Capability With Virtue

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A Capability Approach to Justice as a Virtue

Jay Drydyk

Accepted: 24 November 2011 /Published online: 10 December 2011# Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2011

Abstract In The Idea of Justice, Amartya Sen argues for an approach to justice that is

comparative and realization-based rather than transcendental and institutional. While Sens

arguments for such an approach may not be as convincing as he thought, there are

additional arguments for it, and one is that it provides a unique and valuable platform on

which an account of justice as a virtue of social and political actors (including institutions

and social movements) can be built. Hence new dimensions of comparison are opened up:

some actors are better disposed and more successful than others at leading social change inthe direction of greater justice. The main objective of this article is to use the capability

approach to construct such an account. Six dimensions of acting justly are identified: (1)

reducing capability shortfalls; (2) expanding capabilities for all; (3) saving the worst-off as

a first step towards their full participation in economy and society, (4) which is also to be

promoted by a system of entitlements protecting all from social exclusion; while (5)

supporting the empowerment of those whose capabilities are to expand; and (6) respecting

ethical values and legitimate procedures. I conclude by sketching some underlying moral

psychology.

Keywords Justice. Virtue. Capability Approach. Amartya Sen. Martha Nussbaum

There is remarkably little discussion in contemporary political philosophy of justice as a

virtue of persons or agents. After Rawls proclaimed that Justice is the first virtue of social

institutions (Rawls1971, 3), the thought that creating just institutions is the proper task of

just persons and just social movements has been taken for granted and regarded as an

obvious afterthought from which little can be learned. In recent work by virtue ethicists, the

Humean approach to justice as a virtue of societies or social interactions largely prevails

over the Aristotelian approach to justice as a virtue of political agents. Of course, there are

some sophisticated hybrid views, such as that of Michael Slote, who identifies caring

concern for the public good as a salient virtue of political actors and then identifies just

Ethic Theory Moral Prac (2012) 15:2338

DOI 10.1007/s10677-011-9327-2
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laws, policies, and institutions as those that reflect such concern (Slote 2007, 94). One

might think that the order of reasons is not so very different for Slote and Rawls: whereas

Slotes just society is one that would be adopted by citizens with caring concern for the

public good, that of Rawls is of course the one that would be adopted by rational people

behind a veil of ignorance. However, concerning justice as a virtue, the two views havelittle in common, since for Rawls justice is a virtue of the resulting society, and the original

position is just a device, whereas for Slote justice as a virtue must belong to a society and

its citizens alike. Just societies are created through just politics, in which decisions are made

from caring concern for public welfare.1

InThe Idea of Justice, Amartya Sen also rejects the predominant preoccupation with justice

as a virtue of institutions. However, rather that developing a capability approach to justice as a

virtue of individual and collective social and political actors, he develops a comparative

approach to justice as a property of social changes. Nevertheless, the comparative approach

that Sen presents in this book provides an interesting platform on which a capability account

of justice as a virtue of social and political actors can be constructed. My aim in this article is

to show how such an account can be built. This turns out to be particularly important insofar

as Sens arguments for a comparative approach may not be as strong as he thought. To these

arguments I turn in the first section. After supplementing them in a second section, I return to

justice as a virtue in the third. In the final section I sketch out the moral psychology

underlying this capability account of justice as a virtue.

1 Comparative vs. Transcendental

Sen conceives of his approach to justice as aligned against two others. Whereas they are

transcendental, his perspective is comparative; whereas they are institutional, his focus

is realization-based. Sen advocates his own point of departure mainly by attacking these

alternatives, arguing that a transcendental institutionalist (TI) approach is in the first place

not feasible, and moreover neither necessary nor sufficient nor useful for knowing how

greater justice might be achieved.

I will first consider the feasibility argument, which casts doubt on whether there is just one

set of principles that would enjoy unanimous support from all free, equal and rational people.

What social contract theorists typically aim to show is that a set of reasons endorsable by free,

equal and rational people would support a particular set of social arrangements. But what theydo not show because they cannot is that there are no other sets of reasons, likewise

endorsable by free, equal, and rational people, that supportotherarrangements (Sen2009, 8

10). There may be a plurality of impartial principles of justice, and, if so, there are grounds for

skepticism as to whether any unique set of principles would enjoy unanimous support from

rational people unbiased and fairly situated as, for instance, in Rawlss original position.

Indeed, Sen observes that Rawls too has conceded in his later writings that the constraint of

fairness may not be sufficient to mobilize unanimous acceptance of principles, in a group

which harbours indefinitely many considerations that may be appealed to in the original

position

(Rawls2001, 133, cited in Sen2009, 58).While this argument should give us pause about traditional social contract theory,

contemporary contractarianism and contractualism may not be so faithfully wedded to

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unique outcomes with unanimous support. Indeed, Rawlss later willingness to accept a

plurality of liberal principles somewhat blunts the force of the feasibility argument. In

addition, there are other approaches besides contractarianism that have sought TI

conceptions of justice. It is puzzling that Sen has excluded John Stuart Mill from the

transcendental/institutional camp. While Considerations on Representative Governmentconcedes that the best government imaginable (direct democracy) may not be the best

government achievable on larger than city-state scale, we should not forget that most of

Mills utilitarian argumentation for representative democracy appears in a chapter entitled,

That the Ideally Best Form of Government is Representative Government (Mill 1861,

45ff). Approaches such as these will go untouched by the feasibility argument, for while

they are clearly TI, they are not contractarian.

