The Quality of Life

by Martha C. Nussbaum (Editor), Amartya Sen (Editor)

This is an open access title available under the terms of a CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 IGO licence. It is free to read at Oxford Scholarship Online and offered as a free PDF download from OUP and selected open access locations.

The idea of the quality of life is central to economic and social assessment and also to public policy, social legislation, and community programs. However, the commonly used indicators of economic success such as per capita income are at best crude measures of the quality of life. There is a strong need for a systematic exploration of the content, reach, and relevance of the concept of the quality of life, and ways of making it concrete and usable. In this collection of essays, some leading economists and philosophers rise to that challenge and provide a wide-ranging investigation. The essays include examinations of recent attempts to replace incomes and utilities by the concept of capability and also an exploration of the classic Aristotelian accounts of human flourishing, which provide insights into capability-based assessment of the quality of life. Some underlying methodological problems are also examined, including cultural relativism and utility as a measure of advantage.
Possibilities of application are discussed in the context of important practical problems, such as correcting gender-based inequalities, determining medical priorities, and promoting living standards. The overall result is a major contribution to the understanding and use of the idea of the quality of life.

Genres: Philosophy, Economics, Nonfiction, Academic, Humanities

468 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1987

About the author

Martha C. Nussbaum is Ernst Freund Distinguished Service Professor at the University of Chicago, appointed in the Law School and the Philosophy Department. Among her many awards are the 2018 Berggruen Prize, the 2017 Don M. Randel Award for Humanistic Studies from the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the 2016 Kyoto Prize in Arts and Philosophy.

Reviews

[Abedijafari · Rating 4 out of 5]

کتاب کیفیت زندگی مجموعه مقالاتی است که توسط ناسبام و سن سفارش و گرداوری شده است.
معمولا پس از هر مقاله یک نقد هم درباره همان مقاله توسط یکی دیگر از نویسندگان ارائه شده است.
موضوع کتاب درواقع بهزیستن هست. افرادی که در این کتاب مقاله داده اند را میتوان در پارادایم توسعه قابلیتی دانست. برخی اقتصاددان و برخی فیلسوف هستند.
کتاب در 1993 نوشته شده و در 1997 بازچاپ گردیده.

[Ed Fernyhough · Rating 5 out of 5]

Putnam's essay in this is essential reading; if you read one essay from this collection then look at the Putnam one. He persuasively argues against Hume's now-sacred distinction between fact/value, which has important epistemological implications for the re-legitimisation of moral philosophy.

[Leonardo]

Citado en el artículo de Angner en Capabilities and Happiness.

[Jilany]

econ1 to-read