Sen’s Capability Approach

The Capability Approach is defined by its choice of focus

upon the moral significance of individuals’ capability of achieving the kind of lives
they have reason to value. This distinguishes it from more established approaches to
ethical evaluation, such as utilitarianism or resourcism, which focus exclusively on
subjective well-being or the availability of means to the good life, respectively. A
person’s capability to live a good life is defined in terms of the set of valuable ‘beings
and doings’ like being in good health or having loving relationships with others to
which they have real access.
The Capability Approach was first articulated by the Indian economist and
philosopher Amartya Sen in the 1980s, and remains most closely associated with
him. It has been employed extensively in the context of human development, for
example, by the United Nations Development Programme, as a broader, deeper
alternative to narrowly economic metrics such as growth in GDP per capita. Here
‘poverty’ is understood as deprivation in the capability to live a good life, and
‘development’ is understood as capability expansion.

Within academic philosophy the novel focus of Capability Approach has attracted a
number of scholars. It is seen to be relevant for the moral evaluation of social
arrangements beyond the development context, for example, for considering gender
justice. It is also seen as providing foundations for normative theorising, such as a
capability theory of justice that would include an explicit ‘metric’ (that specifies
which capabilities are valuable) and ‘rule’ (that specifies how the capabilities are to
be distributed). The philosopher Martha Nussbaum has provided the most influential
version of such a capability theory of justice, deriving from the requirements of human
dignity a list of central capabilities to be incorporated into national constitutions and
guaranteed to all up to a certain threshold.
This article focuses on the philosophical aspects of the Capability Approach and its
foundations in the work of Amartya Sen. It discusses the development and structure
of Sen’s account, how it relates to other ethical approaches, and its main
contributions and criticisms. It also outlines various capability theories developed
within the Capability Approach, with particular attention to that of Martha
Nussbaum.

Table of Contents
 1. The Development of Sen’s Capability
Approach
a. Sen’s Background
b. Sen’s Concerns
2. Sen’s Critiques of Utilitarianism and
Resourcism
a. Utilitarianism
i. Act-Consequentialism
ii. Welfarism
iii. Sum Ranking
b. Resourcism
3. Core Concepts and Structure of Sen’s
Capability Approach
a. Functionings and Capability
b. Valuation: Which Functionings
Matter for the Good Life?
c. Evaluation: What Capability do
People Have to Live a Good
Life?
4. Applying Sen’s Capability Approach
5. Criticisms of Sen’s Capability Approach
a. Illiberalism
b. Under-Theorisation
c. Individualism
d. Information Gaps
6. Theorising the Capability Approach
a. Generating Lists for Empirical
Research in the Social Sciences
(Ingrid Robeyns)
b. A Participatory Approach to
Evaluating Capability
Expansion (Sabina Alkire)
c. Justice as Equal Capability of
Democratic Citizenship
(Elizabeth Anderson)
d. Capability as Freedom from
Domination (John Alexander)
7. Martha Nussbaum’s Capability Theory of
Justice
a. Structure and Development of
Nussbaum’s Capability Theory
b. Criticisms of Nussbaum’s
Theory
c. Sen and Nussbaum
8. References and Further Reading
a. Primary Sources
b. Secondary Sources
1. The Development of Sen’s Capability Approach
a. Sen’s Background
Amartya Sen had an extensive background in development economics, social choice
theory (for which he received the 1998 Nobel Prize in Economics), and philosophy
before developing the Capability Approach during the 1980s. This background can be
pertinent to understanding and assessing Sen’s Capability Approach because of the
complementarity between Sen’s contributions to these different fields. Sen’s most
influential and comprehensive account of his Capability Approach, Development as
Freedom (Sen 1999), helpfully synthesizes in an accessible way many of these
particular, and often quite technical, contributions.
Sen first introduced the concept of capability in his Tanner Lectures on Equality of
What? (Sen 1979) and went on to elaborate it in subsequent publications during the
1980s and 1990s. Sen notes that his approach has strong conceptual connections
with Aristotle’s understanding of human flourishing (this was the initial foundation
for Nussbaum’s alternative Capability Theory); with Adam Smith, and with Karl Marx.
Marx discussed the importance of functionings and capability for human well-being.
For example, Sen often cites Smith’s analysis of relative poverty in The Wealth of
Nation in terms of how a country’s wealth and different cultural norms affected which
material goods were understood to be a ‘necessity’. Sen also cites Marx’s foundational
concern with “replacing the domination of circumstances and chance over
individuals by the domination of individuals over chance and circumstances”.
b. Sen’s Concerns
The Capability Approach attempts to address various concerns that Sen had about
contemporary approaches to the evaluation of well-being, namely:

(1) Individuals can differ greatly in their abilities to convert the same resources into
valuable functionings (‘beings’ and ‘doings’). For example, those with physical
disabilities may need specific goods to achieve mobility, and pregnant women have
specific nutritional requirements to achieve good health. Therefore, evaluation that
focuses only on means, without considering what particular people can do with them, is
insufficient.
(2) People can internalize the harshness of their circumstances so that they do not
desire what they can never expect to achieve. This is the phenomenon of ‘adaptive
preferences’ in which people who are objectively very sick may, for example, still
declare, and believe, that their health is fine. Therefore, evaluation that focuses only on
subjective mental metrics is insufficient without considering whether that matches with what
a neutral observer would perceive as their objective circumstances,.
(3) Whether or not people take up the options they have, the fact that they do have
valuable options is significant. For example, even if the nutritional state of people
who are fasting and starving is the same, the fact that fasting is a choice not to eat
should be recognized. Therefore evaluation must be sensitive to both actual achievements
(‘functionings’) and effective freedom (‘capability’).
(4) Reality is complicated and evaluation should reflect that complexity rather than
take a short-cut by excluding all sorts of information from consideration in advance.
For example, although it may seem obvious that happiness matters for the evaluation
of how well people are doing, it is not all obvious that it should be the only aspect that
ever matters and so nothing else should be considered. Therefore, evaluation of how
well people are doing must seek to be as open-minded as possible. (Note: This leads to the
deliberate ‘under-theorization’ of the Capability Approach that has been the source of
some criticism, and it motivated the development of Nussbaum’s alternative
Capability Theory.)
2. Sen’s Critiques of Utilitarianism and Resourcism
An important part of Sen’s argument for the Capability Approach relates to his
critique of alternative philosophical and economics accounts. In particular, he argues
that, whatever their particular strengths, none of them provide an analysis of well-
being that is suitable as a general concept; they are all focused on the wrong
particular things (whether utility, liberty, commodities, or primary goods), and they
are too narrowly focused (they exclude too many important aspects from evaluation).
Sen’s criticisms of economic utilitarianism and John Rawls’ primary goods are
particularly important in the evolution of his account and its reception.
a. Utilitarianism
Economics has a branch explicitly concerned with ethical analysis (‘Welfare
Economics’). Sen’s systematic criticism of the form of utilitarianism behind welfare
economics identifies and rejects each of its three pillars: act consequentialism,
welfarism, and sum-ranking.

