Integral Human Development Ethics

Traditional approaches to development tend to focus on one-way transfers of wealth from the rich to the poor. More innovated approaches, like Martha Nussbaum’s version of the capability approach recognizes multi-dimensional poverty and strives to ensure that no person is below a threshold of central capabilities, or freedoms. In this paper, I introduce integral human development ethics; a secular approach to development inspired by Catholic Social Tradition’s integral human development. This approach is anchored in the notion that authentic development must promote the good of every person and of the whole person. I argue that integral human development ethics offers a new and promising shift in the way that development has been understood. In focusing on the whole person, it captures the multi-dimensional poverty of the capabilities approach, in focusing on every person it replaces the model of development as one-way transfers of wealth with a radical solidarity that benefits both rich and poor.