Concepts and Conceptions

Abstract

Section 1 of this chapter outlines the concept of basic justice and argues that it is worthwhile to confine attention to it for the remainder of the book. Section 2 introduces in some detail the concept of habilitation and argues that it is a particularly illuminating tool for examining basic justice. Section 3 examines two types of normative theory that appear to have especially close conceptual connections to habilitation (capability theories; dependency and care theories). The habilitation framework proposed here is then distinguished from them. Section 4 suggests that habilitation into a robust form of health is a project central to the human condition itself rather than to a particular normative theory, and that the habilitation framework could in principle provide a theory-independent framework for normative theories of basic justice generally.