Martha C. Nussbaum - Böcker

A “brilliant” (Chicago Review of Books), “elegantly written, and compelling” (National Review) new theory and call to action on animal rights, ethics, and law from the renowned philosopher Martha C. Nussbaum.Animals are in trouble all over the world. Whether through the cruelties of the factory meat industry, poaching and game hunting, habitat destruction, or neglect of the companion animals that people purport to love, animals suffer injustice and horrors at our hands every day. The world needs an ethical awakening, a consciousness-raising movement of international proportions. In Justice for Animals, one of the world’s most renowned philosophers and humanists, Martha C. Nussbaum, provides “the most important book on animal ethics written to date” (Thomas I. White, author of In Defense of Dolphins). From dolphins to crows, elephants to octopuses, Nussbaum examines the entire animal kingdom, showcasing the lives of animals with wonder, awe, and compassion to understand how we can create a world in which human beings are truly friends of animals, not exploiters or users. All animals should have a shot at flourishing in their own way. Humans have a collective duty to face and solve animal harm. An urgent call to action and a manual for change, Nussbaum’s groundbreaking theory directs politics and law to help us meet our ethical responsibilities as no book has done before.

Lucius Annaeus Seneca (4 BCE - 65 CE) was a Roman Stoic philosopher, dramatist, statesman, and adviser to the emperor Nero, all during the Silver Age of Latin literature. The "Complete Works of Lucius Annaeus Seneca" is a fresh and compelling series of new English-language translations of his works in eight accessible volumes. Edited by world-renowned classicists Elizabeth Asmis, Shadi Bartsch, and Martha C. Nussbaum, this engaging collection restores Seneca - whose works have been highly praised by modern authors from Desiderius Erasmus to Ralph Waldo Emerson - to his rightful place among the classical writers most widely studied in the humanities. "Anger, Mercy, Revenge" comprises three key writings: the moral essays "On Anger" and "On Clemency" - the latter penned as advice for the young emperor Nero - and the "Apocolocyntosis", a brilliant satire lampooning the end of the reign of Claudius. Friend and tutor, as well as philosopher, Seneca welcomed the end of Claudius' sovereignty and the beginning of the age of Nero in tones alternately serious, poetic, and comic - making "Anger, Mercy, Revenge" a collection just as complicated, astute, and ambitious as its author.

Anger is not just ubiquitous, it is also popular. Many people think it is impossible to care sufficiently for justice without anger at injustice. Many believe that it is impossible for individuals to vindicate their own self-respect or to move beyond an injury without anger. To not feel anger in those cases would be considered suspect. Is this how we should think about anger, or is anger above all a disease, deforming both the personal and the political?In this wide-ranging book, Martha C. Nussbaum, one of our leading public intellectuals, argues that anger is conceptually confused and normatively pernicious. It assumes that the suffering of the wrongdoer restores the thing that was damaged, and it betrays an all-too-lively interest in relative status and humiliation. Studying anger in intimate relationships, casual daily interactions, the workplace, the criminal justice system, and movements for social transformation, Nussbaum shows that anger's core ideas are both infantile and harmful. Is forgiveness the best way of transcending anger? Nussbaum examines different conceptions of this much-sentimentalized notion, both in the Jewish and Christian traditions and in secular morality. Some forms of forgiveness are ethically promising, she claims, but others are subtle allies of retribution: those that exact a performance of contrition and abasement as a condition of waiving angry feelings. In general, she argues, a spirit of generosity (combined, in some cases, with a reliance on impartial welfare-oriented legal institutions) is the best way to respond to injury. Applied to the personal and the political realms, Nussbaum's profoundly insightful and erudite view of anger and forgiveness puts both in a startling new light.

We all age differently, but we can learn from shared experiences and insights. The conversations, or paired essays, in Aging Thoughtfully combine a philosopher's approach with a lawyer-economist's.Here are ideas about when to retire, how to refashion social security to help the elderly poor, how to learn from King Lear -- who did not retire successfully -- and whether to enjoy or criticize anti-aging cosmetic procedures. Some of the concerns are practical: philanthropic decisions, relations with one's children and grandchildren, the purchase of annuities, and how to provide for care in old age. Other topics are cultural, ranging from the treatment of aging women in a Strauss opera and various popular films, to a consideration of Donald Trump's (and other men's) marriages to much younger women.These engaging, thoughtful, and often humorous exchanges show how stimulating discussions about our inevitable aging can be, and offer valuable insight into how we all might age more thoughtfully, and with zest and friendship.

