Reconciling the capability approach and the ICF

AbstractThe literature on applications of the so-called “Capability Approach” of Amartya Sen and Martha Nussbaum is extensive, but it is only recently that some have argued that its application to the analysis of disability would be a great advantage over existing analyses, and in particular preferable to the model of functioning and disability found in the World Health Organization's International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health (ICF). I argue here that care must be taken in this head-to-head comparison between the Capability Approach and ICF since the former is essentially a political-theoretical account of equalitarian justice, whereas the latter is a model of a classification system for describing disability that is explicitly neutral between any theory of distributive justice. Nonetheless, this paper argues that a careful comparison of the two approaches to the conceptualisation of disability reveals salient aspects of convergence that, arguably, point to a potential synergy between the Capability Approach as applied to disability and the ICF