Capabilities versus Resources

Journal of Moral Philosophy 10 (4):151-171 (2013)
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Abstract

What is the correct metric of distributive justice? Proponents of the capability approach claim that distributive metrics should be articulated in terms of individuals’ effective abilities to achieve important and worthwhile goals. Defenders of resourcism, by contrast, maintain that metrics should instead focus on the distribution of external resources. This debate is now more than three decades old, and it has produced a vast and still growing literature. The present paper aims to provide a fresh perspective on this protracted debate. It does so by defending capability metrics while also criticizing the two most common arguments used to support them, and sympathetically reconstructing the arguments for resourcism. I ultimately argue that while sweeping defenses of the capability approach do not succeed, capability theorists can indeed vindicate the justice-relevance of certain capabilities while still accommodating what is plausible in resourcism

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Author's Profile

J. Paul Kelleher
University of Wisconsin, Madison

References found in this work

What is the point of equality.Elizabeth Anderson - 1999 - Ethics 109 (2):287-337.
Equality of what?Amartya Sen - 1987 - In John Rawls & Sterling M. McMurrin (eds.), Liberty, Equality, and Law: Selected Tanner Lectures on Moral Philosophy. University of Utah Press.
Beyond the social contract : capabilities and global justice.Martha Nussbaum - 2005 - In Gillian Brock & Harry Brighouse (eds.), The Political Philosophy of Cosmopolitanism. Cambridge University Press.
Responsibilities for Poverty-Related Ill Health.Thomas W. Pogge - 2002 - Ethics and International Affairs 16 (2):71-79.

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