i. Act-Consequentialism
According to act consequentialism, actions should be assessed only in terms of the
goodness or badness of their consequences. This excludes any consideration of the
morality of the process by which consequences are brought about, for example,
whether it respects principles of fairness or individual agency. Sen argues instead for
a ‘comprehensive consequentialism’ which integrates the moral significance of both
consequences and principles. For example, it matters not only whether people have
an equal capability to live a long life, but how that equality is achieved. Under the
same circumstances women generally live longer than men, for largely biological
reasons. If the only thing that mattered was achieving equality in the capability to
live a long life this fact suggests that health care provision should be biased in favor
of men. However, as Sen argues, trying to achieve equality in this way would override
important moral claims of fairness which should be included in a comprehensive
evaluation.
ii. Welfarism
Welfarism is the view that goodness should be assessed only in terms of subjective
utility. Sen argues that welfarism exhibits both ‘valuational neglect’ and ‘physical
condition neglect’. First, although welfarism is centrally concerned with how
people feel about their lives, it is only concerned with psychological states, not with
people’s reflective valuations. Second, because it is concerned only with feelings it
neglects information about physical health, though this would seem obviously
relevant to assessing well-being. Not only does subjective welfare not reliably track
people’s actual interests or even their urgent needs, it is also vulnerable to what Sen
calls ‘adaptive preferences’. People can become so normalized to their conditions of
material deprivation and social injustice that they may claim to be entirely satisfied.
As Sen puts it,
Our mental reactions to what we actually get and what we can sensibly expect to get
may frequently involve compromises with a harsh reality. The destitute thrown into
beggary, the vulnerable landless labourer precariously surviving at the edge of
subsistence, the overworked domestic servant working round the clock, the subdued
and subjugated housewife reconciled to her role and her fate, all tend to come to
terms with their respective predicaments. The deprivations are suppressed and
muffled in the scale of utilities (reflected by desire-fulfilment and happiness) by the
necessity of endurance in uneventful survival. (Sen 1985, 21-22)
iii. Sum Ranking
Sum-ranking focuses on maximizing the total amount of welfare in a society without
regard for how it is distributed, although this is generally felt to be important by the
individuals concerned. Sen argues, together with liberal philosophers such as
Bernard Williams and John Rawls, that sum-ranking does not take seriously the
distinction between persons. Sen also points out that individuals differ in their ability
to convert resources such as income into welfare. For example, a disabled person
may need expensive medical and transport equipment to achieve the same level of
welfare. A society that tried to maximize the total amount of welfare would distribute
resources so that the marginal increase in welfare from giving an extra dollar to any
person would be the same. Resources would therefore be distributed away from the
sick and disabled to people who are more efficient convertors of resources into
utility.

b. Resourcism
Resourcism is defined by its neutrality about what constitutes the good life. It
therefore assesses how well people are doing in terms of their possession of the
general purpose resources necessary for the construction of any particular good life.
Sen’s criticism of John Rawls’ influential account of the fair distribution of primary
goods stands in for a criticism of resourcist approaches in general. Sen’s central
argument is that resources should not be the exclusive focus of concern for a
fairness-based theory of justice, even if, like Rawls’s primary goods, they are
deliberately chosen for their general usefulness to a good life. The reason is that this
focus excludes consideration of the variability in individuals’ actual abilities to
convert resources into valuable outcomes. In other words, two people with the same
vision of the good life and the same bundle of resources may not be equally able to
achieve that life, and so resourcists’ neutrality about the use of resources is not as fair
as they believe it is. More specifically, Sen disputes Rawls’ argument that the
principles of justice should be worked out first for the ‘normal’ case, in terms of a
social contract conceived as a rational scheme for mutually advantageous
cooperation between people equally able to contribute to society, and only later
extended to ‘hard’ cases, such as of disability. Sen believes such cases are far from
abnormal and excluding them at the beginning risks building a structure that
excludes them permanently. The general problem is that such accounts ‘fetishize’
resources as the embodiment of advantage, rather than focusing on the relationship
between resources and people. Nevertheless Sen acknowledges that although the
distribution of resources should not be the direct concern in evaluating how well
people are doing, it is very relevant to considerations of procedural fairness.
3. Core Concepts and Structure of Sen’s Capability
Approach
This section provides a technical overview of Sen’s account.
a. Functionings and Capability
When evaluating well-being, Sen argues, the most important thing is to consider
what people are actually able to be and do. The commodities or wealth people have
or their mental reactions (utility) are an inappropriate focus because they provide
only limited or indirect information about how well a life is going. Sen illustrates his
point with the example of a standard bicycle. This has the characteristics of
‘transportation’ but whether it will actually provide transportation will depend on the
characteristics of those who try to use it. It might be considered a generally useful
tool for most people to extend their mobility, but it obviously will not do that for a
person without legs. Even if that person, by some quirk, finds the bicycle delightful,
we should nevertheless be able to note within our evaluative system that she still
lacks transportation. Nor does this mental reaction show that the same person would
not appreciate transportation if it were really available to her.

The Capability Approach focuses directly on the quality of life that individuals are
actually able to achieve. This quality of life is analyzed in terms of the core concepts
of ‘functionings’ and ‘capability’.

 Functionings are states of ‘being and

doing’  such as being well-nourished,
having shelter. They should be
distinguished from the commodities
employed to achieve them (as ‘bicycling’
is distinguishable from ‘possessing a
bike’).
 Capability refers to the set of valuable
functionings that a person has effective
access to. Thus, a person’s capability
represents the effective freedom of an
individual to choose between different
functioning combinations – between
different kinds of life – that she has
reason to value. (In later work, Sen refers
to ‘capabilities’ in the plural (or even
‘freedoms’) instead of a single capability
set, and this is also common in the wider
capability literature. This allows analysis
to focus on sets of functionings related to
particular aspects of life, for example, the
capabilities of literacy, health, or political
freedom.)
 

