The philosophy of social justice in the work of Amartya Sen and Martha Nussbaum: Ethical and legal aspects

Abstract

In the fields of critical thinking and contemporary social theory, social justice, in philosophical terms, has established itself as an analytical category with clear emancipatory nuances, which seeks to question how a given community distributes valuable goods, burdens, opportunities, and symbolic recognition among its members, paying particular attention to those most disadvantaged in asymmetrical power relations. The research carried out in this article aimed to interpret the ethical and legal foundations of the philosophy of social justice in the works of Amartya Sen and Martha Nussbaum. To achieve this objective, documentary analysis and the comparative method were used. In the conclusions, the results obtained suggest that the human capabilities approach can benefit 21st-century societies, as it challenges simple solutions in the face of an increasingly conflictive and unequal world. Therefore, it is suggested that development should be assessed not only through the accumulation of wealth or technological complexity (deterministic economism), but also through everyone’s true capacity to live in substantive dignity, in a context of freedom, security, and social recognition, above poverty.