Abstract

The American philosopher Martha Nussbaum criticizes John Rawls theory of justice, Justice as fairness, for not answering well enough to challenges related to disability as human condition. People have various abilities and impairments throughout their lives and some people live with impairments in their entire life. In her theory of justice, The capabilities approach, disability as human condition is integrated and Nussbaum argues that a just society should enable citizens to live lives that are worthy of human dignity. By including disability, and discussing what this entail for her theory, Nussbaum focuses on a topic of ethical importance; the right for all people to live in the world. Her theory is, highly relevant in discussing what people should be entitled to do and be, linked to a conception of disability as a relation between individuals and their social, political, cultural and material environments. The capabilities approach is a valuable contribution to a discussion on citizenship and rights, by seriously integrating a disability perspective. The capabilities approach risks to fall short, however, in terms of inclusion, if interpreted as a normative definition of who should belong to humanity.