Consequently, the weight of Sens urgings against transcendental institutionalism, and

hence for a comparative-realization approach, must rest upon another set of arguments, for

what has been called the redundancy claim (Robeyns2010). This is the claim that, If a

theory of justice is to guide reasoned choice of policies, strategies or institutions, then the

identification of fully just social arrangements is neither necessary nor sufficient (Sen

2009, 15). This should be considered carefully, since it has met with some skepticism. Sen

begins with an argument by analogy:

If we are trying to choose between a Picasso and a Dali, it is of no help to invoke a

diagnosis that the ideal picture in the world is the Mona Lisa.... Indeed, it is not at

all necessary to talk about what may be the greatest or most perfect picture in the

world, to choose between the two alternatives that we are facing. Nor is it sufficient,

or indeed of any particular help, to know that the Mona Lisa is the most perfect

picture in the world when the choice is actually between a Dali and a Picasso. (Sen2009, 16)

He adds that knowing the ideal type of a just society does not even enable us to compare

imperfect actual societies in terms of how close or far they are to the ideal, since there may

be several dimensions of comparison, and a given society might be closer in one dimension

but farther in another. He concedes that some theories of justice (which he calls

conglomerate theories) might give us to know both the ideal and how to make the

comparisons, but he denies that the theories of Hobbes, Rousseau, Kant, Rawls, or Nozick

are theories of this kind. Later he concedes that the Rawlsian difference principle can do

some comparative work, which we might illustrate in the following way: suppose that, forany given society, we could devise an index M, which is an index of inequality that does

not serve to improve the condition of the worst off, and suppose further that 10 years later

this index has been reduced by half; to that extent, this society has become less unjust in

that time. But the difference principle is to be applied under conditions of equal fair

opportunity. Ideally fair equal opportunity is to take priority over the difference principle

(Rawls2001, 43, 163). In practice, that does not make comparisons any easier. Giving fair

equal opportunity lexical priority in practice would mean that progress towards satisfying

the difference principle counts for nothing until perfectly fair equal opportunity has been

achieved (which is as unknowable as it is unlikely). On the other hand, if the priorityrequirement is waived for purposes of comparison in the real world, multidimensionality

would make some comparisons very difficult. Imagine one society (call it Empty

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either trend moves in the direction of greater justice or in the direction of greater injustice,

much less which trend is worse.

However, this problem does not afflict Rawls or other transcendental theories

exclusively. It afflicts the capability approach as well. As is well known, the capability

approach holds that a combination of lowness and inequality of well-being freedom isunjust. But an agency-based capability approach such as that of David Crocker (Crocker

2008) will also hold that a combination of lowness and inequality of agency freedom is

unjust, and one dimension of agency freedom is the degree to which ones activities are

determined by ones own choices. Some transformations remove injustice along both

dimensions, such as the abolition of slavery. But transformations that remove one inequality

while increasing the other are as difficult to evaluate for the capability approach as tradeoffs

between equal fair opportunity and primary-goods inequality are for the difference

principle. One solution might be to identify a threshold level of agency freedom and

weight it massively, so that lowering agency freedom below this threshold outweighs any

resulting expansion or inequality-reduction of well-being freedom. But the same solution

would then be available to fair equal opportunity.

So the problems posed by multidimensionality equally afflict comparative theories of

justice and conglomerate transcendental theories that also aspire to do comparative work.

But according to Sen the latter still have a unique problem:

Even if we think of transcendence not in the gradeless terms of right social

arrangements, but in the graded terms of the best social arrangements, the

identification of the best does not, in itself, tell us much about the full grading,

such as how to compare two non-best alternatives, nor does it specify a unique

ranking with respect to which the best stands at the pinnacle; indeed, the same bestmay go with a great many different rankings at the same pinnacle. (Sen 2009, 1001)

However, Sen also convinced many of us some 20 years ago (Sen 1992, 1230) that every

theory of justice must identify which inequalities matter. So if every theory of justice has an

inequality-of-what module, then surely this module will generate at least some prima facie

comparative judgments: if it is inequalities in liberty that are unjust, then improvements of

justice are made when liberties are made less unequal; if it is inequalities in resources that are

unjust, then improvements of justice are made when resource holdings are made less unequal,

and so on. So, to play on another of Sens metaphors, it is not as though transcendental

theories merely tell us that Mount Everest is the highest mountain, which is admittedly uselessfor determining whether Kilimajaro is higher than Mount Rainier (Sen 2009, 102). They do

not merely do this, since they must, like all other theories of justice, tell us which way is up so

far as justice is concerned. And they do this by telling us which inequalities matter.

