Nussbaum’s Model of Human Capacity

Self-Critical Examination

This is the capacity to critically examine oneself and one’s personal traditions. This would follow,  in the the Socratic manner, ‘the examined life’

Multiple Loyalties / Multiple Views of Citizenship

Nussbaum proposed that those who ‘cultivate their humanity’ will require an ability to view themselves not just in terms of their group identities but also as ‘human beings bound to all other human beings by ties of recognition and concern.’

Narrative Imagination

The third skill  is proposed to be the ability to be able to empathize and think what it may be like ‘to be in the shoes of a person different from oneself’  and to be able to read intelligently and with understanding that person’s ‘story’. 

(adapted from Nussbaum 1997,  pp. 10-11)