We all age differently, but we can learn from shared experiences and insights. The conversations, or paired essays, in Aging Thoughtfully combine a philosopher's approach with a lawyer-economist's. Here are ideas about when to retire, how to refashion social security to help the elderly poor, how to learn from King Lear -- who did not retire successfully -- and whether to enjoy or criticize anti-aging cosmetic procedures. Some of the concerns are practical: philanthropic decisions, relations with one's children and grandchildren, the purchase of annuities, and how to provide for care in old age. Other topics are cultural, ranging from the treatment of aging women in a Strauss opera and various popular films, to a consideration of Donald Trump's (and other men's) marriages to much younger women. These engaging, thoughtful, and often humorous exchanges show how stimulating discussions about our inevitable aging can be, and offer valuable insight into how we all might age more thoughtfully, and with zest and friendship.

Writers of fiction have always confronted topics of crime and punishment. This age-old fascination with crime on the part of both authors and readers is not surprising, given that criminal justice touches on so many political and psychological themes essential to literature, and comes equipped with a trial process that contains its own dramatic structure. This volume explores this profound and enduring literary engagement with crime, investigation, and criminal justice. The collected essays explore three themes that connect the world of law with that of fiction. First, defining and punishing crime is one of the fundamental purposes of government, along with the protection of victims by the prevention of crime. And yet criminal punishment remains one of the most abused and terrifying forms of political power. Second, crime is intensely psychological and therefore an important subject by which a writer can develop and explore character. A third connection between criminal justice and fiction involves the inherently dramatic nature of the legal system itself, particularly the trial. Moreover, the ongoing public conversation about crime and punishment suggests that the time is ripe for collaboration between law and literature in this troubled domain.The essays in this collection span a wide array of genres, including tragic drama, science fiction, lyric poetry, autobiography, and mystery novels. The works discussed include works as old as fifth-century BCE Greek tragedy and as recent as contemporary novels, memoirs, and mystery novels. The cumulative result is arresting: there are "killer wives" and crimes against trees; a government bureaucrat who sends political adversaries to their death for treason before falling to the same fate himself; a convicted murderer who doesn't die when hanged; a psychopathogical collector whose quite sane kidnapping victim nevertheless also collects; Justice Thomas' reading and misreading of Bigger Thomas; a man who forgives his son's murderer and one who cannot forgive his wife's non-existent adultery; fictional detectives who draw on historical analysis to solve murders. These essays begin a conversation, and they illustrate the great depth and power of crime in literature.

From Anthony Trollop to Sinclair Lewis, and from Jane Austen to James Joyce and John Steinbeck, many important novels touch on fundamental questions about the role of money in human affairs. These questions are explored in this volume through the lens of law and literature. The sixteen essays collected here, by important theorists from a range of disciplines, shed new light on the impact of economic change, from the Industrial Revolution to the Great Depression. Students of economics and business will gain a new appreciation of literature's insights on singular events and human emotions. Similarly, scholars and students of literature will gain an appreciation for the power of law and economics to inform literary and social analysis. The volume's focus on novels about money and economic upheaval showcases the power of the disciplinary marriage of law and literature.

'A manifesto for hope'Literary ReviewFrom one of the world's most celebrated moral philosophers comes a thorough examination of the current political crisis and recommendations for how to mend a divided country.For decades, Martha C. Nussbaum has been an acclaimed scholar and humanist, earning dozens of honours for her books and essays. In The Monarchy of Fear she turns her attention to the current political crisis that has polarized America since the 2016 election.Although today's atmosphere is marked by partisanship, divisive rhetoric, and the inability of two halves of the country to communicate with one another, Nussbaum focuses on what so many pollsters and pundits have overlooked. She sees a simple truth at the heart of the problem: the political is always emotional. Globalization has produced feelings of powerlessness in millions of people in the West. That sense of powerlessness bubbles into resentment and blame. Blame of immigrants. Blame of Muslims. Blame of other races. Blame of cultural elites. While this politics of blame is exemplified by the election of Donald Trump and the vote for Brexit, Nussbaum argues it can be found on all sides of the political spectrum, left or right.Drawing on a mix of historical and contemporary examples, from classical Athens to the musical Hamilton, The Monarchy of Fear untangles this web of feelings and provides a roadmap of where to go next.