2 Some Further Arguments

Nevertheless, Sens broader argument strategy remains useful, because there are yet more

ways in which TI approaches to justice fail. Here I will mention just two.The most important of these failings was noted by Karl Marx. As is well known, Marx

warned that it can be misleading to criticize capitalism for being unjust2 (Wood 1980). The

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meaning of justice, he thought, had to be specific to particular stages of social and

economic development, referring only to those types of equality that are feasible at a

particular stage of development. For instance, within capitalism, it is feasible only for

workers to receive in wages the cost of renewing their labour power and returning them to

work. By contrast, in an immediate post-capitalist phase, he surmised that it would befeasible for a worker to receive a basket of goods equivalent in labour time to the goods

produced by that worker, less deductions for common social costs and services. Justice can

never be higher than the economic structure of society and its cultural development

conditioned thereby. (Marx1875, 320) Nevertheless, it remains possible to identify flaws

in these contextually limited principles of justice. For instance, the equal exchange of

labour for a basket of goods produced by equivalent labour still treats people unequally if

they have different needs. The broader lesson here is that thinking about institutions and

distributive patterns for a just society is invariably limited by presuppositions about which

sorts of interactions are normal within that society and which regularities govern those

interaction theirlaws of motionas Marx or Engels would say. That point was conceded

by Rawls when he allowed parties in the original position the same body of general facts

(the presently accepted facts of social theory) and the information about the general

circumstances of society(Rawls2001, 87). These plain truths now common and available

to citizens generally (Rawls2001, 90) will surely include conceptions of the limits within

which they conduct their business as usual. And these presuppositions will function as

ideological blinkers, excluding from view different institutions and patterns that are feasible

only with further social and economic development. In this way, theorizing about ideal

structures for a just society is far from ideal; rather, it is inherently ideological in a

conservative way, systematically blocking the view of better worlds.A second ideological failing of TI approaches has to do with their fixation on necessary

and sufficient conditions for a just society. People who are inclined to defend the status quo

will follow the example of Hobbes and argue for criteria that are easily met. Others,

following the example of Locke, may set their criteria for a just society in a way that

vindicates newly-gained reforms and forbids backsliding towards an older regime. Those

who are inclined to advocate reform or transformation will likewise be inclined to require

some necessary conditions that are absent from the status quo. Arguably this is predictable

and indeed rational: peoples conceptions of justice and their political orientations should be

consistent. But consider: how much work do these ideological judgments do in the way of

advocating or opposing specific social changes? This is important because, since the 19thcentury, politics has largely been politics of social change. What the right, centre, and left

all advocate is social change; where they differ is on the direction this change should take.

What guidance to social change is given by a holistic legitimation or delegitimation of a

society? A society that fully satisfied necessary conditions for justice would need no

change. But this would be unhelpful if political leadership of all stripes is right to advocate

social change of some kind or other. Nor does knowing simply that a society is unjust tell

us specifically how it must change. Between these holistic judgments there is of course

middle ground: if we understand why and how a society is unjust, then that may tell us of

specific changes that are required. But then we are in comparative territory: a society with afully protected array of political liberties is, for liberals, more just than one in which only a

few liberties are poorly protected; a society in which every person enjoys fair equal

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Two counterarguments have been proposed by Ingrid Robeyns (2010) and others.

The first concerns path dependency. (See also Estlund 2011, 4 ff.; Gaus 2011, 10.) A

comparative approach will seek to reduce inequalities in the most effective way possible.

Suppose we are at point A, with an inequality index of 100. From A we can go either to B

(with an index of 80) or to S (with an index of 95). In order to reduce inequality mostrapidly, we should choose the move to B. But it may turn out that from B one can only

proceed to C, with an index of 75, whereas from S one can get to T, with an index of 50.

What appears to be a path of most rapid inequality reduction may lead to a suboptimal

result. However, the same problem afflicts strategies guided by principles of perfect justice.

Suppose, for instance, that the index just mentioned were not an index of inequality but an

index of divergence from perfect justice. A move that seems to get much closer to perfect

justice, more quickly, may also turn out to be a dead end. So path dependency arguments do

not prove that knowing necessary and sufficient conditions for a just society is necessary

for acting justly. They prove only that acting justly is difficult.

Robeynss second argument is that a theory of perfect justice is needed in order to

evaluate claims that all injustices of a certain kind have been eliminated. David Estlund has

made similar arguments more recently: one practical use that conceptions of perfect justice

or even merely excellent justice could have is to disabuse us of contentment we might

have with local maxima arrangements that may seem as just as can be, but really need

to be transcended (Estlund 2011, 6). Robeyns gives gender justice as an example. If

someone claims that gender injustice has been removed somewhere, completely, we need to

know necessary and sufficient conditions for gender justice in order to evaluate this claim.

Pragmatically and politically, she is no doubt right about this: clear standards for gender

equity might serve well, both as rallying points for its advocates and for estimating whatremains to be done.

My reply is that, epistemologically, standards like these are derivative, and comparisons

are primary. In the absence of such standards or in order to test their completeness we

would search remaining gender inequalities and assess whether they are significant enough

to be considered unjust. For instance, some division of labour may remain. Is it unjust? One

would have to look at the effects of differences in work on other inequalities that matter, at

whether differences in work are chosen, and to what degree they are chosen freely.

