Martha Nussbaum

Readers of Sex and Social Justice will find in its essays fresh insights and powerful arguments on such varied topics as pornography, prostitution, gay rights, the tensions between feminist imperatives and respect for cultural and religious differences, the importance to feminism of considering how desires adjust to socially formed expectations, the relationship between narrative, mercy and justice, Kenneth Dover’s memoirs, and Richard Posner’s economic and evolutionary account of sexual behaviour. In her discussions of these highly charged topics, Nussbaum never gives in to the temptation of uncomprehending moral condemnation, but instead approaches the issues with an enviable command of the facts, a sympathetic understanding, and a will to uncover and reason through the best arguments on all sides. Women and Human Development: The Capabilities Approach is an ambitious work of political philosophy that aims to guide constitutional design and social policy. Its four chapters present the capabilities approach in detail, argue for its universal status, and apply it to issues in religion and the family.

This is the latest volume in a series that has made important contributions on Hellenistic philosophy, currently the liveliest context of research in ancient philosophy. Each volume is based on a smallish conference of leading international scholars; the aim is not to generate shared work on a single issue or topic, but to produce a series of original, expert papers in a given area. A feature of the series has been to show not only that much new, good scholarship can be done on Hellenistic thought, but also that the theories brought to light are philosophically powerful, when judged by the most exacting contemporary standards. How well does this volume measure up against these high expectations?

The philosophers of the Hellenistic schools in ancient Greece and Rome made important contributions to the philosophy of mind and the philosophy of psychology. This volume, which contains the proceedings of the Fifth Symposium Hellenisticum, describes and analyses their contributions on issues such as: the nature of perception, imagination and belief; the nature of the passions and their role in action; the relationship between mind and body; freedom and determinism; the role of pleasure as a goal; the effects of poetry on belief and passion. Written with a high level of historical and philosophical scholarship, the essays are intended both for classicists and for specialists interested in the philosophy of mind.

In this major book Martha Nussbaum, one of the most innovative and influential philosophical voices of our time, proposes a kind of feminism that is genuinely international, argues for an ethical underpinning to all thought about development planning and public policy, and dramatically moves beyond the abstractions of economists and philosophers to embed thought about justice in the concrete reality of the struggles of poor women. Nussbaum argues that international political and economic thought must be sensitive to gender difference as a problem of justice, and that feminist thought must begin to focus on the problems of women in the third world. Taking as her point of departure the predicament of poor women in India, she shows how philosophy should undergird basic constitutional principles that should be respected and implemented by all governments, and used as a comparative measure of quality of life across nations.

Emotions shape the landscape of our mental and social lives. Like geological upheavals in a landscape, they mark our lives as uneven, uncertain and prone to reversal. Are they simply, as some have claimed, animal energies or impulses with no connection to our thoughts? Or are they rather suffused with intelligence and discernment, and thus a source of deep awareness and understanding? In this compelling book, Martha C. Nussbaum presents a powerful argument for treating emotions not as alien forces but as highly discriminating responses to what is of value and importance. She explores and illuminates the structure of a wide range of emotions, in particular compassion and love, showing that there can be no adequate ethical theory without an adequate theory of the emotions. This involves understanding their cultural sources, their history in infancy and childhood, and their sometimes unpredictable and disorderly operations in our daily lives.

It will be seen how in place of the wealth and poverty of political economy come the rich human being and rich human need. The rich human being is simultaneously the human being in need of totality of human life-activities — the man in whom his own realization exists as an inner necessity, as need. Marx, Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844 Svetaketu abstained from food for fifteen days. Then he came to his father and said, `What shall I say?' The father said: `Repeat the Rik, Yagus, and Saman verses.' He replied, `They do not occur to me, Sir.' The father said to him... `Go and eat! Then wilt thou understand me.' Then Svetaketu ate, and afterwards approached his father. And whatever his father asked him, he knew it all by heart.... After that, he understood what his father meant when he said: `Mind, my son, comes from food, breath from water, speech from fire.' He understood what he said, yea, he understood it. Chandogya-Upanishad, VI Prapathaka, 7 Kanda When you love a man you want him to live and when you hate him you want him to die. If, having wanted him to live, you then want him to die, this is a misguided judgment. `If you did not do so for the sake of riches, you must have done so for the sake of novelty.' Confucius, Analects, Book 12. 10.

Widely hailed as one of the most significant works in modern political philosophy, John Rawls's _Political Liberalism_ defended a powerful vision of society that respects reasonable ways of life, both religious and secular. These core values have never been more critical as anxiety grows over political and religious difference and new restrictions are placed on peaceful protest and individual expression. In her introduction to the volume, Martha Nussbaum discusses the main themes of _Political Liberalism _and puts them into the context of contemporary philosophical debates.