This volume brings together Martha Nussbaum's published papers, some revised for this collection, on the relationship between literature and philosophy, especially moral philosophy. It also includes two new essays and a substantial Introduction.The papers, many of them previously not readily available to non-specialist readers, explore such fundamental issues as the relationship between style and content in the exploration of ethical questions; the nature of ethical attention and ethical knowledge and their relationship to written forms and style; and the role of the emotions in deliberation and self-knowledge. The author investigates and defends a conception of ethical understanding which involves emotional as well as intellectual activity, and which gives a certain type of priority to the perception of particular people and situations rather than to abstract rule.

Writing with the rigorous argument and generous insight that characterizes all her work, Martha Nussbaum in these essays articulates a distinctive conception of feminism, one rooted in the liberal tradition of political thought but responsive to radical feminist critiques of this tradition.Growing out of her years of work with an international development agency connected with the United Nations, the book charts a feminism that is deeply concerned with global justice and with the urgent needs of women who live in hunger and illiteracy, or under inherently unequal legal systems. Nussbaum contends that the liberal tradition holds rich resources for addressing these problems provided it transforms itself by responsiveness to feminist arguments concerning the social shaping of preferences and institutions. Nussbaum also takes on the pursuit of social justice in the sexual sphere, dedicating several chapters to the issue of equal rights for lesbians and gay men. Further chapters consider the feminist concept of objectification and argue for the importance of sympathy and mercy within a feminist conception of justice. Clear, timely, and accessible, these essays, extensively revised where previously published, make available to a wide audience the incisive political reflections of one of our most important living philosophers.

What sort of support do human capacities demand from the world, and how should we think about this support when we encounter differences of gender or sexuality? How should we think about each other across divisions that a legacy of injustice has created? In Sex and Social Justice, Martha Nussbaum delves into these questions and emerges with a distinctive conception of feminism that links feminist inquiry closely to the important progress that has been made during the past few decades in articulating theories of both national and global justice. Growing out of Nussbaum's years of work with an international development agency connected with the United Nations, this collection charts a feminism that is deeply concerned with the urgent needs of women who live in hunger and illiteracy, or under unequal legal systems. Offering an internationalism informed by development economics and empirical detail, many essays take their start from the experiences of women in developing countries. Nussbaum argues for a universal account of human capacity and need, while emphasizing the essential role of knowledge of local circumstance. Further chapters take on the pursuit of social justice in the sexual sphere, exploring the issue of equal rights for lesbians and gay men. Nussbaum's arguments are shaped by her work on Aristotle and the Stoics and by the modern liberal thinkers Kant and Mill. She contends that the liberal tradition of political thought holds rich resources for addressing violations of human dignity on the grounds of sex or sexuality, provided the tradition transforms itself by responsiveness to arguments concerning the social shaping of preferences and desires. She challenges liberalism to extend its tradition of equal concern to women, always keeping both agency and choice as goals. With great perception, she combines her radical feminist critique of sex relations with an interest in the possibilities of trust, sympathy, and understanding. Sex and Social Justice will interest a wide readership because of the public importance of the topics Nussbaum addresses and the generous insight she shows in dealing with these issues. Brought together for this timely collection, these essays, extensively revised where previously published, offer incisive political reflections by one of our most important living philosophers.

Sexual orientation is a topic of intense debate within America's religious traditions. Debate about sexual orientation has had a significant impact on the formation of public policy, as spokespersons who locate themselves squarely within religious traditions have articulated positions both pro and con in recent discussions concerning gays in the military, civil rights protections for gays and lesbians, gay marriage, parenting and foster parenting, and even benefits for partners of gay and lesbian employees of major corporations and institutions. This volume, which stems from a 1995 conference at Brown University, is intended to promote both academic and public understanding of the different positions that exist on sexual orientation and public policy dimensions within four major American religious traditions. In the first part of the book, writers from the Jewish community, the Roman Catholic church, Mainline Protestant churches, and African-American churches explore the history and tradition of their communities on same-sex orientation, discuss the moral stance they advocate, and consider the legal and public policy implications of that stance. For each of these traditions, two opposing views are represented, and a respondent frames the issue in a larger context. Included are papers by such distinguished writers as David Novack, Judith Plaskow, Charles E. Curran, and Margaret Farley. The book concludes with essays by Michael McConnell and Andrew Koppelman exploring how our society might find a modus vivendi in a state position of neutrality on the moral status of homosexuality.

