Habilitation, Health, and Agency

A Framework for Basic Justice

Lawrence C. Becker

The author proposes a theory-independent line of argument, which argues for a specific metric for assessing progress toward justice, but which refrains from endorsing any particular normative distributive principles
Argues that we should replace the standard analysis of the circumstances of justice (crystallized by Hume, but implicitly in use since ancient times) with an analysis of the circumstances of habilitation.

Habilitation, Health, and Agency

A Framework for Basic Justice

Lawrence C. Becker

Description

Lawrence C. Becker introduces an unconventional set of background ideas for future philosophical work on normative theories of basic justice. The organizing concept is habilitation -- the process of equipping a person or thing with functional abilities or capacities. The specific proposals drawn from the concept of habilitation are independent of any particular set of distributive principles. The result is a framework for theory that includes a metric for the pursuit of basic justice, but not a normative theory of it.

The basic idea is that receiving and providing habilitation is a lifelong necessity for human beings, from their nearly helpless newborn state through their struggles to survive and thrive thereafter, even into the most severe diminishments of old age. This lifelong human necessity underlies all questions about basic justice, and the possibilities for habilitation define the circumstances under which those questions arise.

Focusing on the circumstances of habilitation calls attention to the central role of physical and psychological health. Without basic good health in both domains, it is not possible to cope with the habilitative demands of one's physical and psychological endowments, and one's physical and social environments. And for human beings, a particular aspect of human health effectively sums up these matters: namely human agency; the nature and extent of the ability to act effectively.

The book proposes, specifically, that normative theories of basic justice adopt the habilitation framework. What then appears to follow is that the most plausible comprehensive metric for assessing progress toward basic justice will be the level and distribution of basic good health. Moreover, achieving robustly healthy agency will be the most plausible tactical target for making progress toward basic justice -- no matter what one's favored distributive principles might be.

Habilitation, Health, and Agency

A Framework for Basic Justice

Lawrence C. Becker

Introduction
Part One: Habilitation and Basic Justice
Preface to Part One
1. Basic Justice and Habilitation: Concept and Conception
1. Basic Justice
2. Habilitation: Concept and Conception
3. Normative Theories with a Close Connection to Habilitation
4. Habilitation: Conception and Framework
2. The Circumstances of Habilitation for Basic Justice
1. Functional Abilities in a Given Range of Environments
2. Summary of the Circumstances of Habilitation
3. The Centrality of Health and Agency

Part Two: Health, Healthy Agency, and the Health Metric
Preface to Part Two
3. Eudaimonistic Health: Complete Health, Moral Development, Well-Being, and Happiness
1. Health, Well-Being, and Virtue
2. A Unified Conception of Health, Positive and Negative
3. The Science of Mental Health, Happiness, and Virtue
4. Health, Happiness, and Basic Justice
4. Good Health as Reliably Competent Functioning
1. Basic health: An Integrated, Limited General Concept
2. Habilitation, Coping Abilities, and Agency
3. Good (basic) Health as Reliably Competent Functioning
5. Robustly Healthy Agency
1. The Health Metric
2. Health Science: Limited and Unified
3. Habilitation into Robustly Healthy Agency
6. Healthy Agency as the Representative Good for Basic Justice
1. Healthy Agency versus Wealth and Income
2. Healthy Agency versus Pluralism
3. The Representativeness of Habilitation into Healthy Agency
4. Theory All the Way Down: A Public Policy Objection

Part Three: Healthy Agency and the Norms of Basic Justice
Preface to Part Three
7. Healthy Agency and Its Behavioral Tendencies
1. Dispositions Toward Health and Habilitation
2. Dispositions About the Subject Matter of Justice
8. Healthy Agency and the Norms of Basic Justice
1. Habilitative Necessities and Justice
2. Habilitative Stability, Strength, and Efficiency
3. Second-Order Norms,
4. Moving Beyond Basic Justice

Part Four: Relevance, Influence, and Prejudice Revisited
Preface to Part Four
9. Relevance, Influence, and Prejudice
1. Exclusionary Reminders
2. Comprehensiveness and Representativeness
10. Conclusion and Extrication
1. Health, Individual Liberty, and Social Stability: A Fantasy
2. Approximations to Health
3. Pseudo-Problems and Elusive Targets: Sensible Replies to the Foole
4. Hope Rather than Fantasy
Acknowledgments
Bibliography

Habilitation, Health, and Agency

A Framework for Basic Justice

Lawrence C. Becker

Author Information

Lawrence C Becker is a Fellow of Hollins University, and Professor of Philosophy Emeritus, College of William and Mary. He is the author of four previous monographs, including Property Rights (1977), Reciprocity (1986), and A New Stoicism (1998). With Charlotte B. Becker he co-edited two editions of The Encyclopedia of Ethics (1992; 2001).

Habilitation, Health, and Agency

A Framework for Basic Justice

Lawrence C. Becker

Reviews and Awards

"Becker's discussion of health is fascinating and raises many important questions for further pursuit."--Lorraine Besser-Jones, Social Theory and Practice

"[An] innovative and challenging volume."--David A. Crocker, Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews

"It is widely agreed that if your health is seriously impaired, then little else matters. In his strikingly original new book Lawrence Becker turns this folk wisdom into a reorientation of political philosophy. Becker proposes a new conceptual framework for political philosophy in terms of 'habilitation into healthy agency.' He argues that basic justice demands that each person is to be equipped with good physical and psychological health and the social and material environments to sustain it. This claim in one way seems very familiar, yet it has gone missing in contemporary political philosophy. Hence, we are in Becker's debt for introducing a new set of ideas into debates about justice. This book is bound to stimulate wide debate."--Jonathan Wolff, University College London

"This book represents Becker at his best: challenging existing paradigms in a way that is quirky but also compelling. It adds to debates about justice in a manner that is absolutely original."--Leslie Francis, University of Utah