Figure 1. Outline of the core relationships in the Capability Approach

Figure 1 outlines the core relationships of the Capability Approach and how they
relate to the main alternative approaches focused on resources and utility. Resources
(such as a bicycle) are considered as an input, but their value depends upon
individuals’ ability to convert them into valuable functionings (such as bicycling),
which depends, for example, on their personal physiology (such as health), social
norms, and physical environment (such as road quality). An individual’s capability
set is the set of valuable functionings that an individual has real access to. Achieved
functionings are those they actually select. For example, an individual’s capability set
may include access to different functionings relating to mobility, such as walking,
bicycling, taking a public bus, and so on. The functioning they actually select to get to
work may be the public bus. Utility is considered both an output and a functioning.
Utility is an output because what people choose to do and to be naturally has an
effect on their sense of subjective well-being (for example, the pleasure of bicycling to
work on a sunny day). However the Capability Approach also considers subjective
well-being – feeling happy – as a valuable functioning in its own right and
incorporates it into the capability framework.

b. Valuation: Which Functionings Matter for the Good Life?

Sen argues that the correct focus for evaluating how well off people are is their
capability to live a life we have reason to value, not their resource wealth or
subjective well-being. But in order to begin to evaluate how people are performing in
terms of capability, we first need to determine which functionings matter for the
good life and how much, or at least we need to specify a valuation procedure for
determining this.
One way of addressing the problem is to specify a list of the constituents of the
flourishing life, and do this on philosophical grounds (Martha Nussbaum does this
for her Capability Theory of Justice). Sen rejects this approach because he argues
that it denies the relevance of the values people may come to have and the role of
democracy (Sen 2004b). Philosophers and social scientists may provide helpful ideas
and arguments, but the legitimate source of decisions about the nature of the life we
have reason to value must be the people concerned. Sen therefore proposes a social
choice exercise requiring both public reasoning and democratic procedures of
decision-making.

One reason that social scientists and philosophers are so keen to specify a list is that
it can be used as an index: by ranking all the different constituents of the flourishing
life with respect to each other it would allow easier evaluation of how well people are
doing. Sen’s social choice exercise is unlikely to produce collective agreement on a
complete ranking of different functionings, if only because of what Rawls called the
‘fact of reasonable disagreement’. But Sen argues that substantial action-guiding
agreement is possible. First, different valuational perspectives may ‘intersect’ to
reach similar judgments about some issues, though by way of different arguments.
Second, such agreements may be extended by introducing ‘ranges’ of weights rather
than cardinal numbers. For example, if there are four conflicting views about the
relative weight to be attached to literacy vis-à-vis health, of ½, ⅓, ¼ and 1/5, that
contains an implicit agreement that the relative weight on education should not
exceed ½, nor fall below 1/5, so having one unit of literacy and two of health would be
better than having two units of literacy and one of health.
Sen does suggest that in many cases a sub-set of crucially important capabilities
associated with basic needs may be relatively easily identified and agreed upon as
urgent moral and political priorities. These ‘basic capabilities’, such as education,
health, nutrition, and shelter up to minimally adequate levels, do not exhaust the
resources of the capability approach, only the easy agreement on what counts as
being scandalously deprived. They may be particularly helpful in assessing the extent
and nature of poverty in developing countries. However, taking a basic capability
route has implications for how the exercise of evaluating individuals’ capability can
proceed, since it can only evaluate how well people’s lives are going in terms of the
basics.
c. Evaluation: What Capability do People Have to Live a Good
Life?
Evaluating capability is a second order exercise concerned with mapping the set of
valuable functionings people have real access to. Since it takes the value of
functionings as given, its conclusions will reflect any ambiguity in the valuation
stage.

Assessing capability is more informationally demanding than other accounts of

advantage since it not only takes a much broader view of what well-being
achievement consists in but also tries to assess the freedom people actually have to
choose high quality options. This is not a purely procedural matter of adding up
the number of options available, since the option to purchase a tenth brand of
washing powder has a rather different significance than the option to vote in
democratic elections. For example, Sen argues that the eradication of malaria from
an area enhances the capability of individuals living there even though it doesn’t
increase the number of options those individuals have (since they don’t have the
‘option’ to live in a malarial area anymore). Because the value of a capability set
represents a person’s effective freedom to live a valuable life in terms of the value of
the functionings available to that individual, when the available functionings are
improved, so is the person’s effective freedom.
The capability approach in principle allows a very wide range of dimensions of
advantage to be positively evaluated (‘what capabilities does this person have?’). This
allows an open diagnostic approach to what is going well or badly in people’s lives
that can be used to reveal unexpected shortfalls or successes in different dimensions,
without aggregating them all together into one number. The informational focus can
be tightened depending on the purpose of the evaluation exercise and relevant
valuational and informational constraints. For example, if the approach is limited to
considering ‘basic capabilities’ then the assessment is limited to a narrower range of
dimensions and attempts to assess deprivation – the shortfall from the minimal
thresholds of those capabilities – which will exclude evaluation of how well the lives
of those above the threshold are going.

As well as being concerned with how well people’s lives are going, the Capability
Approach can be used to examine the underlying determinants of the relationship
between people and commodities, including the following (Sen 1999, 70-71):

(1)      Individual physiology, such as the variations associated with illnesses, disability,

age, and gender. In order to achieve the same functionings, people may have
particular needs for non-standard commodities – such as prosthetics for a disability
– or they may need more of the standard commodities – such as additional food in
the case of intestinal parasites. Note that some of these disadvantages, such as
blindness, may not be fully ‘correctable’ even with tailored assistance.
(2)      Local environment diversities, such as climate, epidemiology, and pollution.
These can impose particular costs such as more or less expensive heating or clothing
requirements.
(3)      Variations in social conditions, such as the provision of public services such as
education and security, and the nature of community relationships, such as across
class or ethnic divisions.
(4)      Differences in relational perspectives. Conventions and customs determine the
commodity requirements of expected standards of behaviour and consumption, so
that relative income poverty in a rich community may translate into absolute poverty
in the space of capability. For example, local requirements of ‘the ability to appear in
public without shame’ in terms of acceptable clothing may vary widely.
(5)      Distribution within the family – distributional rules within a family determining,
for example, the allocation of food and health-care between children and adults,
males and females.
The diagnosis of capability failures, or significant interpersonal variations in
capability, directs attention to the relevant causal pathways responsible. Note that
many of these interpersonal variations will also influence individuals’ abilities to
access resources to begin with. For example, the physically handicapped often have
more expensive requirements to achieve the same capabilities, such as mobility,
while at the same time they also have greater difficulty earning income in the first
place.