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, the relationship between human beings and nonhuman animals is being fundamentally rethought. This book offers a state-of-the-art treatment of that rethinking.

A distinguished professor of law and philosophy at the University of Chicago, a prolific writer and award-winning thinker, Martha Nussbaum stands as one of our foremost authorities on law, justice, freedom, morality, and emotion. In From Disgust to Humanity, Nussbaum aims her considerable intellectual firepower at the bulwark of opposition to gay equality: the politics of disgust. Nussbaum argues that disgust has long been among the fundamental motivations of those who are fighting for legal discrimination against lesbian and gay citizens. When confronted with same-sex acts and relationships, she writes, they experience "a deep aversion akin to that inspired by bodily wastes, slimy insects, and spoiled food--and then cite that very reaction to justify a range of legal restrictions, from sodomy laws to bans on same-sex marriage." Leon Kass, former head of President Bush's President's Council on Bioethics, even argues that this repugnance has an inherent "wisdom," steering us away from destructive choices. Nussbaum believes that the politics of disgust must be confronted directly, for it contradicts the basic principle of the equality of all citizens under the law."It says that the mere fact that you happen to make me want to vomit is reason enough for me to treat you as a social pariah, denying you some of your most basic entitlements as a citizen." In its place she offers a "politics of humanity," based not merely on respect, but something akin to love, an uplifting imaginative engagement with others, an active effort to see the world from their perspectives, as fellow human beings. Combining rigorous analysis of the leading constitutional cases with philosophical reflection about underlying concepts of privacy, respect, discrimination, and liberty, Nussbaum discusses issues ranging from non-discrimination and same-sex marriage to "public sex." Recent landmark decisions suggest that the views of state and federal courts are shifting toward a humanity-centered vision, and Nussbaum's powerful arguments will undoubtedly advance that cause. Incisive, rigorous, and deeply humane, From Disgust to Humanity is a stunning contribution to Oxford's distinguished Inalienable Rights series.

Wendy Doniger and Martha Nussbaum bring together leading scholars from a wide array of disciplines to address a crucial question: How does the world's most populous democracy survive repeated assaults on its pluralistic values? India's stunning linguistic, cultural, and religious diversity has been supported since Independence by a political structure that emphasizes equal rights for all, and protects liberties of religion and speech. But a decent Constitution does not implement itself, and challenges to these core values repeatedly arise---not least in the first decade of the twenty-first century, when the rise of Hindu Right movements threatened to destabilize the nation and upend its core values, in the wake of a notorious pogrom in the state of Gujarat in which approximately 2000 Muslim civilians were killed. Focusing on this time of tension and threat, the essays in this volume consider how a pluralistic democracy managed to survive. They examine the role of political parties and movements, including the women's movement, as well as the role of the arts, the press, the media, and a historical legacy of pluralistic thought and critical argument. Featuring essays from eminent scholars in history, religious studies, political science, economics, women's studies, and media studies, Pluralism and Democracy in India offers an urgently needed case study in democratic survival. As Nehru said of India on the eve of Independence: ''These dreams are for India, but they are also for the world.'' The analysis this volume offers illuminates not only the past and future of one nation, but the prospects of democracy for all.

Wendy Doniger and Martha Nussbaum bring together leading scholars from a wide array of disciplines to address a crucial question: How does the world's most populous democracy survive repeated assaults on its pluralistic values? India's stunning linguistic, cultural, and religious diversity has been supported since Independence by a political structure that emphasizes equal rights for all, and protects liberties of religion and speech. But a decent Constitution does not implement itself, and challenges to these core values repeatedly arisemost recently in the form of the Hindu Right movements of the twenty-first century that threatened to destabilize the nation and upend its core values, in the wake of a notorious pogrom in the state of Gujarat in which approximately 2000 Muslim civilians were killed. Focusing on this time of tension and threat, the essays in this volume consider how a pluralistic democracy managed to survive. They examine the role of political parties and movements, including the womens movement, as well as the role of the arts, the press, the media, and a historical legacy of pluralistic thought and critical argument. Featuring essays from eminent scholars in history, religious studies, political science, economics, womens studies, and media studies, Pluralism and Democracy in India offers an urgently needed case study in democratic survival. As Nehru said of India on the eve of Independence: ''These dreams are for India, but they are also for the world.'' The analysis this volume offers illuminates not only the past and future of one nation, but the prospects of democracy for all.

