Animals suffer injustice at our hands. We need a powerful theoretical strategy to diagnose injustice and suggest remedies. As a philosopher, I recommend a version of the theory of political justice known as the “Capabilities Approach,” to shift the way we think about animal rights from other influential approaches to animal justice, such as anthropocentric approaches that rank animals in terms of likeness to humans, or the promising but flawed approach supplied by classical Utilitarianism.

Originally developed to guide international development agencies working with human populations, the Capabilities Approach, I believe, provides a good basis for animal entitlements as well. (The original architect of the approach is the Nobel Prize–winning economist and philosopher Amartya Sen, with whom I collaborated on this theory but soon developed my own very different version.) The approach focuses on meaningful activities and on the conditions that make it possible for a creature to pursue those activities without damage or blockage. In other words, to lead a flourishing life.

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My approach argues that a society is minimally just only if it secures to each individual citizen a basic threshold amount of a list of “Central Capabilities,” which are defined as substantial freedoms, or opportunities for choice and action in areas of life that people in general have reason to value. Capabilities are core entitlements, closely comparable to a list of fundamental rights. But the Capabilities Approach emphasizes that the goal is not simply high-sounding words on paper. It is to make people really able to select that activity if they want to. So, it emphasizes material empowerment more than many rightsbased approaches do.

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