This is instructive: in the order of reasons, it is the comparative judgments that are

primary. Not only are they action-guiding on their own, but they are necessary for

testing any standards for justice that may be adopted along the way. Indeed, the samecan be said of Rawlss approach to justification, in which considered comparative

judgments by competent judges anchor the setup of the original position (Rawls 1951;

Rawls 1971, 4851).

This may also provide some greater clarity on the nature and justification of the

comparative judgments on which Sen places so much weight. The inquiry that yields these

judgments is focused on inequalities. The question is which if any of them are wrong.

Perhaps the most significant constraint on this deliberation is impartiality, although Sen

insists that this goes beyond impartiality towards otherswell-being; it must also be open to

the full diversity of their ideas about impartiality, both within and across societal boundaries(Sen 2009, 12452 and 194207). If the best reasons converge on the conclusion that a

particular type of inequality is wrong, then, other things being the same, a society in which

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impartiality.3 In these cases, public reason will lead from diverse conceptions towards

convergence on the conclusion that this inequality must be removed, yielding social

arrangements that are comparatively more just.

3 The Virtue of a Comparative Capability Approach

In constructing a capability approach to acting justly, it may be helpful to begin by paying

some respect to philosophical tradition by considering what similarities and differences

there may be between this virtue in capability thinking and in the thinking of Aristotle.

According to Book V of the Nicomachean Ethics, just action is intermediate between

acting unjustly and being unjustly treated.... the just man will distribute either between

himself and another or between two others not so as to give more of what is desirable to

himself and less to his neighbour (and conversely what is harmful), but so as to give what is

equal in accordance with proportion; and similarly in distributing between two other

persons. (Aristotle 1941, 1134a1-6) Just people are concerned about inequalities that are

somehow disproportionate, and just action avoids the imposition of such inequalities either

on others or on oneself. Hence Aristotle calls it a mean between treating others unjustly and

being unjustly treated. The question of which inequalities are disproportionate is

controversial, indeed ideological, for all men agree that what is just in distribution must

be according to merit in some sense, though they do not all specify the same sort of merit, but

democrats identify it with the status of freeman, supporters of oligarchy with wealth (or with

noble birth) and supporters of aristocracy with excellence. (Aristotle1941, 1131a20-30)

Here is a major difference, then: the capability account will have little use for a conceptof merit that stratifies the population for unequal consideration. The inequalities that Sen

opposes are those inconsistent with impartial social choice and public reason, while

Nussbaum opposes those that are inconsistent with equal human dignity. Or, putting this in

another way, the only merit acceptable to a capability approach would be equal worth,

though this way of speaking deprives merit language of its purpose in the Aristotelian

scheme.

It might be thought that this is too individualistic: a story about individuals neither

imposing inequalities on others nor allowing others to impose upon them. However, that

would be a misreading of Aristotle and his context. In the ancient Greek world, particularly

Athens, the virtue of justice was needed by citizens in two contexts. Corrective justicewas needed to adjudicate cases in law, as a jury member. Distributive justice was needed

by citizens as members of the assembly, which allocated public offices (Kraut 226), jury

pay, foreign corn, colonial lands, and public assistance for the disabled, sick, or elderly

(Hardie1968). Changed between then and now are the functions of a state, its scope for

action, and the complexity of societies. Citizen officeholders have been replaced by career

civil servants, and the purview for public action has expanded in keeping with greater social

complexity. Still, we can regard both has having the advantageous and the just (Kraut

227) as their purview.

How, then, can inequalities be found

disproportionate

in a capability approach?Practically, the disproportionateinequalities are those whose removal would be given high

priority by rational, impartial, and well-informed public reason. Social choice theory plays

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the role of inquiring whether it is possible to reach any such conclusions by aggregating

individual priorities. In both contexts, the capability approach offers an informational base

as a source of convergence. Stepping back from particular goals, goods, and preferences,

the capability approach seeks to identify capabilities to function in ways that people

generally have reason to value. If there are such capabilities, they would enjoy high priorityin a social choice context, and also in a context of public reason (as, notably, capabilities for

health and education do, to name just two). Moreover, if everyone has reason to value them

as factors contributing to a good life, then condoning inequalities in them would be, on the

face of it, inconsistent with impartiality.

For Martha Nussbaum, on the other hand, the moral basis for removing capability

inequalities is equal human dignity; or, in other words, capability justice seeks capability

equality because condoning capability inequalities is inconsistent with recognizing equal

human dignity. Elsewhere (Drydyk 2011) I have expanded on Nussbaums discussion of

equal dignity by exploring the meaning of dignity. When we recognize, respect, value, or

admire people for their dignity, what is it that we see in them? It could have to do with the

specificity of human goods. That is, humans are disposed to value goods and goals that

exhibit intelligence, that appeal to tastes and other dispositions that we share with others,

and that may express our affinities with others. Following Marx, Nussbaum says that a life

of goods and goals like these is a truly human life (Nussbaum2000, 7174, Nussbaum

2006, 74). To observe that people have dignity is to say that this is the kind of life for them,

possibly suggesting in addition that this is the kind of life they deserve. Equal dignity,

then, should mean that no ones claim on a truly human life is privileged over any others.

