•  42974
    Capabilities as Fundamental Entitlements: Sen and Social Justice
    Feminist Economics 9 (2-3): 33-59. 2003.
    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 c…Read more
  •  1157
    Objectification
    Philosophy and Public Affairs 24 (4): 249-291. 1995.
  •  886
    Compassion: The Basic Social Emotion
    Social Philosophy and Policy 13 (1): 27. 1996.
    Philoctetes was a good man and a good soldier. When he was on his way to Troy to fight alongside the Greeks, he had a terrible misfortune. By sheer accident he trespassed in a sacred precinct on the island of Lemnos. As punishment he was bitten on the foot by the serpent who guarded the shrine. His foot began to ooze with foul-smelling pus, and the pain made him cry out curses that spoiled the other soldiers' religious observances. They therefore left him alone on the island, a lame man with no …Read more
  •  820
    Virtue 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
  •  725
    Upheavals of Thought: The Intelligence of Emotions
    Cambridge University Press. 2001.
    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 forc…Read more
  •  696
    Non‐Relative Virtues: An Aristotelian Approach
    Midwest Studies in Philosophy 13 (1): 32-53. 1988.
  •  659
    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, a…Read more
  •  484
    Perfectionist Liberalism and Political Liberalism
    Philosophy and Public Affairs 39 (1): 3-45. 2011.
  •  426
    Is Nietzsche a political thinker?
    International Journal of Philosophical Studies 5 (1). 1997.
    Nietzsche claimed to be a political thinker in Ecce Homo and elsewhere. He constantly compared his thought with other political theorists, chiefly Rousseau, Kant and Mill, and he claimed to offer an alternative to the bankruptcy of Enlightenment liberalism. It is worthwhile re-examining Nietzsche's claim to offer serious criticisms of liberal political philosophy. I shall proceed by setting out seven criteria for serious political thought: understanding of material need; procedural justification…Read more
  •  417
    This volume brings together Nussbaum's published papers on the relationship between literature and philosophy, especially moral philosophy.
  •  363
    This is the text of The Lindley Lecture for 1997, given by Martha C. Nussbaum, an American philosopher.
  •  326
    Mortal immortals: Lucretius on death and the voice of nature
    Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 50 (2): 303-351. 1989.
  •  317
    Transitional Anger
    Journal of the American Philosophical Association 1 (1): 41--56. 2015.
    ABSTRACT ABSTRACT: A close philosophical analysis of the emotion of anger will show that it is normatively irrational: in some cases, based on futile magical thinking, in others, based on defective values
  •  303
    Exactly and responsibly: A defense of ethical criticism
    Philosophy and Literature 22 (2): 343-365. 1998.
  •  299
    The Future of Feminist Liberalism
    Proceedings and Addresses of the American Philosophical Association 74 (2). 2000.
  •  285
    Equity and mercy
    Philosophy and Public Affairs 22 (2): 83-125. 1993.
  •  265
    Animal rights: current debates and new directions (edited book)
    Oxford University Press. 2004.
    Cass Sunstein and Martha Nussbaum bring together an all-star cast of contributors to explore the legal and political issues that underlie the campaign for animal rights and the opposition to it. Addressing ethical questions about ownership, protection against unjustified suffering, and the ability of animals to make their own choices free from human control, the authors offer numerous different perspectives on animal rights and animal welfare. They show that whatever one's ultimate conclusions, …Read more
  •  260
    Education for Citizenship in an Era of Global Connection
    Studies in Philosophy and Education 21 (4/5): 289-303. 2002.
    Higher education makes an importantcontribution to citizenship. In the UnitedStates, the required portion of the ``liberalarts education'' in colleges and universitiescan be reformed so as to equip students for thechallenges of global citizenship. The paperadvocates focusing on three abilities: theSocratic ability to critize one's owntraditions and to carry on an argument on termsof mutual respect for reason; (2) the abilityto think as a citizen of the whole world, notjust some local region or g…Read more
  •  257
    Rawls's Political Liberalism. A Reassessment
    Ratio Juris 24 (1): 1-24. 2011.
    Since Rawls's Political Liberalism is by now the subject of a wide and deep philosophical literature, much of it excellent in quality, it would be foolhardy to attempt to say something about each of the major issues of the work, or to sort through debates that can easily be located elsewhere. I have therefore decided to focus on a small number of issues where there is at least some chance that a fresh approach may yield some new understanding of the text: Rawls's distinction between “reasonable”…Read more
  •  255
  •  254
    Wuthering heights: The romantic ascent
    Philosophy and Literature 20 (2): 362-382. 1996.
    In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Wuthering Heights: The Romantic AscentMartha NussbaumI“If I were in heaven, Nelly,” she said, “I should be extremely miserable.”“I dreamt, once, that I was there.... [H]eaven did not seem to be my home; and I broke my heart with weeping to come back to earth; and the angels were so angry that they flung me out, into the middle of the heath on the top of Wuthering Heights, where I woke sobbing for joy.” 1Cathy’s soul cannot live in th…Read more
  •  254
    The capabilities of people with cognitive disabilities
    Metaphilosophy 40 (3-4): 331-351. 2009.
    People with cognitive disabilities are equal citizens, and law ought to show respect for them as full equals. To do so, law must provide such people with equal entitlements to medical care, housing, and other economic needs. But law must also go further, providing people with disabilities truly equal access to education, even when that is costly and involves considerable change in current methods of instruction. The central theme of this essay is what is required in order to give such people pol…Read more
  •  232
    Essays on Aristotle's De anima (edited book)
    Oxford University Press. 1995 [1992].
    Bringing together a group of outstanding new essays on Aristotle's De Anima, this book covers topics such as the relation between soul and body, sense-perception, imagination, memory, desire, and thought, which present the philosophical substance of Aristotle's views to the modern reader. The contributors write with philosophical subtlety and wide-ranging scholarship, locating their interpretations firmly within the context of Aristotle's thought as a whole.u.