Does a Basic Needs Approach Need Capabilities?

THE ‘basic needs approach’ (henceforth BNA) is an approach to social justice ‘that gives priority to meeting people’s basic needs—to ensuring that there are sufficient, appropriately distributed basic needs (BN) goods and services to sustain all human lives at a minimally decent level’. BNA draws on the intuitive moral force of claims of need (compared to claims of preference or subjective or objective benefit, for example), to develop a practical normative theory about what should be done. Its intuitive humanitarian appeal notwithstanding, BNA has been subject to many criticisms, with the result that it has declined in popularity. It is now widely accepted that BNA is inadequate, and should either be wholly replaced by, or at least be made a subordinate part of, a more comprehensive, better theory. The ‘capability approach’ (henceforth CA) founded by Amartya Sen, and developed in different directions by Sen, Martha Nussbaum, Sabina Alkire and others, is widely taken to be that better theory. CA is an approach which aims to expand capabilities or valuable freedoms. Capabilities are what people are actually able to do and to be, that is, their freedom to enjoy valuable beings and doings. BNA has been overtaken by CA. But how many criticisms of BNA were well-founded? How many of its problems were intrinsic to the theory, and how many were contingent results of the way the concept of need was misunderstood or misused? In this article I consider criticisms of BNA made by capability theorists, and argue that BNA can meet them all. I conclude that BNA has been unfairly criticised and too hastily displaced by CA. This raises a further question: what should be done? My hope is that defenders of BNA will be encouraged to revive their approach by these arguments, and that defenders of CA will be encouraged to reconsider and modify or withdraw their criticisms.