This provides a basis for seeking equality in human capabilities, commensurate with our

equal human dignity

to follow Aristotles notion of justice as proportionality. Bear in

mind the nature of these capabilities: they are capabilities to function in ways that human

beings generally have reason to valueas aspects of living well. Having capabilities that are

comparatively restricted means being less able to live well. To condone this would be to

accept that some peoples living well matters less than others. But we cannot condone this

if we endorse equal human dignity.

When we look, then, for reasons why inequalities of capability should not be condoned,

the capability approach seems to give us two, not one. Is that a problem? I think not, since

the two views are quite complementary. Sen advocates what he calls open impartiality,

and what remains open4 in it is the question, Impartiality towards what? He illustrates this

with an example in one which one person has made a flute, another is best at playing it, anda third, being destitute, would be much happier if this flute were his. If these were all put

forward as competing claims for the flute, what would impartiality require? One might be

impartial with respect to desert based on labour, based on talent, or based on need. Since

none of these claims can be dismissed out of hand, impartiality must be open to all three

(Sen 2009, 1215). Nevertheless, if capabilities and well-being freedom do indeed

constitute an especially important evaluative space, then an impartial observer would be

expected to weight them heavily. In that way, it would be difficult for Sen to disagree with

the weight that Nussbaum places on equal human dignity. In effect, Nussbaum is simply

proposing a particular answer to the question,

Impartial towards what?

Her answer wouldbe that we must be impartial towards all human beings with respect to their dignity, for

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what equal human dignity means is that no ones claim to a truly human life is privileged

over any others.

Acting justly, then, must involve striving to reduce and remove inequalities in peoples

capabilities to function in ways that are elemental to such a life. Or, in Sen s terminology, it

must involve striving to reduce and remove shortfalls in well-being freedom.The consequences of this must be drawn with some care. Yes, from equal human dignity

it does follow that shortfalls of well-being freedom are unjust. On the other hand, this

injustice does not consist in some people having too much and others too little, if the

capability approach denies (as I think it should) that there is any such thing as having too

much well-being freedom. Well-being freedom is not a freedom to have more stuff, it is

freedom to function in ways that we generally have reason to value, which is not always

enhanced by having more stuff. So in this respect capability injustice is defined simply by

capability shortfalls (Sen1999, 87110).

However, the same premises (whether from impartiality or from equal dignity) can be

used to argue we mustraise capabilities, as distinct from simply equalizing them. It is not

just poor and sick people who have reason to value long and healthy lives. Well-off and

healthy people also value long and healthy lives, and so, if a new treatment comes along to

help them avoid some illness, pain, or injury, they too will have reason to value it. To

discount the importance of enhancing health capabilities for the well-off and healthy is to

discount their striving to live well with others. So if the capability approach does not

privilege some peoples dignity (or well-being freedom) over others, then we must grant

that expanding everyones capabilities has some importance (Sen 2009, 298).

Acting justly, then, consists not just in closing inequalities, but also in raising

capabilities. Of course, there will be circumstances in which it is difficult to know howto do both at once, circumstances in which tradeoffs seem unavoidable. What, then, is a just

person or collective to do? One who challenges the tradeoff would have to be counted as

more just than one who acquiesces. One who finds a win-win solution should be counted as

acting more justly still. If we think of justice as a virtue, it is not incumbent on us to give

lexical priority to one or the other.

Should priority nevertheless be given to those who are worse off? This is a question

abouthow to address shortfalls, whether to pay greatest attention to the very worst off, or to

focus instead on moving as many people as possible over threshold levels of capability that

are socially acceptable (Arneson 2006). Equal human dignity would seem to forbid

privileging the poor over the extremely poor simply in order to move more people up tomeeting social standards. Fortunately, this is not a real dilemma, but a philosophical

concoction. It is not mandatory to give lexical priority to either over the other. The risk that

is faced by the borderline poor is how to engage with economy, society, and state so as to

make a better living. Doyal and Gough were, in retrospect, very wise to define needs in

terms of social participation (Doyal and Gough1991, 73). In more contemporary language,

needs mean not just what you need in order to keep on living another day, but what you

need in order to transcend social exclusion. What the poorest of the poor face, by contrast,

is the risk of not keeping body and soul together: think of the victims of regional famine or

natural disaster. Should a poor society stricken by natural disaster accept continued socialexclusion in order to keep providing rice, tents, and water to disaster victims? That would

be a questionable policy, because what is needed, in order to reduce the numbers in camps



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Martha Nussbaum has argued that social standards can be set at capability thresholds

required for a dignified life (Nussbaum 2006, 7071, 179ff). While the argument from

equal human dignity must surely play a role in this, I think that further considerations need

to be deployed before actual thresholds can be set. In practice, social welfare standards are

determined by what is required in order not to be excluded but rather to participate in thelife of a particular society often distorted, of course, by politically motivated animosity

towards the poor. The further considerations that are needed to bridge from commitment to

equal dignity to practical thresholds of support are to be provided by social science research

on causes and conditions of social exclusion. Acting justly, then, must also involve

promoting such standards and harmonizing these efforts with the first three. Practical

politics will impose challenges and trade-offs among them, but social actors who find win-

win solutions must be regarded as more effectively just.

