Public education is crucial to the health of democracy. Recent educational initiatives in many countries, however, focus narrowly on science and technology, neglecting the arts and humanities. They also focus on internalization of information, rather than on the formation of the student’s critical and imaginative capacities. This chapter argues that such a narrow focus is dangerous for democracy’s future. Drawing on the ideas of Rabindranath Tagore, the chapter proposes a three‐part model for the development of young people’s capabilities through education, focusing on critical thinking, world citizenship, and imaginative understanding.

Disdain for Cicero is widespread among contemporary philosophers. This chapter shows this attitude is mistaken. It focuses on three topics where Cicero speaks to contemporary philosophical problems with special urgency and relevance: cosmopolitanism, aging, and friendship. Cicero’s analysis of the duties of justice and the duties of material aid in his De officiis became the foundation for much of modern international law. But his analysis suffers from a bifurcation: it makes the former fully global (national boundaries are irrelevant) and the latter very elastic. The topic of aging has been entirely neglected by philosophers. Cicero’s dialogue De senectute offers a defense of old age against stigma and prejudices: some arguments are unconvincing, but many are excellent and have much to teach us. In his De amicitia, Cicero offers a convincing critique of common self-insulating pictures of friendship and an exploration of friendship as an element of political life, of which Cicero’s long-lived friendship with Atticus is a perfect example.

Much of the existing literature on the philosophical antecedents of the capabilities approach focuses narrowly on well-known figures — such as Aristotle, Adam Smith, Karl Marx and J. S. Mill — in ‘Western’ philosophy and political economy. This chapter is chiefly concerned with influences on the works of Amartya Sen and Martha C. Nussbaum and the intellectual climate from which their works on capability emerged. It traces these to traditions — including those of Greek tragedy, Stoic and Buddhist thought — as well as particular influences on Sen’s and Nussbaum’s works from twentieth-century India, including the works of Rabindranath Tagore. In both these ways, this contribution makes a strong case for expanding the literature on the predecessors of, and influences on, contemporary work on the capabilities approach well beyond the ‘Western’ tradition of philosophy, and encourages researchers to consider the extent to which the roots of the capabilities approach can be found in ‘non-Western’ traditions and ideas which have been relatively neglected in the literature on Sen’s and Nussbaum’s works on capabilities. In making this case, the chapter also reiterates some differences between Sen’s and Nussbaum’s views.

Legal reasoning is a vast topic. In principle, it includes the reasoning of lawyers, judges, and even lawmakers, in every area of law, from family law to contracts, from criminal law to constitutional adjudication. And it is thoroughly global, encompassing enormously different national and regional understandings. Bringing the topic down to a size compatible with saying anything useful means leaving out most of it. Accordingly, this chapter will be confined to countries with a common law legal system, and its primary focus will be judicial reasoning. Most of its examples will be drawn from just two areas of law, criminal and constitutional law. Its argument will focus on the philosophical underpinnings of an ongoing debate between defenders of common law legal reasoning and a variety of utilitarian challengers.

CURBING MAJORITY TYRANNY, PROMOTING SOCIAL INCLUSION

India's Constitution, like others the world over, was ratified by a constitutional assembly. Unlike many or even most, however, it is to a considerable extent the creation of one dominant legal intellect, B. R. Ambedkar (1891–1956), who, as Nehru's law minister, had considerable latitude in drafting it and who has told history a great deal about what he wanted to achieve and at times had to fight to achieve. He argued extensively for a particular conception of the Constitution, one in which a central purpose was protecting vulnerable minorities from majority tyranny and promoting their full social inclusion. He focused centrally on the evils of the Hindu caste hierarchy, but he was also passionately concerned with the situation of India's women and its religious minorities. Although he did not address the problems faced by sexual minorities and transgender people, his name and his principles have been central to recent legal activism in these areas. In a very general way, Ambedkar saw the practice of stigmatizing and excluding groups of people as a major obstacle to India's success as a nation, and one that law could productively address.