Martha Craven Nussbaum was already a widely respected classicist and Aristotle scholar before she embraced 'the capabilities approach' to human development. This approach was first developed by Amartya Sen, but Nussbaum gave it a distinctly Aristotelian flavour. She remains a leading proponent, and was recently president of the Human Development and Capability Association. Her own Aristotelian approach to ethics and politics has been strongly universalist, because she bases it in Aristotle's naturalism, but Nussbaum's Aristotelianism has become increasingly tempered by a commitment to Rawlsian 'political liberalism'. 

 

CASEP is co-hosting a conference on Martha Nussbaum, Cosmopolitanism and Global Justice at the University of Nottingham from Thursday 6th to Friday 7th May, 2010. For details, please consult the Call for Papers.