4. Applying Sen’s Capability Approach

The concept of a capability has a global-local character in that its definition abstracts
from particular circumstances, but its realization depends on specific local
requirements. For example, the same capability to be well-nourished can be
compared for different people although it may require different amounts and kinds
of food depending on one’s age, state of health, and so on. This makes the Capability
Approach applicable across political, economic, and cultural borders. For example,
Sen points out that being relatively income poor in a wealthy society can
entail absolute poverty in some important capabilities, because they may require more
resources to achieve. For example, the capability for employment may require more
years of education in a richer society
Many capabilities will have underlying requirements that vary strongly with social
circumstances (although others, such as adequate nourishment, may vary less). For
example, the ‘ability to appear in public without shame’ seems a capability that
people might generally be said to have reason to value, but its requirements vary
significantly according to cultural norms from society to society and for different
groups within each society (such as by gender, class, and ethnicity). Presently in
Saudi Arabia, for example, women must have the company of a close male relative to
appear in public, and require a chauffeur and private car to move between private
spaces (since they are not permitted to use public transport or drive a car
themselves). Strictly speaking the Capability Approach leaves open whether such
‘expensive’ capabilities, if considered important enough to be guaranteed by society
as a matter of justice, should be met by making more resources available to those
who need them (subsidized cars and chauffeurs), or by revising the relevant social
norms. The Capability Approach only identifies such capability failures and
diagnoses their causes. However, if there is general agreement in the first place that
such capabilities should be equally guaranteed for all, there is a clear basis for
criticizing clearly unjust social norms as the source of relative deprivation and thus
as inconsistent with the spirit of such a guarantee.

The capability approach takes a multi-dimensional approach to evaluation. Often it

may seem that people are generally well-off, yet a closer analysis reveals that this ‘all-
things-considered’ judgement conceals surprising shortfalls in particular capabilities,
for example, the sporting icon who can’t read. Capability analysis rejects the
presumption that unusual achievement in some dimensions compensates for
shortfalls in others. From a justice perspective, the capability approach’s relevance
here is to argue that if people are falling short on a particular capability that has been
collectively agreed to be a significant one, then justice would require addressing the
shortfall itself if at all possible, rather than offering compensation in some other
form, such as increased income.

Capability evaluation is informationally demanding and its precision is limited by the

level of agreement about which functionings are valuable. However, Sen has shown
that even where only elementary evaluation of quite basic capabilities is possible (for
example, life-expectancy or literacy outcomes), this can still provide much more, and
more relevant, action-guiding information than the standard alternatives. In
particular, by making perspicuous contrasts between successes and failures the
capability approach can direct political and public attention to neglected dimensions
of human well-being. For example, countries with similar levels of wealth can have
dramatically different levels of aggregate achievement – and inequality – on such
non-controversially important dimensions as longevity and literacy. And, vice versa,
countries with very small economies can sometimes score as highly on these
dimensions as the richest. This demonstrates both the limitations of relying
exclusively on economic metrics for evaluating development, and the fact that
national wealth does not pose a rigid constraint on such achievements (that GNP is
not destiny). Such analyses are easily politicized in the form of the pointed
question, Why can’t we do as well as them?
Philippines South Africa

Gross National Income per capita

(ppp) $ 4,002 $9,812

Life expectancy (years) 72.3 52

Mean years of schooling 8.7 8.2

Figure 2. Perspicuous contrasts: The Philippines does more with less
(Data from the 2010 UNDP Human Development Report)

5. Criticisms of Sen’s Capability Approach

This section outlines important criticisms of Sen’s approach, together with his
responses.

a. Illiberalism
Liberal critics of Sen often identify the focus of the Capability Approach – ‘the ability
to achieve the kind of lives we have reason to value’ – as problematic because it
appears to impose an external valuation of the good life, whatever people may
actually value. Rawls, for example, notes that the reason for liberals to focus on the
fair allocation of general purpose resources rather than achievement is that this best
respects each individual’s fundamental right to pursue their own conception of the
good life. This relates to Rawls’ conception of justice as political rather than
metaphysical: it is not the task of justice to assess people’s achievements, but rather
to ensure the fairness of the conditions of participation in a society. Justice should be
neutral with regard to judging different people’s conceptions of the good. But this
neutrality seems incompatible with the Capability Approach’s concern with assessing
people’s achievements, which would seem to require a much more substantive view
of what counts as a good life than one needs for assessing general purpose resources.
Rawls suggests that this constitutes the privileging of a particular (non-political)
comprehensive conception of rational advantage or the good.

In replying to this criticism, Sen particularly points to the heterogeneity (variability)

in people’s abilities to convert the same bundle of resources into valuable
functionings. Theories of justice that focus on the distribution of means implicitly
assume that they will provide the same effective freedom to live the life one has
reason to value to all, but this excludes relevant information about the relationship
between particular people and resources. Even if one abstracts from existing social
inequalities or the results of personal choices (‘option luck’), as many liberal theories
of justice do, one will still find a substantial and pervasive variation in the abilities of
different members of a society to utilize the same resources – whether of specific
goods like education or general purpose goods like income. That means that even if it
happened that everyone had the same conception of the good, and the same bundle
of resources, the fact of heterogeneity would mean that people would have
differential real capability to pursue the life they had reason to value. Therefore, Sen
argues, a theory of justice based on fairness should be directly and deeply concerned
with the effective freedom – capability – of actual people to achieve the lives they
have reason to value.