In addition, it matters how these outcomes are brought about. Indeed, Sen has taken

pains throughout his book to advocate a conception of outcomes that includes their manner

of realization, and his main reason for doing so is to highlight the agency involved in

achieving them: the role of human agency, he wrote, cannot be obliterated by some

exclusive focus on what happens only at the culmination. (Sen2009, 22 and 21517) His

concern is to recognize the degree to which development outcomes are freely chosen,

involving the critical agency of those whose development is being promoted. Other

capability theorists have identified this as an aspect of empowerment, and although Sen

does declare at one point in this book that development is fundamentally an empowering

process, these dimensions of critical agency (which Nussbaum captures under practical

reason) and empowerment are unfortunately quite understated in The Idea of Justice.

Nevertheless, there are good reasons for saying that acting justly, according to a capabilityapproach, aims not merely for people to rise above capability deprivation, but to do so

through processes that are empowering for them, so that they have become better able to

shape their own lives.

David Crocker has reconstructed from Sens thinking an ideal of agency (Crocker and

Robeyns 2010). This approach to agency, too, is comparative: some people manage to

exercise, in what they do, a greater degree of agency than others, and a person or group

may at some times exercise a greater degree of agency than they do at other times. The

degree to which agency is exercised varies according to the degree to which four conditions

are met. Agency is exercised insofar as (a) a person either performs an activity or plays a

role in performing it, (b) this activity has an impact on the world, (c) the activity waschosen by the person (d) for reasons of their own (in individual or group deliberation). In

other words, agency is about the extent and degree to which ones activities are ones

own. While some capability theorists have argued that empowerment means simply the

expansion of agency (Ibrahim and Alkire2007; Alkire 2008), I have argued that this will

not stand up to a comparative approach (Drydyk 2008). Expansion of agency is more

empowering if it also enables people to shape their own lives for the better. In other words,

empowerment must be gauged in part by whether expansion of agency yields any

expansion of well-being freedom. If, shortly before the Titanic went down, the captain had

informed passengers that they were free to re-arrange the deck chairs as they pleased, theirscope for agency could indeed have expanded, yet not in any way that was particularly

empowering. If their agency had been mobilized to deploy and board lifeboats efficiently,

32 J. Drydyk
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including utility and ownership over the fruits of ones of labour (Sen 2009, 1214). In

addition, he believes that fair process is independently valuable (297). These two kinds of

accommodation are distinctive yet overlapping. Minimally, the first involves being

pluralistic rather than dogmatic in how one goes about implementing a reduction of

capability inequality. The capability approach is not a comprehensive normative doctrine;there are many other reasonable and reliable normative values. Striving to reduce capability

inequalities should not be approached dogmatically, in ways that are insensitive to these

values. This somewhat parallels what Aristotle called justice in a general sense, by which

he meant acting virtuously in all respects (not just regarding inequality) in ones dealings

with others (1129b251130a15). Fairness and any other process values that Sen might want

to accommodate are indeed among these values, though they seem especially salient in

conferring legitimacy on a course of action. Clearly space needs to be created for both sorts

of values within our conception of acting justly. If reducing shortfalls in well-being freedom

is one part of acting justly, then greater justice is shown by doing this consistently with

ethical values and accepted process norms, rather than running afoul of them.5

On this account, then, acting justly involves achieving and harmonizing six objectives:

(1) reducing capability shortfalls; (2) expanding capabilities for all; (3) saving the worst-off

as a first step towards their full participation in economy and society, (4) which is also to be

promoted by a system of entitlements protecting all from social exclusion; while (5)

supporting the empowerment of those whose capabilities are to expand; and (6) respecting

ethical values and legitimate procedures. If this is right, then knowing how to act justly

does not require knowledge of ideal theories; knowledge of comparative justice is

sufficient.

4 Ideals and the Moral Psychology of Justice

Nevertheless, it may be that, even if ideal theory is not needed for knowing how to act

justly, it may be needed for rhetorical and motivational reasons. Arguably, ideal theories

may have greater power to inspire people than do comparative theories, which may focus

more narrowly on the dull details of present-day circumstances.

Once again we might learn something from the Aristotelian account. It has been

observed that the virtue of justice seems to be lacking the emotional content that is found in

Aristotles account of the other virtues. However, a proposed solution to the Aristotelianproblem has interesting implications regarding the potential motivating power of a

contemporary virtue of justice.

Aristotles account of justice diverges significantly from his typical account of other

virtues. As is well known, he regarded courage is a mean between the vices of being

cowardly and being reckless, and, at the same time, as a mean between excess and

deficiency in particular emotions: a coward is too fearful and insufficiently confident,

whereas a reckless person is too fearless and overconfident. A brave person is, in the right

circumstances, neither too fearful nor overconfident. The puzzle about justice is: what sort

of emotional balancing belongs to a just person

s character? One commentator tells usflatly, There is no special emotion that a [just person, e.g.,] a judge ought to feel and

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exhibit in the right degree. (Urmson 1988, 7677) In the Nicomachean Ethics only one

corresponding vice is discussed, pleonexia, translated in one edition as being grasping

(Aristotle1941, 1129b1-11). This has been interpreted as desire for more than ones share,

at the expense of others (Kraut2002, 138). Moreover, a just person would not be one who

feels only moderately grasping; a just person would not be inclined to feel grasping at all. Itremains something of a mystery what the opposite vice would be, to form the pair of vices

between which the virtuous person strikes a balance, and, finally, not only can unjust

judgments have many motives apart from pleonexia, but they can result simply from

ignorance (Williams1980; Kraut2002, 143).

