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Martha Nussbaum

Modern Ethics · North America · born 1947

American philosopher who builds on Aristotle. She argues for a list of basic abilities every person needs to live well.

What it is

Martha Nussbaum, born in New York in 1947, is an American philosopher and legal scholar. She trained as a classicist at Harvard, taught at Harvard, Brown and the University of Chicago, and is known for work on ancient Greek and Roman philosophy, moral psychology, ethics, feminism and political philosophy.

Her writing moves between the study of ancient texts and urgent present questions: human rights, justice, development, education and the place of emotion in public life. She has also worked with international bodies and women's groups on projects about quality of life.

The main ideas

  • Goodness is fragile. In The Fragility of Goodness she argued that a good human life is not fully self-sufficient: it depends on circumstances and on attachments that can be lost. She sided with Aristotle on this and drew on the Greek tragedians.
  • Capabilities. She developed the capability approach, first pioneered by Amartya Sen, into a way of judging political arrangements by whether they foster or frustrate the capacities essential to a truly human life, such as health, bodily integrity, thought and emotional attachment.
  • Emotions matter for ethics. She argued that emotions are not mere animal impulses that disturb reason but are forms of intelligence that matter to human flourishing, with compassion and love at the centre.
  • Education for citizenship. She defended a liberal education that cultivates the ability to examine oneself and others and to imagine another person's situation, drawing on Socratic reasoning and Stoic ideas of world citizenship.

What it looks like in practice

Picture a town trying to decide whether its schools, clinics and laws are working, and asking not how much money was spent but what people are actually able to do and to be: to be healthy, to learn, to take part in decisions. That is the kind of question the capability approach puts, and Nussbaum treats it as a test of justice. This is an illustration of the idea, not a quotation.

Books and moments

  • The Fragility of Goodness (1986) is her first major work, on luck and ethics in Greek tragedy and philosophy.
  • Cultivating Humanity (1997) is her case for liberal education.
  • Creating Capabilities (2011) is her comprehensive restatement of the capability approach.

Questions and criticism

  • Is a list of capabilities universal? She argues that the list is grounded in realistic judgments about the needs of all people, and critics have asked whether it imposes one culture's values.
  • Can emotions guide public policy? Her work on the role of emotions in law and policy has been admired and also questioned, especially about which emotions to trust.
  • Does the capability approach go far enough? Some think it should say more about what to do when capabilities conflict, a question that remains open.

Close neighbours

She works from Aristotle and the Stoics, and she shares the capability approach with Amartya Sen. The pages on Aristotle, Stoicism and Rawls show the traditions she draws on and argues with.

Written by epchē in our own words, and checked against independent sources on 9 October 2026. The sources are listed below.

Philosophies they belong to or are close to

Who they connect to

Influenced by

  • Adam Smith · Nussbaum draws on Smith's idea of sympathy in her work on emotions and justice. (scholars disagree about this link)
  • Amartya Sen · The two worked together on the capabilities approach to well-being.
  • John Rawls · Nussbaum extends Rawls' theory of justice to disability, animals and global questions.

Other Modern Ethics thinkers

Sources we used

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