b. Under-Theorisation
Both capability theorists and external critics express concern that the content and
structure of Sen’s Capability Approach is under-theorised and this makes it
unsuitable as a theory of justice. Sen does not say which capabilities are important or
how they are to be distributed: he argues that those are political decisions for the
society itself to decide. Many philosophers have argued that without an objectively
justified list of valuable capabilities the nature of the life ‘we have reason to want’ is
unclear and so it is hard to identify the goal that a just society should be aiming
towards, to assess how well a society is doing, or to criticize particular shortfalls.
Different capability theorists have taken different approaches to the valuation of
capabilities, from procedural accounts to ones based on substantive understandings
of human nature. There are related concerns about the institutional structure of the
Capability Approach, for example, brought by the Rawlsian social justice theorist,
Thomas Pogge (Pogge 2002). How should capabilities be weighted against each other
and non-capability concerns? For example, should some basic capabilities be
prioritized as more urgent? What does the Capability Approach imply for
interpersonal equality? How should capability enhancement be paid for? How much
responsibility should individuals take for the results of their own choices? What
should be done about non-remediable deprivations, such as blindness?
Sen’s main response to such criticisms has been to admit that the Capability
Approach is not a theory of justice but rather an approach to the evaluation of
effective freedom.

c. Individualism
Sen’s emphasis on individual effective freedom as the focal concern of the Capability
Approach has been criticized as excessively individualistic. There are several
components to this family of criticisms. Some communitarians see Sen’s account as
lacking interest in, and even sometimes overtly hostile to, communal values and ways
of life because of an excessive focus on individuals. Charles Gore, for example, has
argued that Sen’s approach only considers states of affairs and social arrangements
in terms of how good or bad they are for an individual’s well-being and freedom
(Gore 1997). But this excludes consideration of certain other goods which individuals
may have reason to value which are ‘irreducibly social’ because they cannot be
reduced to properties of individuals, such as a shared language, set of moral norms,
or political structure. A related criticism argues that Sen’s emphasis on individual
freedom is vague and fails to consider how one individual’s freedom may affect
others. Martha Nussbaum, for example, points out that a just society requires
balancing and even limiting certain freedoms, such as regarding the expression of
racist views, and in order to do so must make commitments about which freedoms
are good or bad, important or trivial (Nussbaum 2003).  Others have noted that
‘freedom’ though broad, is a poor way of conceptualizing certain inter-personal goods
such as friendship, respect, and care. A third line of critique takes issue with Sen’s
‘thin’ agency based picture of persons as too abstract and rationalistic. It is said to be
founded too closely in Sen’s personal dialectical relationship between economics and
philosophy, and not enough in the perspectives and methods of anthropology,
sociology, or psychology (see, for example, Giri 2000; Gasper 2002). As a result
Sen’s account is said to have a poor grasp, for example, of the centrality and
complexity of personal growth and development.
With regard to ‘irreducibly social goods’ like culture, Sen argues that they not only
enter into the analysis instrumentally (such as in the requirements for appearing in
public without shame) but also as part of the lives people have reason to value.
Nevertheless Sen is clear in his view that the value of social goods is only derivative
upon the reflective choices of those concerned (see, for example, Sen 2004a). So if
people on reflection don’t value such social goods as the traditional religious
institutions of their society or continuing to speak a minority language then that
should trump the ‘right’ of those institutions to continue. With regard to freedom,
Sen distinguishes the ability to choose between different options from the value of
those options. These two together make up effective freedom or capability. Simple
freedom to choose may be vulnerable to the objection that it is compatible with
invidious freedoms, but the Capability Approach is concerned with people’s ability to
live a life they have reason to value, which incorporates an ethical evaluation of the
content of their options. It is not concerned only with increasing people’s freedom-
as-power. Finally, Sen’s Capability Approach is particularly concerned with grasping
the dimensions of human well-being and advantage missing from standard
approaches. This relates to its concern with tracing the causal pathways of specific
deprivations, with how exactly different people are able or unable to convert
resources into valuable functionings. Although this remains somewhat abstractly
presented in the formal structure of the Capability Approach, Sen’s analysis of, for
example, adaptive preferences and intra-household distribution do go at least some
way to a situated and sociological analysis.

d. Information Gaps
Sen’s Capability Approach is founded on the idea that much more information about
the quality of human lives can and should be taken into account in evaluating them.
The Human Development Index developed by Amartya Sen and the economist
Mahbub ul Haq in 1990 for the United Nations Development Programme’s Human
Development Reports is the most influential capability metric currently used.
However it has been criticized for its crudeness. It contains only three dimensions –
longevity, literacy (mean years of schooling), and Gross National Income per capita –
which are weighted equally. The Capability Approach is supposed to be interested in
assessing how people fare on many dimensions of life including some which seem
very difficult to obtain information about, such as people’s real choice sets or such
complicated capabilities as the ability to appear in public without shame or to form
relationships with others. It also requires detailed information on the real inter-
personal variations in translating commodities into functionings. It is not clear
however that such informational ambitions could ever be realized. Furthermore even
the effort of trying to collect such detailed information about people’s lives and their
‘real’ disabilities can be seen as invasive.

Sen was concerned about the crudeness of the Human Development Index (HDI)
from the start, but was won over by Mahbub ul Haq’s argument for the rhetorical
significance of a composite index of human well-being that could compete directly
with the crude GDP per capita numbers that have been so influential in development
thinking. Thus the HDI does not fully reflect the scope or methodology of the
Capability Approach. Nevertheless it has succeeded in demonstrating that capability
related information can be used systematically as a credible supplement to economic
metrics. Sen accepts that some information about capabilities is easier to obtain than
others. Firstly, he argues that we already have quite extensive information about
some basic capabilities even for many quite poor countries, such as about health, that
can and should be systematically assessed. There is therefore no need to limit our
assessment to economic metrics which firstly count the wrong things (means) and
secondly also come with significant measurement error despite their apparent
numerical precision. Secondly, he argues that if researchers accept the capability
space as the new priority for evaluation that will motivate the development of new
data collection priorities and methods. As a result more information will become
available about how people are faring on the currently ‘missing dimensions’ of the
lives we have reason to value, for example, relating to employment or gender equality
in domestic arrangements. Nevertheless, the Capability Approach is not concerned
with information collection for its own sake, but rather with the appropriate use of
information for assessment. It is therefore not committed to, nor does its effective
use require, building a perfect information collection and assessment bureaucracy.

