Nussbaum

             In Martha Nussbaum’s piece, Women and Cultural Universals, she proposes her own approach to measuring the quality of life. She calls this the capabilities approach. Within this approach there are two senses of capability. Internal capability states that given certain external conditions, X is capable of Y. While combined capability states that given certain external conditions where these external conditions are met, X is capable of Y. Throughout her piece, Nussbaum also makes note of other approaches to measuring the quality of life and why her approach is a better fit. I agree with Nussbaum and her approach because I also believe that certain social and material conditions have to be met for original decisions and autonomy to be possible.

One of the other approaches talked about in Nussbaum’s piece is the utilitarian approach. This approach has people asses their own wellbeing. I agree that people should be able to assess their own wellbeing but with this approach, like Nussbaum said, people are going to assess their wellbeing off of their own expectations. When this occurs, based on how a person feels their life should be, will determine how harsh they asses their own wellbeing and therefore everyone is going to have different degrees of wellbeing even if each person is equally well off.  There should be a central degree of wellbeing that everyone should base their assessments off of or else everyone is going to be all over the place with their judgments and there won’t be any accurate way to measure the quality of life if everyone bases their measurements off different things. It’s like using different units to solve an equation, no one is going to get nearly the same answer.

While having a central way to measure the quality of life, which the utilitarian approach fails to provide, in order to have the opportunity to do what you want, you have to have resources to do it. Someone that was to oppose Nussbaum would say that having public policy specify and develop capabilities of people for their wellbeing interferes with the autonomy of those individuals. Although, Nussbaum believes that public policy should attempt to develop capabilities as opposed to trying to ensure that people express them. For example, people should have the opportunity to join clubs or sports teams but they don’t have to if they don’t want to. Someone that was to refute this would come back and say that individuals should have the ability to determine what is fundamental to their wellbeing. Although, I understand that people should be able to determine what is necessary to their wellbeing, I believe what Nussbaum is trying to say is that basic human capabilities should be determined but that does not mean that every person has to express them.

The capabilities approach doesn’t say that each and every person has to abide by the central human capabilities that she came up with but having them sets a guideline to what capabilities would ensure the wellbeing of people. For example, one of Nussbaum’s central human capabilities is affiliation and one of the points in the description of that is being able to involve yourself in different forms of social interaction and be able to show concern for other humans. Having this as one of the basic human capabilities doesn’t mean that every person needs to interact socially with others or show concern for people. There are a lot of people that are never social and seem emotionless because they don’t show concern. Nussbaum’s approach notes that this is a central human capability but that people don’t need to express it. Therefore, her approach isn’t interfering with the autonomy of individuals but instead is just acting as a guideline to measure the quality of life which is the overall goal of these approaches.

            All in all, I believe Nussbaum’s capabilities approach is the best way to measure the quality of life because it doesn’t interfere with the autonomy of individuals but does provide a guideline for central human capabilities that people can base their measurements off of.