political cooperation and the nature of political principles--and to look to a future of greater justice for all.

 

Contents

Introduction
1
Social Contracts and Three Unsolved Problems of Justice
9
ii Three Unsolved Problems
14
iii Rawls and the Unsolved Problems
22
iv Free Equal and Independent
25
v Grotius Hobbes Locke Hume Kant
35
vi Three Forms of Contemporary Contractarianism
54
vii The Capabilities Approach
69
The TwoStage Contract Reaffirmed and Modified
238
iv Justification and Implementation
255
v Assessing the TwoStage Contract
262
Beitz and Pogge
264
vii Prospects for an International Contractrarianism
270
Capabilities across National Boundaries
273
ii Why Capabilities?
281
iii Capabilities and Rights
284

viii Capabilities and Contractarianism
81
ix In Search of Global Justice
92
Disabilities and the Social Contract
96
ii Prudential and Moral Versions of the Contract Public and Private
103
Primary Goods Kantian Personhood Rough Equality Mutual Advantage
107
iv Postponing the Question of Disability
108
v Kantian Personhood and Mental Impairment
127
Kittay and Sen
140
vii Reconstructing Contractarianism?
145
Capabilities and Disabilities
155
ii The Bases of Social Cooperation
156
Aristotelian not Kantian
159
iv The Priority of the Good the Role of Agreement
160
v Why Capabilities?
164
vi Care and the Capabilities List
168
vii Capability or Functioning?
171
viii The Charge of Intuitionism
173
ix The Capabilities Approach and Rawlss Principles of Justice
176
The Species Norm
179
The Question of Guardianship
195
Education and Inclusion
199
The Work of Care
211
xiv Liberalism and Human Capabilities
216
Mutual Advantage and Global Inequality The Transnational Social Contract
224
The TwoStage Contract Introduced
230
iv Equality and Adequacy
291
v Pluralism and Toleration
295
vi An International Overlapping Consensus?
298
The Role of Institutions
306
What Institutions?
311
ix Ten Principles for the Global Structure
315
Beyond Compassion and Humanity Justice for Nonhuman Animals
325
Indirect Duties Duties of Compassion
328
iii Utilitarianism and Animal Flourishing
338
Extending the Capabilities Approach
346
Theory and Imagination
352
vi Species and Individual
357
No Nature Worship
366
viii Positive and Negative Capability and Functioning
372
ix Equality and Adequacy
380
x Death and Harm
384
xi An Overlapping Consensus?
388
The Capabilities List
392
xiii The Ineliminability of Conflict
401
xiv Toward a Truly Global Justice
405
The Moral Sentiments and the Capabilities Approach
408
Notes
417
References
451
Index
463
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