Human Needs

31 Pages 7634 Words

What makes a life a truly human one? Is it possible to make a sort of identification when a “life has been so impoverished that it is not worthy of the dignity of the human being?” (Women, Culture and Development, p.74). This is the very question Martha Nussbaum, leading female Aristotelian philosopher, addresses throughout various pieces of her work. What she has tried to do is establish a list of central capabilities “that can be convincingly argued to be of central importance in any human life; whatever else the person pursues or chooses” (Women, Culture and Development, p.74). Nussbaum’s goal is to clarify and develop the so-called “capabilities approach”, an approach to the recognition of the quality of life originally presented by the Nobel Prize winner Amartya Sen. I intend to evaluate and analyze Nussbaum’s work on the subject from the perspective of Cicero and the Stoics and that of non-Western thinkers. What's more, I hope to set in motion a new conceptualization concerning the assessment and attainment of the good life.
In view of the list of capabilities, Nussbaum supposes that if a life lacks any of these said capabilities, no matter what else it includes, the life being examined will not be deemed as a good human life. Upon reading, the list she has created is most obviously quite extensive and by all means can be seen as generally obtainable, but the question at hand is whether or not it is universal? Cicero and the Stoics will agree that such a list can be in fact objectively determined but would assess that Nussbaum’s revision of Amartya Sen’s original compilation is much too long. On the other hand, such scholars like Frederique Apffel Marglin would completely disagree with Nussbaum’s efforts, saying that her account of what constitutes a good life is culturally biased, imposing Western thought upon a non-Western way of life. Specific human relationships within Nussbaum’s system are ...