What, then, motivates a just character? The most interesting solution proposed so far is

that the relevant virtue is one discussed elsewhere, not in Aristotles account of justice

(Curzer1995, 23336). Nemesis consists in being pleased when someones (good or bad)

fortune is deserved but displeased when it is undeserved.6 It is a mean between envy (being

displeased by someones deserved good fortune) and spite (being pleased by someones

undeserved bad fortune). In relation to justice, the person ofnemesis is pained by unjust

distributions and pleased by just distributions even when uninvolved in the distribution

process.(Curzer1995, 235) The just character, in other words, is motivated by indignation

at unjust inequalities and joy or satisfaction at their removal (in the right ways).

This has interesting implications for my account of acting justly, but not without certain

caveats and qualifications. The first is that justice must not be reduced to desert. Capability

shortfalls must always be considered unjust, or else we are not duly considering the equal

dignity of each person. The capability to be in good health may not be deservedby people

who knowingly put their health at risk, yet it remains unjustto deny them opportunities to

regain good health even if they have lost it through their own negligence. So if indignationis to motivate striving for capability justice, it must be indignation at inequalities that are

unjust rather than indignation at inequalities that are undeserved. Secondly, since there is no

such thing as too much well-being freedom, this indignation at injustice should focus not on

people with high capabilities but, rather, on the shortfalls endured by people whose well-

being freedom is restricted. The virtue of justice leads us both to oppose unjust inequalities

imposed on others but also to resist when they are imposed on us; if justice is a mean

between imposing undeserved inequalities on others and having them imposed on oneself,

then resisting oppression is part of the virtue. With these qualifications, indignation at

injustice may be an appropriate motivator. Historical instances come easily to mind,

including not only the famous Justice thunders condemnationfrom theInternationale, butalso J.S. Mills broader conception of justice as the natural feeling of resentment, moralised

by being made coextensive with the demands of social good (Mill 1863, 94).

On the other hand, fuelling a political movement with indignation alone would seem

dangerously choleric and lacking in the more positive emotions that are needed within a

popular movement so that people can sustain themselves and support each other over the

long time that may be required to achieve greater justice. In this light, are ideals necessary

after all? I remain skeptical. For some people, having ideals is part of their identity. Just as

some people are spiritual while others are not, some people are idealists while others are

not. To risk a stereotype: I would find it difficult to imagine a Quaker without ideals. No6 On another interpretation, nemesis is one emotion among a cluster of four that jointly dispose a person to

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effective social movement can afford to exclude people just because they are motivated by

their ideals. For that reason, any effective social movement can be expected to harbour a

plurality of different ideals. So the thought that one ideal might single-handedly motivate an

effective social movement seems highly unrealistic. Moreover, if the driving ambition of

transcendental theory is to discover a unique set of necessary and sufficient conditions for afully just society, this may not serve the needs of justice-seeking social movements:

dismissing the ideals and values of ones allies is unlikely to encourage solidarity,

cooperation, and effectiveness in achieving greater justice. It is difficult to understand how

transcendental ambitions are consistent with the kind of pluralism that social justice

movements generally require.

Admittedly more research needs to be done on what can motivate people to act justly

both individually and collectively according to the account of comparative justice that is

being developed here. While the Aristotelian framework is intriguing, and it should not be

forgotten, I find that better progress can be made by starting from more recent

psychological research.

There are, for instance, recent conjectures by moral psychologists and cognitive scientists

that the human mind includes ajustice module(Haidt and Graham2007). In such a module,

cognition and affect interact in response to inequalities, to support beliefs and motivate action

concerning those inequalities. This leads to two further questions. First, we still need to know

in greater detail how the module functions. What goes on inside the box between inputs of

perceived inequality and outputs of belief and action? Second, we need to know how it

malfunctions, and here there is normative work to be done. In particular, one needs to identify

cognitive outputs that are unreliable and to diagnose which malfunctions generate them.

Here a comparative approach might usefully challenge further research and debate byproposing that one criterion for reliability should be discernment ofcomparativejustice and

injustice. Is this not a proposal that advocates of transcendental theories can also accept?

Transcendental theorists must agree that mental functioning is unreliable if it misleads

people even about how to distinguish greater justice from greater injustice. Otherwise

transcendental theory will be incapable of guiding action. Moreover, social psychology

already works with such a criterion. There has been extensive study of conflicts between

perceptions of inequality and beliefs in a just world: often the latter belief (that people

deserve what they get and get what they deserve) is maintained by condoning considerable

suffering with the thought that it was deserved (Lerner1980; Montada and Lerner 1998),

and in these cases the just world mentality is a source of cognitive distortion(Kazemi andTrnblom2008, 213).

