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51The complexity of groups: A comment on Jorge ValadezPhilosophy and Social Criticism 29 (1): 57-69. 2003.Valadez’ book is an excellent investigation of the question of group rights. Nonetheless, there are some serious objections to group rights that he does not investigate. Groups contain hierarchies of power: thus giving legal privileges to a group is usually tantamount to giving more power to those already in power within the group. Groups have unclear and changing boundaries of membership; group rights often reify the current definition of a group and militate against change. Finally, there are …Read more
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116Précis of upheavals of thought (review)Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 68 (2). 2004.Emotions shape the landscape of our mental and social lives. Like the “geological upheavals” a traveler might discover in a landscape where recently only a flat plane could be seen, they mark our lives as uneven, uncertain, and prone to reversal. Why and how? Is it because emotions are animal energies or impulses that have no connection with our thoughts, imaginings, and appraisals? In the passage from which my title is taken, Proust denies this, calling the emotions “geological upheavals of tho…Read more
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109Transcendence and human values (review)Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 64 (2). 2002.Robert Adams has written a most impressive book. To say that it is the major philosophical contribution to theocentric ethics in recent years, given moral philosophers’ general avoidance of religious topics, would be grossly inadequate praise. Nor would that judgment adequately convey the book’s fresh and subtle contributions to many more familiar topics in philosophical ethics, from the nature of ethical language to the virtues to the role of civil liberties in a pluralistic society. Most impre…Read more
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135Symposium on cosmopolitanism duties of justice, duties of material aid: Cicero's problematic legacyJournal of Political Philosophy 8 (2). 2000.
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869Virtue Ethics: A Misleading Category?The Journal of Ethics 3 (3): 163-201. 1999.Virtue ethics is standardly taught and discussed as a distinctive approach to the major questions of ethics, a third major position alongside Utilitarian and Kantian ethics. I argue that this taxonomy is a confusion. Both Utilitarianism and Kantianism contain treatments of virtue, so virtue ethics cannot possibly be a separate approach contrasted with those approaches. There are, to be sure, quite a few contemporary philosophical writers about virtue who are neither Utilitarians nor Kantians; ma…Read more
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65Political soul-making and the imminent demise of liberal educationJournal of Social Philosophy 37 (2). 2005.
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342Mortal immortals: Lucretius on death and the voice of naturePhilosophy and Phenomenological Research 50 (2): 303-351. 1989.
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52How should what economists call “social values” be measured?The Journal of Ethics 3 (3): 249-273. 1999.Most economists and some philosophers distinguish individual utilities from interpersonal social values. Even if challenges to that conceptual distinction can be met, further philosophically interesting questions arise. I pursue three in this paper, using, as context for the discussion, health economics and its attempt to discern empirically a social welfare function to help guide rationing decisions. (1) To discern these utilities and values in a manner that is morally appropriate if they are t…Read more
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49Conversing with the tradition: John Rawls and the history of ethicsEthics 109 (2): 424-430. 1999.
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361Aristotle, politics, and human capabilities: A response to Antony, Arneson, Charlesworth, and MulganEthics 111 (1): 102-140. 2000.
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435’s Knowledge: Essays on Philosophy and LiteratureOxford University Press. 1990.This volume brings together Nussbaum's published papers on the relationship between literature and philosophy, especially moral philosophy.
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167Emotions as judgments of value and importanceIn Robert C. Solomon (ed.), Thinking About Feeling: Contemporary Philosophers on Emotions, Oxford University Press Usa. 2004.
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16A philosopher and a lawyer-economist examine the challenges of the last third of life. They write about friendship, sex, retirement communities, inheritance, poverty, and the depiction of aging women in films. These essays, or conversations, will help readers of all ages think about how to age well, or at least thoughtfully, and how to interact with older family members and friends.
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45The Therapy of Desire: Theory and Practice in Hellenistic Ethics (edited book)Princeton University Press. 2009.The Epicureans, Skeptics, and Stoics practiced philosophy not as a detached intellectual discipline but as a worldly art of grappling with issues of daily and urgent human significance. In this classic work, Martha Nussbaum maintains that these Hellenistic schools have been unjustly neglected in recent philosophic accounts of what the classical "tradition" has to offer. By examining texts of philosophers such as Epicurus, Lucretius, and Seneca, she recovers a valuable source for current moral an…Read more
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37CHAPTER 12. Serpents in the Soul: A Reading of Seneca’s MedeaIn The Therapy of Desire: Theory and Practice in Hellenistic Ethics, Princeton University Press. pp. 439-483. 2009.
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12CHAPTER 9. Stoic Tonics: Philosophy and the Self-Government of the SoulIn The Therapy of Desire: Theory and Practice in Hellenistic Ethics, Princeton University Press. pp. 316-358. 2009.
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5AcknowledgmentsIn The Therapy of Desire: Theory and Practice in Hellenistic Ethics, Princeton University Press. 2009.
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2Index LocorumIn The Therapy of Desire: Theory and Practice in Hellenistic Ethics, Princeton University Press. pp. 531-549. 2009.
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8IntroductionIn The Therapy of Desire: Theory and Practice in Hellenistic Ethics, Princeton University Press. pp. 1-12. 2009.
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6Introduction to the 2009 EditionIn The Therapy of Desire: Theory and Practice in Hellenistic Ethics, Princeton University Press. 2009.
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32CHAPTER 4.Epicurean Surgery: Argument and Empty DesireIn The Therapy of Desire: Theory and Practice in Hellenistic Ethics, Princeton University Press. pp. 102-139. 2009.
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2General IndexIn The Therapy of Desire: Theory and Practice in Hellenistic Ethics, Princeton University Press. pp. 550-558. 2009.
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AbbreviationsIn The Therapy of Desire: Theory and Practice in Hellenistic Ethics, Princeton University Press. 2009.
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13CHAPTER 10. The Stoics on the Extirpation of the PassionsIn The Therapy of Desire: Theory and Practice in Hellenistic Ethics, Princeton University Press. pp. 359-401. 2009.
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17CHAPTER 2. Medical Dialectic: Aristotle on Theory and PracticeIn The Therapy of Desire: Theory and Practice in Hellenistic Ethics, Princeton University Press. pp. 48-77. 2009.
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8Nature, Function, and Capability: Aristotle on Political DistributionOxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy 145-184. 1988.
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23The Ethics and Politics of Compassion and Capabilities (edited book)Faculty of Law, The University of Hong Kong. 2007.