Aspiration and Wrongful Harm: Why the State Owes a Duty to Cultivate Hope

This article argues that the failure of the state to foster the development of the capability to aspire among disadvantaged citizens constitutes a form of wrongful harm. Drawing on the Capability Approach, theories of justice, and recent sociological research on the capacity to aspire, I show that aspiration is not merely a matter of private preference, but a socially embedded capability shaped by structural conditions. When state institutions fail to cultivate this capacity – or worse, actively impede its development – particularly among the disadvantaged, they undermine a central aspect of moral agency. I advance a normative reframing of aspiration deprivation as a state-inflicted harm: under this account, low aspirations are not a tragic by-product of poverty but represent a systematic violation of citizens’ moral personhood and a denial of their capacity for self-authorship. This paper offers a novel account of aspiration as a capability, the deprivation of which grounds duties of rectification, not merely reform. I conclude by arguing that the state’s failure to support this central human capability demands reparative justice – an obligation rooted not in charity or benevolence, but in respect for persons as moral equals.