PERSON
Martha Nussbaum
American philosopher (b. 1947) who developed the <em>central capabilities approach</em> in dialogue with Sen — providing the specific enumeration of capabilities that Sen himself deliberately left open.
Martha Nussbaum is the American philosopher whose collaboration with Amartya Sen produced the most developed version of the capability approach. Born in 1947, educated at NYU and Harvard, she has held positions at Brown, Oxford, and the University of Chicago, where she is currently the Ernst Freund Distinguished Service Professor of Law and Ethics. Her development of the capability framework differs from Sen's in one crucial respect: she specifies a list of central capabilities that any just society must secure for its members, whereas Sen deliberately left the selection open to democratic deliberation. The difference is philosophically significant and operationally consequential — Nussbaum's specification makes the framework more actionable but also more contested.
In The You On AI Field Guide
Nussbaum's ten central capabilities are: life; bodily health; bodily integrity; senses, imagination, and thought; emotions; practical reason; affiliation; other species; play; and control over one's environment. Each capability is specified in enough detail to permit policy application while retaining sufficient generality to apply across cultural contexts. The list draws on
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