Within social psychology there is considerable evidence that people have conceptions of

justice that affect their judgments, feelings, and behaviour, and these are not reducible to

considerations of self-interest or group interest (Tyler2001, 344; Lerner and Clayton2011).

I will consider the cognitive processes first and then return to emotions and motivation. My

question is how well or poorly these processes support or implement a capability approach

to acting justly.

It seems that concerns over justice can be triggered both by distributive and procedural

inequalities. (There is also a literature on retributive justice, which I will not discuss here.)Three main types of distributive concern are most salient: (a) equity concerns, that some

people are receiving greater or lesser outcomes in proportion to their inputs (Adams 1965);

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compared to strictly distributive concerns (Thibaut and Walker 1975; Tyler2001, 3456).

Among the earliest results of this research were the findings that perceptions of procedural

fairness are affected critically both by control over process (opportunity for input and voice)

and by decision control, i.e., influence over actual outcomes (Thibaut and Walker 1975;

Kazemi and Trnblom2008, 21213).All of these concerns are well matched with those of a capability approach to comparative

justice. While the CA rejects equality of outcome with respect to goods and resources, it places

considerable weight on equalizing capabilities. The capability thresholds that must be protected,

according to Nussbaum, are more than minimal standards of needs for survival; they are

standards of needs for living a life worthy of human dignity. Regarding the equity standard,

anyone who, no matter what they may try, cannot manage to function at all well in their society,

must seen as suffering an injustice, both by common equity standards and by the standard of

well-being freedom. The procedural concerns uncovered by social psychology match well with

the weight given by the capability approach to individual agency (Sen 1993; Alkire 2008),

practical reason (Nussbaum 2000; 2006), and collective agency (Crocker 2008, 15063).

Empowerment/disempowerment is a dynamic relation between distributive and procedural

justice (Drydyk2008), and no other approach to justice has given nearly as much attention as

the capability approach has given to this dynamic.

However, this still leaves one major question unanswered. What is required to lead from

perception of injustice to action for justice? The social psychology of justice motivation is far

too complex to summarize here, so I will merely note that there are many possible responses to

perceiving an inequality, and they do not all lead to changing the world: for instance, it is also

possible to adjust ones expectations. Moreover, a wide range of emotions can be involved

either in leading to action or in faltering. The

negative affectson which research has focused

so far include dissatisfaction, distress, anger, resentment, and indignation, but also guilt, sorrow,

sadness, shame, disgust, and even fear (De Cremer and Van den Bos2007). On the other hand,

concerns for justice may also elicit more positive pro-social attitudes and emotions. Possibly,

as Michael Slote has proposed, empathic care should be among them. Historically, solidarity

and group loyalty have also had roles to play in justice struggles (though, as is well known,

they have also been implicated in atrocities). Possibly empathy and solidarity are linked

(Bartky2002, 79). If any clear conclusions stand out from all of this, one would be that there

is no single emotion that qualifies pre-eminently as thefeeling of justice. Similarly, there is no

single pair of affects or attitudes between which a just actor must navigate.

Martha Nussbaum once described compassion as the basic social emotion (Nussbaum1996), and she has written at length about the importance of cultivating compassion among

citizens of democratic states (Nussbaum1998, 85107; Nussbaum2001, 401455). To my

knowledge, however, she has not held that compassion is the pre-eminent emotion of

justice, which, I think, is wise. While we may hope for justice that is compassionate and

compassion that is just, there are many ways in which they are psychologically distinct.

(Blader and Tyler2002). To mention just one, compassion is highly particularistic: one does

not feel compassion for humanity, but rather for particular people, with particular aims,

merits, failings, predicaments, and suffering (Blader and Tyler2002, 238). There are some

people that rouse very little compassion, and yet they must be treated justly

a concernthat has even been voiced even over the manner of death and posthumous treatment of

Muammar Qaddafi.7

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It may be that striving for justice needs to be guided, if not motivated, by an attitude for

which there is no single emotional basis, namely respect and care for the dignity of other people.

Psychologically, the most significant term in this phrase may be care. Making dignity its

object merely shifts focus from the particularities of a persons life to a broader recognition that

they are pursuing what are after all human goods, characterized by intelligence and affectivebonds with others, and in this way striving to live well with others even if we find their

particular ambitions to be misguided, despicable, or, in the extreme, evil. Perhaps this could also

be characterized as caring for persons as human beings. While care and empathy may be

psychologically independent, it has been argued in the context of early moral development that

they are mutually supportive, hence congruent dispositions(Hoffman2000, 225). Care and

respect for dignity may also have at least a partial basis in the care-giving practices that are

needed and carried on every day for human survival and flourishing (Drydyk2011).

So far in this sketch I have barely mentioned solidarity. But ultimately it cannot be

neglected, and its role too must be understood. Since the achievement of justice clearly

requires collective action whether in elections, or protests, or organizing acting justly is

not typically sustained without the support of group loyalties. Since everyone has several

group loyalties, the challenge is to harmonize them in justice-seeking ways. When the

solidarity of the just conflicts with solidarities of family, nationality, and so on, greater

justice is less likely to be achieved.

While much further discussion is needed, this could comprise, at least in part, the moral

psychology of justice as a virtue, according to a capability approach to comparative justice.

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