Prince of Asturias Awards 1981–2014. Speeches

6 O viedo | C ampoamor T heatre | What I have done over the years is to develop (in collaboration with economists) what is known as the Human Development Approach, or Capabilities Approach. This is an approach to the measurement of national quality of life that holds that economic growth, measured by GDP per capita, is insufficient: such an approach does not really capture what people are striving for. The GDP approach ignores distribution, and thus can give high marks to nations that contain alarming inequalities of opportunity. And it also ignores the fact that a flourishing human life has many parts that vary independently of one another, and independently, too, of regional or national economic growth. A nation may have high growth without political or religious liberty; but people desire to have a voice in the shape of their political and conscientious lives. A nation can also grow well without adequately distributing opportunities for education, for health care, and for the basic preservation of bodily integrity; as my own wealthy nation, with its struggles over education and health care and its woeful record of domestic violence against women, shows all too clearly. What we have been arguing, then, is that the right measure of development is people-centered, distribution-sensitive, and plural: it reflects the fact that people do not strive for national income, they strive for meaningful lives for themselves. By developing a list of the Central Human Capabilities, which I argue are minimum requirements of a life worthy of human dignity, I have tried to give substance to these ideas and to suggest some definite goals for all nations. Martha C. Nussbaum — Prince of Asturias Award for Social Sciences 2012 Excerpt from the speech given on the occasion of receiving the Prince of Asturias Award for Social Sciences on 26/10/2012. 26 th O ctober 2012