Degerman, Dan (2014) Essentialist capabilities versus humorless warriors:a defense of Nussbaum's Aristotelian Method. Human Welfare, 3. pp. 42-52. ISSN 2048-9080
Full text not available from this repository.Abstract
Recent literature faults the Aristotelian essentialist foundation of Nussbaum’s capabilities approach for failing to qualify a particular list of capabilities. This paper defends the Aristotelian essentialist method, and posits that it justifies the selection of particular capabilities to the omission of others. Certain fringe capabilities can be justly excluded because they conflict with assumptions that the human is a fundamentally social and reasonable creature. The paper grants that critics are correct in claiming that the use of a list will preclude certain conceptions of human good, which may conflict with liberal commitments. Yet, the paper argues, all societies prohibit some of their members from realizing their ideas of good, and in light of this, the capabilities list’s publicized shape of human nature seems preferable to the implicit constructs at work within liberal theory.