It can be said that western literature begins with a war story, the Iliad; and that this is true too of many non-Western literary traditions, such as the Mahabharata. And yet, though a profoundly human subject, war often appears to be by definition outside the realm of structures such as law and literature. When we speak of war, we often understand it as incapable of being rendered into rules or words. Lawyers struggle to fit the horrors of the battlefield, the torture chamber, or the makeshift hospital filled with wounded and dying civilians into the framework of legible rules and shared understandings that law assumes and demands. In the West's centuries-long effort to construct a formal law of war, the imperative has been to acknowledge the inhumanity of war while resisting the conclusion that it need therefore be without law. Writers, in contrast, seek to find the human within war--an individual story, perhaps even a moment of comprehension. Law and literature might in this way be said to share imperialist tendencies where war is concerned: toward extending their dominion to contain what might be uncontainable.Law, literature, and war are thus all profoundly connected--and it is this connection this edited volume aims to explore, assembling essays by preeminent scholars to discuss the ways in which literary works can shed light on legal thinking about war, and how a deep understanding of law can lead to interpretive insights on literary works. Some of the contributions concern the lives of soldiers; others focus on civilians living in war zones who are caught up in the conflict; still others address themselves to the home front, far from the theatre of war. By collecting such diverse perspectives, the volume aims to illuminate how literature has reflected the totalizing nature of war and the ways in which it distorts law across domains.

The human body is the primary instrument of war, yet those waging war often confront soldiers' bodies in a detached or merely intellectual way. In The Tenderness of Silent Minds, Martha C. Nussbaum, a leading thinker on emotion, morality, and justice, conducts a pioneering study of Benjamin Britten's musical representations of the tender male body amidst the brutality of war, and their ability to transform consciousness by evoking potent, non-personal emotions.Offering a reading of Britten's views about the value and beauty of the body that situates these in the context of his thirty-nine year partnership with his lover, the singer Peter Pears, and also surveying pacifist themes in works written both before and after War Requiem, Nussbaum presents a compelling framework for critically assessing Britten's oeuvre. Nussbaum engages with a remarkably wide range of Britten's works, examining his treatment of aggression and its roots in his collaborations with the poet W.H. Auden, offering readings of the value placed on the body in early partnerships with Britten's beloved and singer Peter Pears, and surveying pacifist themes in Britten's earlier works. The analysis throughout is enriched with perspectives from Britten's personal letters and thoughtful study of the social and political backdrop of fear and homophobic disgust in mid-twentieth century Britain. According to Nussbaum's interpretation, War Requiem confronts listeners with the reality of bodily experience in war, eliciting compassion by its depiction of beauty, vulnerability, and eroticism. Issuing a stern warning, it points the way to hope for postwar reconciliation. Nussbaum's careful analysis of Britten's score and its settings of both the Requiem Mass and Owen's poems, their historic performance at Coventry, and its philosophical commitments, unveils a message of human love in a hostile world that resonates as powerfully today as in post-war Britain.

A major work of scholarship by world-renowned, prize-winning philosopher Martha C. Nussbaum, The Republic of Love reveals opera as a profound form of political thought--and an often-overlooked force behind the political reforms of the Enlightenment.In The Republic of Love, world-renowned philosopher Martha C. Nussbaum offers a bold and original vision of opera's contribution to political thought. Drawing on her deep knowledge of classical and contemporary opera, she reveals how composers such as Mozart, Verdi, Strauss, Beethoven, and others used their music to explore the emotional and ethical dimensions of human life. These works, she argues, illuminate our fundamental need for dignity, love, and freedom in the face of oppressive institutions--and they gesture toward new possibilities for how we might live together. Nussbaum devotes the first half of her book to Mozart, who embraced a new vision of freedom, writing male characters singing in a new emotional landscape, one that elevated the freedom of others. Her readings of The Marriage of Figaro, Idomeneo, The Magic Flute, Don Giovanni and Così Fan Tutte show an artist who recognized the capacity for love in everyone, and advanced fertile ideas about how we might cultivate it in a new kind of republic. The second half of her book follows this line of thought in operas by Beethoven, Verdi, Benjamin Britten, John Adams, and Jake Heggie, and their greatest antagonist, Richard Wagner, suggesting that they all, in a variety of ways, engage in conversation with Mozart and his themes of love and freedom. Throughout, Nussbaum identifies a recurring operatic metaphor for the impulse toward freedom: the act of breathing itself. A major work of scholarship by a prize-winning thinker, The Republic of Love redefines opera as a vital, if often overlooked, engine of Enlightenment ideals--and a powerful resource for imagining the emotional foundations of political life.