6. Theorising the Capability Approach

A number of philosophers sympathetic to Sen’s foundational concerns have
nevertheless been dissatisfied with the vagueness and under-elaboration of the
theoretical structure of his Capability Approach (although these features seem to be
quite deliberate on Sen’s part). A number of theoretical accounts have been
developed that seek to elaborate the Capability Approach more systematically and to
address these philosophers’ particular concerns. Some theoretical accounts are
primarily concerned with operationalising the evaluative dimension of the Capability
Approach: the assessment of quality of life, well-being and human development.
Others focus on developing a capability based ‘Theory of Justice’ in the spirit of its
concerns. This section provides a brief outline of some of these.

a. Generating Lists for Empirical Research in the Social

Sciences (Ingrid Robeyns)
Ingrid Robeyns argues that attempting to develop a single all-purpose list of
capabilities would be incompatible with Sen’s concern with a general framework of
evaluation. Instead she proposes a procedural approach to the selection of
capabilities for particular purposes, such as the evaluation of gender inequality in
terms of capabilities (Robeyns 2003). She claims that valuational procedures that
meet her criteria provide epistemic, academic, and political legitimacy for empirically
evaluating capability. Her five criteria are:

(1) Explicit formulation. All proposed list elements should be explicit, so they can be
discussed and debated.
(2) Methodological justification. The method of generating the list should be made
explicit so it can be scrutinized.
(3) Sensitivity to context. The level of abstraction of the list should be appropriate to its
purposes, whether for philosophical, legal, political, or social discussion.
(4) Different levels of generality. If the list is intended for empirical application or
public policy then it should be drawn up in two distinct stages, first an ideal stage
and then a pragmatic one that reflects perhaps temporary feasibility constraints on
information and resources.
(5) Exhaustion and non-reduction. The list should include all important elements and
those elements should not be reducible to others (though they may overlap).
b. A Participatory Approach to Evaluating Capability
Expansion (Sabina Alkire)
Sabina Alkire has developed a philosophically grounded framework for the
participatory valuation and evaluation of development projects in terms of capability
enhancement (Alkire 2005). This allows her to go beyond standard cost-benefit
analyses of development projects in financial terms to investigate which capabilities
that the people concerned have reason to value are enhanced and by how much.

Alkire’s approach has 2 stages of evaluation: i) a theoretical one-off stage in which

‘philosophers’ employ practical reason to reflexively identify the basic spheres or
categories of value, and ii) a local participatory phase in which members of a social
group deliberate, with the aid of a facilitator, about what their needs are and what,
and how, they would like to do about them (with the basic categories employed as
prompts to ensure that all main dimensions of value are discussed). For the first,
philosophical, stage Alkire proposes an adaptation of the practical reasoning
approach of John Finnis to identify the basic dimensions of human well-being by
asking iteratively, ‘why do I/others do what we do?’ until one comes to recognize the
basic reasons for which no further reasoned justification can be given. This method is
intended to yield substantive and objective descriptions of the fundamental, non-
hierarchically ordered, dimensions of human flourishing, while allowing the content
and relative importance of these dimensions to be specified in a participatory process
according to a particular group’s historical, cultural, and personal values. The
intrinsically important dimensions identified by this method are: Life; Knowledge;
Play; Aesthetic experience; Sociability; Practical reasonableness; Religion.
One of the advantages Alkire claims for her approach is its ability to elicit what the
people whose lives are the subject of development projects really consider valuable,
which may sometimes surprise external planners and observers. Her use of the
participatory approach for assessing NGO fieldwork in Pakistan showed, for
example, that even the very poor can and do reasonably value other things than
material well-being, such as religion and social participation.

c. Justice as Equal Capability of Democratic Citizenship

(Elizabeth Anderson)
Elizabeth Anderson has proposed a partial theory of justice based on equal capability
of democratic citizenship (Anderson 1999). Anderson takes equality in social
relationships as the focus for her egalitarian theory of justice and argues that one
should analyze the requirements of such equality in terms of the social conditions
supporting it as a capability. Although Anderson’s primary concern is for equality in
the particular dimension of democratic citizenship, she suggests that this has
extensive egalitarian implications for the nature of the society as a whole, because
other capabilities – such as relating to health, education, personal autonomy and
self-respect, and economic fairness – are required as supporting conditions to realize
truly equal citizenship.  She argues that, “Negatively, people are entitled to whatever
capabilities are necessary to enable them to avoid or escape entanglement in
oppressive social relationships. Positively, they are entitled to whatever capabilities
are necessary for functioning as an equal citizen in a democratic state (Anderson
1999, 317).”

d. Capability as Freedom from Domination (John Alexander)

John Alexander has proposed a capability theory based on a Republican
understanding of the importance of freedom as non-domination (Alexander 2008).
He argues that the Capability Approach’s concern with people’s ‘real freedom’ sets it
outside and against the standard liberal egalitarian theory of justice framework
which understands freedom as the absence of constraints. But he argues that the
Capability Approach should go further to elaborate this commitment to real freedom
in Republican terms. In this perspective it is not only important that one be able to
achieve certain functionings, such as mobility, but whether one’s achievement of
these are conditional on the favor or goodwill of other people or are independently
guaranteed by one’s own rights and powers. Capability is standardly understood as
mapping one’s range of choices over valuable functionings regardless of their content.
For example, the ability of a physically disabled but socially well-connected person to
travel outside whenever she wants by arranging the help of friends, family and
voluntary organizations. In addition the Republican perspective requires that her
capability for mobility should be independent of context. For example, in the form of
a guaranteed legal right to government assistance on demand, or by the provision of
her own specially adapted self-drive vehicle. Otherwise she may be said to be still
deprived since her capability is not completely free.
Domination should also be integrated into capability evaluation because it will often
be a cause of capability deprivation. It is no coincidence that the people who are most
capability deprived are often the poorest and weakest in society, and as a result also
vulnerable to yet further exploitation. This emphasis on freedom from domination
also gives a strong normative orientation to the Capability Approach’s evaluation of
the causes of capability failure: some causes are simply unacceptable, such as social
norms restricting women’s freedom of movement and employment, and should be
removed rather than mitigated.
7. Martha Nussbaum’s Capability Theory of Justice
This section outlines Martha Nussbaum’s work on the Capability Approach: its
structure, criticisms, and relationship to Amartya Sen’s work.

a. Structure and Development of Nussbaum’s Capability

Theory
Martha Nussbaum has developed the most systematic, extensive, and influential
capability theory of justice to date. Nussbaum aims to provide a partial theory of
justice (one that doesn’t exhaust the requirements of justice) based on dignity, a list of
fundamental capabilities, and a threshold.
Nussbaum’s list of The Central Human Capabilities (Reproduced from Creating
Capabilities 2011, 33-4)

