What are the core capacities that make for a flourishing life? It is an incredibly difficult question to answer. Every philosopher, public commentator, and backyard critic seems to have a different view on the matter. Occasionally the terms of what makes for a good life are developed explicitly, but mostly the grounding of such claims is either left implicit or undeveloped, as if we all agree and spelling out the terms of a good life is unnecessary. In the Global North, the most common appeals assume some variation on the capacities for freedom, connectivity, democracy, and inclusion, with the ideology of freedom usually prevailing. The dominant approach to human development, called the capabilities approach developed by Amartya Sen and Martha Nussbaum and expressed in the Human Development Index, appeals to these liberal notions. This chapter sets out an alternative framework for understanding human capacities. It builds a matrix of capacities around the domains of vitality, relationality, productivity, and sustainability. These are seen as basic to a flourishing human condition.

The idea that every society ought to ensure each of its citizens an adequate standard of living is widely accepted. Martha Nussbaum has argued that such a standard should be understood as a set of capabilities adequate for a life of human dignity, an ample minimum that can be ascertained through public reasoning in each society.In this chapter the author shows why public reasoning about capabilities can be expected to support a higher standard that is optimal rather than minimal: the highest capability levels that could be sustained for everyone by the productive capacity of their society. The argument rests on a conception of equal dignity among human beings striving to live well, each in his or her own way. The first and most urgent step towards reaching this social optimum consists, at a lower level, in overcoming hardships.

Much of the existing literature on the philosophical antecedents of the capabilities approach focuses narrowly on well-known figures — such as Aristotle, Adam Smith, Karl Marx and J. S. Mill — in ‘Western’ philosophy and political economy. This chapter is chiefly concerned with influences on the works of Amartya Sen and Martha C. Nussbaum and the intellectual climate from which their works on capability emerged. It traces these to traditions — including those of Greek tragedy, Stoic and Buddhist thought — as well as particular influences on Sen’s and Nussbaum’s works from twentieth-century India, including the works of Rabindranath Tagore. In both these ways, this contribution makes a strong case for expanding the literature on the predecessors of, and influences on, contemporary work on the capabilities approach well beyond the ‘Western’ tradition of philosophy, and encourages researchers to consider the extent to which the roots of the capabilities approach can be found in ‘non-Western’ traditions and ideas which have been relatively neglected in the literature on Sen’s and Nussbaum’s works on capabilities. In making this case, the chapter also reiterates some differences between Sen’s and Nussbaum’s views.

Happiness has been a major topic of philosophical and other forms of investigation throughout history. Happiness has often been held as an end and a means to good life. People have generally sought happiness, and happiness is related in common and academic discourse to progress, success, and value. However, not all traditions prize happiness, and the definition of happiness and its implications for social life and education are contested. How to measure it, whether one can measure it, and how to know it when you see it, are some puzzles psychologists and philosophers (among others) grapple with. This chapter gives a brief history of the concept of happiness alongside other concepts, of eudemonia and well-being, from philosophical orientations, in psychology, and from the perspective of the politics of emotions. It traces how these views have shaped educational aims and strategies. The analysis here emphasises the need for consideration of more critical approaches to happiness as an educational aim, despite the praise of happiness as a good in itself in much of western philosophy and psychology.

This chapter explores competing perspectives and appraisals of anger in society and in education. It highlights the possibility of accepting and productively using moral anger, in contradiction to the prevalent approach of many educational psychologists and philosophers who are basically against anger. The chapter starts with a discussion of views admonishing against anger, from philosophy and psychology, before exploring their limitations, alongside more tolerant approaches to anger. It then considers the potential productive value of exploring anger in education.