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From Contracts to Capabilities and Back Again

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Abstract

It has been common for researchers and commentators within the discipline of Social and Public Policy to evoke Rawlsian theories of justice. Yet some now argue that the contractualist tradition cannot adequately incorporate, or account for, relations of care, respect and interdependency. Though contractualism has its flaws this article proposes that we should not reject it. Through a critique of one of its most esteemed critics, Martha Nussbaum, it proposes that contractualism can be defended against the capabilities approach she prefers. The article concludes by suggesting how and why the moral philosophy of Thomas Scanlon offers a basis for reconciling the strengths of a contractualist, egalitarian liberalism with those of Nussbaum’s capabilities approach.

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Notes

  1. This political ‘fuzziness’ becomes important below when reviewing Nussbaum’s views on global capitalism.

  2. Note, the intent here is not to recommend a material resources approach over that of capabilities but, in line with the aim of the article, to suggest that the latter should not be allowed simply to absorb the former.

  3. One referee observed that sceptics of global distributive justice claim that we have humanitarian duties towards the global poor which are not as discretionary as charity. My response is that if such duties are taken to derive from local (usually national) contexts then they will indeed transport too much particularism and thus discretion with them. Therefore such duties must be based upon universal standards that guard against such justificatory frameworks. Ironically, and unfortunately, Miller’s communitarian nationalism and Rawls’ thin universalism both support what I have elsewhere called a ‘minimum demandingness’ view of global justice. My position is therefore closer to the ‘contextualist moral universalism’ of Pogge (and Scanlon, see below). See Fitzpatrick (2008, Ch. 11), Miller (2000), Pogge (2008, pp. 108–110), Rawls (1999).

  4. See Nussbaum (2004, pp. 31–37) for her account of reasonableness, albeit in a philosophical agenda that does not make comparison to Scanlon’s account easy.

  5. How Kantian this is being a matter of some conjecture. O’Neill (2003) characterises him as more Kantian than Rawls, while Scanlon (1998, pp. 5–6; 2003a, b) denies that he is a Kantian at all! Scanlon’s view, though, relies upon a contrast with Kant’s Groundwork and does not take into account the other, anthropological and virtue-based aspects of Kant’s subsequent development.

  6. Though Scanlon here considers only individual animals and not species.

  7. It is in this context that I think Scanlon’s defence of Walzer’s complex equality should be seen.

  8. I should add, against those who imagine that a choice/circumstance distinction supports a kind of individualist neoliberalism, that the point is not to deny Lester healthcare but to reduce the primary, socioeconomic distance between Andrew and Lester by revising social background conditions. A choice/circumstance distinction incorporates the dignity stressed by Anderson but believes that dignity alone cannot determine the just distribution of goods.

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Acknowledgment

I am grateful to Jonathan Seglow and the referees for their comments and encouragement.

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Correspondence to Tony Fitzpatrick.

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Fitzpatrick, T. From Contracts to Capabilities and Back Again. Res Publica 14, 83–100 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11158-008-9053-3

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