1. Life. Being able to live to the end of a human life of normal length; not dying
prematurely, or before one’s life is so reduced as to be not worth living.
2. Bodily Health. Being able to have good health, including reproductive health; to be
adequately nourished; to have adequate shelter.
3. Bodily Integrity. Being able to move freely from place to place; to be secure against
violent assault, including sexual assault and domestic violence; having opportunities
for sexual satisfaction and for choice in matters of reproduction.
4. Senses, Imagination, and Thought. Being able to use the senses, to imagine, think,
and reason – and to do these things in a ‘‘truly human’’ way, a way informed and
cultivated by an adequate education, including, but by no means limited to, literacy
and basic mathematical and scientific training. Being able to use imagination and
thought in connection with experiencing and producing works and events of one’s
own choice, religious, literary, musical, and so forth. 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 non-beneficial pain.
5. Emotions. Being able to have attachments to things and people outside ourselves; to
love those who love and care for us, to grieve at their absence; in general, to love, to
grieve, to experience longing, gratitude, and justified anger. Not having one’s
emotional development blighted by fear and anxiety. (Supporting this capability
means supporting forms of human association that can be shown to be crucial in
their development.)
6. Practical Reason. Being able to form a conception of the good and to engage in
critical reflection about the planning of one’s life. (This entails protection for the
liberty of conscience and religious observance.)
7. Affiliation.
A. Being able to live with and toward others, to recognize and show concern for other
human beings, to engage in various forms of social interaction; to be able to imagine
the situation of another. (Protecting this capability means protecting institutions that
constitute and nourish such forms of affiliation, and also protecting the freedom of
assembly and political speech.)

B. Having the social bases of self-respect and nonhumiliation; being able to be

treated as a dignified being whose worth is equal to that of others. This entails
provisions of nondiscrimination on the basis of race, sex, sexual orientation,
ethnicity, caste, religion, national origin.

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 right of political participation, protections of free speech and
association.

B. Material. Being able to hold property (both land and movable goods), and having
property rights on an equal basis with others; having the right to seek employment
on an equal basis with others; having the freedom from unwarranted search and
seizure. In work, being able to work as a human being, exercising practical reason,
and entering into meaningful relationships of mutual recognition with other workers.

In her early contributions to the capability approach, Nussbaum justified the

composition of her list by explicitly Aristotelian argument about the perfectionist
requirements of the truly human life (Nussbaum 1988). In the mid-1990s however
she converted the structure of her account to a Rawlsian style ‘politically liberal’
account. This means that she now presents her list as a proposal that is neutral with
respect to particular conceptions of the good, but can be endorsed by many different
groups in a society through an overlapping consensus. However the list components
themselves remain almost identical and retain a distinctively Aristotelian cast.

Nussbaum’s account is motivated by a concept of human dignity (in contrast to Sen’s

emphasis on freedom), which she links to flourishing in the Aristotelian sense. She
argues that her list of 10 fundamental capabilities follow from the requirements of
dignity and have been tested and adapted over the course of an extensive cross-
cultural dialogue she has carried out, particularly in India (as related in her
book, Women and Human Development, 2001). The threshold is a ‘sufficientarian’
principle that specifies the minimum requirements of justice: everyone must be
entitled to each capability at least to this degree by their governments and relevant
international institutions. Access to these capabilities is required by human dignity,
Nussbaum argues, but this does not mean that a life lacking in any of these, whether
from external deprivation or individual choice, is a less than human life. Choice and
deprivation are different however. If someone lacks access to these capabilities, for
example, to be well-nourished (bodily health), that reflects a failure by society to
respect her human dignity. If someone chooses not to take up her opportunities to
certain capabilities, for example, to adopt an ascetic life-style and fast for religious
reasons at the expense of her bodily health, respecting that choice is also an aspect of
respecting her dignity.
Nussbaum suggests that her list, together with the precise location of the threshold,
should be democratically debated and incorporated into national constitutional
guarantees, international human rights legislation and international development
policy. In keeping with its commitment to political liberalism, the components of
Nussbaum’s list have a ‘thick-vague’ character in that while they have a universal
claim to be of central importance to any human life, their definition is vague enough
to allow their specification in multiple ways that reflect the values, histories, and
special circumstances of particular political societies. For example, freedom of
speech may be defined differently in law in the USA and Germany, because of their
different histories, without endangering the fundamental capability. Nevertheless,
because each capability is equally centrally important and a shortfall in any area is
significant in itself, the scope for governments to make trade-offs between them, for
example, on the basis of quantitative cost-benefit analysis, is limited.

b. Criticisms of Nussbaum’s Theory

Nussbaum’s capability theory of justice received quite intense criticism. Some have
questioned the epistemological basis of her approach, finding it rather suspicious
that after all her years of cross-cultural discussion her list remains basically the same
rather ‘intellectualized’ Aristotelian one she had suggested in the first place (Okin
2003), and suggest that it rather reflects the values of a typical 21 st century American
liberal than a set of timeless universal values or a contemporary global overlapping
consensus (Stewart 2001). Others have argued that her legal-moral-philosophical
orientation is elitist and over-optimistic about what constitutions and governments
are like and are capable of (Menon 2002); is over-specified and paternalistic yet still
misses out important capabilities and is inappropriate for many uses, such as quality
of life measurement or development fieldwork (Alkire 2005, 35-45).
In response to such criticisms, Nussbaum has defended the contents of her list as
having cross-cultural credibility, but also emphasised that she is not trying to impose
a definitive capability theory on everyone. She makes a clear and explicit distinction
between the dimensions of justification (why her theory is best) and implementation (its
more humble meta-status as an object for democratic deliberation and decision by
those concerned) (Nussbaum 2004).
c. Sen and Nussbaum
Nussbaum and Sen collaborated in the late 1980s and early 1990s and since they are
the most high-profile writers in the Capability Approach their accounts are often
elided, despite significant differences. When they are distinguished, Nussbaum’s
account is often seen as the more ‘philosophical’ because she has developed the
Capability Approach in a more orthodox philosophical way, for example, by focusing
on theoretical rigor, coherence and completeness. As a result, Sen’s approach is
sometimes perceived merely as a predecessor to Nussbaum’s more developed second
generation account, and therefore of primarily historical interest to understanding
the Capability Approach rather than a parallel account in its own right.

