Primary Goods versus Capabilities

Considering the debate in relation to equalities in education

Bibliographic Data

ID23748288
AuthorsHarry Brighouse (0009-0007-3378-5704, University of Wisconsin–Madison), E Unterhalter (0000-0002-2302-6583, Institute of International Education)
Year2008
Pages69-81
Publication date2008-05-10
Open AccessNo
TypeCHAPTER
VenueCapabilities - Handlungsbefähigung und Verwirklichungschancen in der Erziehungswissenschaft (SOURCE_BOOK)
PublisherVS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften (PUBLISHER • DE)
DOI10.1007/978-3-531-90922-6_4
OpenAlexW1589045438
ISBN9783531909226
LanguageDE
Citations received4
References cited12

Thomas Pogge has recently argued that the capability approach cannot be justified, and that John Rawls’s social primary goods way of thinking about the metric of justice that is superior to the capability approach (Pogge 2003). The burden of this paper is to respond to his objections drawing on issues that arise when thinking about distribution and equality in education. We should say at the outset that we do not have a strong view about which of the approaches is superior, all-things-considered. Sometimes the language of capabilities better illuminates what matters than does the language of primary goods. And frequently both approaches are hard to apply.

Economic Justice · Economics · Epistemology · Law and economics · Metric (unit) · Microeconomics · Operations management · Positive economics · Primary goods · Relation (database) · Sociology · Computer Science · Income, Poverty, and Inequality · Philosophy · Political Philosophy and Ethics · Social Policy and Reform Studies