Abstract:

We are delighted to have the opportunity to respond to Martha Nussbaum's excellent Creating Capabilities. In that book Nussbaum pays us the great compliment of discussing some aspects of our own book Disadvantage (Wolff and de-Shalit, 2007), both endorsing some of our analysis yet also entering some criticisms. We would like here to explain the issues and provide our response.

The ideas from our work that Nussbaum endorses, albeit with qualifications, are essentially three-fold. The first is the idea of ‘secure functionings’, re-named by Nussbaum ‘capability security’ (Nussbaum, 2011, p. 43): that it is important to people not only that they enjoy a certain level of functioning but also that they are able to sustain it over time. Furthermore, it is important to people to be free from the worry that can be experienced if one's functionings are at ongoing risk. The second idea is that of ‘corrosive disadvantage’, where a disadvantage in one domain is likely to spread its effects to other areas. Drug addiction, homelessness,1 or possibly uncontrollable debt are examples of corrosive disadvantages. The third idea is ‘fertile functioning’, where an achievement in one area is likely to have benefits elsewhere. Self-control is increasingly being argued to be a fertile functioning in this sense, while we speculated that ‘affiliation’ and ‘having friends’ in the sense of having a supportive social network would also be fertile. We also, quite naturally, suggest that it should be a priority for public policy to take preventative steps to block the formation of corrosive disadvantages, and to build fertile functionings.