The accounts of Sen and Nussbaum differ significantly in ways that relate to their
different concerns and backgrounds. In particular:
  Nussbaum is concerned to produce a
philosophically
coherent normative (partial) theory of
justice; Sen is concerned with producing a
general framework for evaluating the
quality of lives people can lead that can
incorporate the very diverse concerns and
dimensions that may be applicable.
 While Sen’s approach is founded on
enhancing individual freedom,
Nussbaum’s theory is founded on
respecting human dignity.
 Sen’s comprehensive consequentialism
makes room for incorporating empirical
information about feasibility and
instrumental relationships between
capabilities when considering policies;
Nussbaum largely rejects such
instrumental analysis because she is wary
of its ‘Utilitarian associations’.
 Sen’s Capability Approach in its
normative ‘developmental’ aspect, is
mainly concerned with practical
incremental improvements; Nussbaum’s
approach is rather more utopian in that it
demands the full implementation of
minimal justice (achievement of the
minimum thresholds of all fundamental
capabilities) for all, and this is specified
so demandingly that no country yet meets
it (though she has suggested that Finland
may be close).
8. References and Further Reading
a. Primary Sources
 John M. Alexander 2008. Capabilities and Social
Justice. Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.
 Introduction to the Capability
Approach, with attention to Sen’s,
Nussbaum’s, and Anderson’s accounts and a
development of his own Republican account
in the final chapter.
 Sabina Alkire. 2005. Valuing Freedoms. Oxford
University Press.
 First half of the book develops a
procedure for operationalizing the Capability
Approach for participatory development;
second half applies this to the evaluation of
development projects.
 Elizabeth Anderson. 1999. “What Is the Point of
Equality?” Ethics 109 (2): 287-337.
 Critique of luck egalitarianism and
outline of a capability theory of justice based
 on the capability for equal democratic
citizenship.
 Martha Nussbaum. 1988. Nature, Function, and
Capability: Aristotle on Political Distribution.
In Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy. Oxford
University Press.
 Martha Nussbaum’s first contribution
to the capability approach, based on a
reading of Aristotle’s politics and ethics.
 Martha Nussbaum. 2001. Women and Human
Development (Cambridge University Press,).
 Key text in Nussbaum’s second stage
– political – development of a capability
theory of justice.
 Martha Nussbaum. 2004. “On Hearing Women’s
Voices: A Reply to Susan Okin.” Philosophy and
Public Affairs 32 (2): 193-205.
 Nussbaum replies to criticisms of the
methodology and legitimacy of her list.
 Martha Nussbaum. 2011. Creating Capabilities: The
Human Development Approach (Harvard University
Press).
 Non-technical introduction to the
capability approach and Nussbaum’s
capability theory of justice intended for
university undergraduates.
 Ingrid Robeyns. 2003. “Sen’s Capability Approach and
Gender Inequality: selecting relevant
capabilities.” Feminist Economics 9 (2): 61-92.
 Robeyns outlines her procedure for
choosing capabilities and applies it to the
case of gender equality.
 Amartya Sen. 1979. Equality of What? Stanford
University: Tanner Lectures on Human Values
(Available from the Tanner Lectures website)
 Amartya Sen’s first publication on the
capability approach, particularly focused on
criticizing utilitarian and Rawlsian
perspectives on well-being.
 Amartya Sen. 1985. Commodities and
Capabilities. North-Holland.
 The most formal (technical)
elaboration of Sen’s capability approach.
 Amartya Sen. 1989. “Development as Capability
Expansion,” Journal of Development Planning 19: 41–
58.
 An especially accessible and succinct
account of the capability approach to human
development.
 Amartya Sen. 1999. Development as Freedom. Oxford
University Press.
 Important and influential synthesis of
Sen’s work on human development and the
Capability Approach.
 Amartya Sen. 2004a. UN Human Development Report
2004: Chapter 1 Cultural Liberty and Human
Development. UN Human Development Reports.
United Nations Development Programme. (Available
from the UNDP website).
  Strong argument by Sen that cultural
rights should be derivative upon individuals’
freedom to choose.
 Amartya Sen. 2004b. “Capabilities, Lists, and Public
Reason: Continuing the Conversation,” Feminist
Economics 10, no. 3: 77-80.
 An interview with Amartya Sen in
which he elaborates on his rejection of a
fixed list of capabilities (frequently cited).

b. Secondary Sources
 Des Gasper. 2002. “Is Sen’s Capability Approach an
Adequate Basis for Considering Human
Development?” Review of Political Economy 14 (4):
435-461.
 Thorough analysis of Sen’s account,
including a critique of its excessive
abstraction.
 Ananta Kumar Giri. 2000. “Rethinking Human Well-
being: A Dialogue with Amartya Sen.” Journal of
International Development 12 (7): 1003-1018.
 Critique of Sen’s neglect of personal
development.
 Charles Gore. 1997. “Irreducibly Social Goods and the
Informational Basis of Amartya Sen’s Capability
Approach.” Journal of International Development 9
(2): 235-250.
 Critique of Sen’s neglect of social
values.
 Susan Moller Okin. 2003. “Poverty, Well-Being, and
Gender: What Counts, Who’s Heard?” Philosophy and
Public Affairs 31 (3): 280-316.
 Feminist critique of Nussbaum’s
theory
 Nivedita Menon. 2002. “Universalism without
Foundations?” Economy and Society 31 (1): 152.
 Critique of the political philosophy in
Nussbaum’s theory.
 Martha Nussbaum. 2003. “Capabilities as Fundamental
Entitlements: Sen and Social Justice.” Feminist
Economics 9 (2): 33.
 Critique of Sen’s Capability Approach
as too vaguely specified to support normative
judgments.
 Thomas Pogge. 2002. “Can the Capability Approach
Be Justified?” Philosophical Topics 30 (2): 167–228.
 Important Rawlsian critique of Sen’s
account, frequently cited.
 Frances Stewart. 2001. Book Review “Women and
Human Development: The Capabilities Approach, by
Martha Nussbaum” Journal of International
Development 13 (8): 1191-1192.
 Short but powerful critique of
Nussbaum’s capability theory from a leading
human development scholar.
 

Author Information
Thomas Wells
Email: [Link]
Erasmus University Rotterdam
The Netherlands
An encyclopedia of philosophy articles written by professional philosophers.

STAY CONNECTED

          
BROWSE BY TOPIC

Browse by Topic                                                                         
© Copyright Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy and its Authors | ISSN 2161-0002