The big idea: It's one thing to say 'measure a society by what people can do and be'. But which things?
Nussbaum's answer: a list: Nussbaum answers with an actual list — ten central capabilities she argues any decent human life needs. Below a certain level of any one of them, she says, a life falls short of human dignity.
The ten central capabilities are her attempt to spell out, concretely, what a government owes every citizen — a floor of real freedoms below which no one should be allowed to fall.
Hold onto this: The list is a threshold, not a ranking. It's a floor: every person should be able to reach a decent minimum of ALL ten — you can't trade a lot of one for none of another.
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Here is the whole list, each one said simply — the things Nussbaum argues a life of dignity needs.
Nussbaum's ten central capabilities
Life
Being able to live a normal-length life, not dying early.
Bodily health
Being able to be healthy, well-fed and adequately sheltered.
Bodily integrity
Being safe from violence and free to move; control over your own body.
Senses, imagination, thought
Being able to learn, think, imagine and create — helped by an education.
Emotions
Being able to love, grieve and form attachments without crippling fear.
Practical reason
Being able to plan your own life and think about what's good.
Affiliation
Being able to live with and for others, and to be treated with respect.
Other species
Being able to live with care for animals, plants and the natural world.
Play
Being able to laugh, play and enjoy recreation.
Control over your environment
Being able to take part in politics, and to hold property and work as an equal.
Checkpoint — the ten: In one line: the ten range from staying alive and healthy, through thinking, feeling and belonging, to having a real say over your own life and your society. Hold that — the next point is why it's a fixed list rather than 'whatever each culture likes'.
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Nussbaum singles out two items on the list as doing special work — they let you actually use all the others.
Practical reason and affiliation: Practical reason (planning your own life) and affiliation (living with and being respected by others) are, Nussbaum says, the two that organise and infuse all the rest.
Why these two hold the rest together
- Health or education only really count as human goods when you can choose how to use them (practical reason) and share a life with others (affiliation).
- A person kept healthy but never allowed to plan anything is still missing something essential.
- So is a person who is fed but shut out of all human company.
- So these two thread through and lift up every other capability on the list.
Go further — higher-level insight: See why the list is deliberately abstract. Nussbaum writes each capability in general terms — 'being able to be healthy', not 'having exactly this diet' — precisely so that different cultures can fill in the specifics their own way.
Use it in part (b): That built-in openness is her defence against the charge that a fixed list is too rigid or too Western. It's a sharp point to deploy in the (b) evaluate task.