Roger Williams est l’un des créateurs de la tradition constitutionnelle américaine. Il fournit les bases d’une politique fondée sur un égal respect des consciences et l’équité religieuse qui résonnent jusqu’à aujourd’hui. Derrière son importante réussite politique, il y a une pensée aussi riche sur ces questions que celle de John Locke et nettement plus pénétrante quant à la psychologie de la victime et de son tortionnaire. Elle tourne autour d’une idée sur laquelle Williams se concentre avec un zèle obsessionnel : la notion du prix et de la dignité de la conscience individuelle de l’homme. Il aide à voir pourquoi la persécution est si tentante et quelles attitudes émotionnelles pourraient être exigées pour lui résister. En développant en outre un compte rendu élaboré des compétences convenables aux autorités civiles et religieuses, il anticipe la position la plus célèbre de Locke. Il n’est pas extravagant d’y voir une esquisse de la notion de John Rawls d’une société civile impliquant un ensemble de principes moraux à propos desquels des gens avec des « doctrines complètes » peuvent se rejoindre dans un « consensus qui se chevauche »

Amartya Sen has made a major contribution to the theory of social justice, and of gender justice, by arguing that capabilities are the relevant space of comparison when justice-related issues are considered. This article supports Sen's idea, arguing that capabilities supply guidance superior to that of utility and resources (the view's familiar opponents), but also to that of the social contract tradition, and at least some accounts of human rights. But I argue that capabilities can help us to construct a normative conception of social justice, with critical potential for gender issues, only if we specify a definite set of capabilities as the most important ones to protect. Sen's "perspective of freedom" is too vague. Some freedoms limit others; some freedoms are important, some trivial, some good, and some positively bad. Before the approach can offer a valuable normative gender perspective, we must make commitments about substance.

This article argues that political liberalism, of the type formulated by John Rawls and Charles Larmore and further developed in Amartya Sen and Martha Nussbaum's capabilities approach, is superior to more comprehensive political views both in domestic and in global affairs. Perfectionist liberalism as advocated by John Stuart Mill and Joseph Raz attempts to erase existing religions and replace them with the religion of utility or autonomy. This is wrong, because in the ethico-religious environment of reasonable disagreement that we inhabit all comprehensive forms of political morality pose a threat to people's liberty and equality. Only thin and narrow conceptions of value like the ones suggested by Rawls, Larmore, Sen, and Nussbaum can guarantee the respect for diversity that is needed in a pluralistic world. Although Rawls famously failed to extend this idea from domestic to transnational matters, the argument of the article is that not only do the principles of political liberalism apply to global mat..

In "Upheavals of Thought", Martha Nussbaum offers a theory of the emotions. She argues that emotions are best conceived as thoughts, and she argues that emotion-thoughts can make valuable contributions to the moral life. She develops extensive accounts of compassion and erotic love as thoughts that are of great moral import. This paper seeks to elucidate what it means, for Nussbaum, to say that emotions are forms of thought. It raises critical questions about her conception of the structure of emotion, and about her conception of compassion, in particular. Finally, the paper seeks to show how analyzing the structure, as well as the moral value, of the emotions ultimately requires entering the realm of religious ethics

I am extremely grateful to Rick Furtak and Alison McQueen for their valuable and challenging comments. My book is long and complicated, and it can hardly have been easy to internalize its details, both philosophical and political. The two authors have a very accurate grasp of my views, and I am delighted by that. I actually do not need to spend my time correcting misstatements of what I say. Both authors offer really interesting challenges to my views, about which it’s a pleasure to think further.Reply to Rick FurtakFurtak is a very subtle thinker about the emotions. What makes his remarks especially illuminating is that he not only understands the nuances of my own position on emotions, especially as I develop it in Upheavals of Thought , but also has a wide-ranging grasp of the philosophical literature on emotions more generally. He poses questions of two sorts. One set concerns emotions of which I suggest that there is something ..

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: the fear of death, love and sexuality, anger and aggression. Like medicine, philosophy to them was a rigorous science aimed both at understanding and at producing the flourishing of human life. In this engaging book, Martha Nussbaum examines texts of philosophers committed to a therapeutic paradigm--including Epicurus, Lucretius, Sextus Empiricus, Chrysippus, and Seneca--and recovers a valuable source for our moral and political thought of today.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: the fear of death, love and sexuality, anger and aggression. Like medicine, philosophy to them was a rigorous science aimed both at understanding and at producing the flourishing of human life. In this engaging book, Martha Nussbaum examines texts of philosophers committed to a therapeutic paradigm--including Epicurus, Lucretius, Sextus Empiricus, Chrysippus, and Seneca--and recovers a valuable source for our moral and political thought of today.