Aristotle's philosophy of mind has recently attracted renewed attention and respect from philosophers. This volume brings together outstanding new essays on De Anima by a distinguished international group of contributors including, in this paperback efdition, a new essay by Myles Burnyeat. The essays form a running commentary on the work, covering such topics as the relation between body and soul, sense-perception, imagination, memory, desire, and thought. the authors, writing with philosophical subtlety and wide-ranging scholarship, present the philosophical substance of Aristotle's views to the modern reader. they locate their interpretations firmly within the context of Aristotle's thought as a whole.

This is an open access title available under the terms of a CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 IGO licence. It is free to read at Oxford Scholarship Online and offered as a free PDF download from OUP and selected open access locations.BL Distinguished editors and contributorsBL Addresses questions of some urgency for the question of women's quality of lifeBL Inter-disciplinary, ranging over philosophy, economics, political science, anthropology, law and sociologyBL Combines theory with case-studiesBL Accessible to non-specialist readerBL Sequel to The Quality of Life, edited by Martha Nussbaum and Amartya Sen, applying the 'capabilities' approach outlined in that volumeBL Topical - challenges 'politically correct' relativist approaches and discusses the validity of charges of 'cultural imperialism' levelled at Western aid and intervention policies.Women, a majority of the world's population, receive only a small proportion of its opportunities and benefits. According to the 1993 UN Human Development Report, there is no country in the world in which women's quality of life is equal to that of men. This examination of women's quality of life thus addresses questions which have a particular urgency. It aims to describe the basic situation of all women and so develops a universal account that can answer the charges of 'Western imperialism' frequently made against such accounts. The contributors confront the issue of cultural relativism, criticizing the relativist apprach which, in its desire to respect different cultural traditions, can result in indifference to injustice. An account of gender justice and women's equality is then proposed in various areas in which quality of life is measured. These issues are related throughout to the specific contexts of India, Bangladesh, China, Mexico, and Nigeria through a series of case studies. Disciplines represented include philosophy, economics, political science, anthropology, law, and sociology.Like its predecessor, The Quality of Life, this volume encourages the reader to think critically about the central fundamental concepts used in development economics and suggests major criticisms of current economic approaches from that fundamental viewpoint.Contributors: Martha Nussbaum, Marty Chen, Susan Wolf, Jonathan Glover, Onora O'Neill, David Crocker, Hilary Putnam, Linda Alcoff, Amartya Sen, Susan Moller Okin, Ruth Anna Putnam, Cass R.Sunstein, Christine M.Korsgaard, Catherine Lutz, Xiaorong Li, Margarita M.Valdes, Nkiru Nzegwu

This is an open access title available under the terms of a CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 IGO licence. It is free to read at Oxford Scholarship Online and offered as a free PDF download from OUP and selected open access locations.BL Distinguished editors and contributorsBL Addresses questions of some urgency for the question of women's quality of lifeBL Inter-disciplinary, ranging over philosophy, economics, political science, anthropology, law and sociologyBL Combines theory with case-studiesBL Accessible to non-specialist readerBL Sequel to The Quality of Life, edited by Martha Nussbaum and Amartya Sen, applying the 'capabilities' approach outlined in that volumeBL Topical - challenges 'politically correct' relativist approaches and discusses the validity of charges of 'cultural imperialism' levelled at Western aid and intervention policies. Women, a majority of the world's population, receive only a small proportion of its opportunities and benefits. According to the 1993 UN Human Development Report, there is no country in the world in which women's quality of life is equal to that of men. This examination of women's quality of life thus addresses questions which have a particular urgency. It aims to describe the basic situation of all women and so develops a universal account that can answer the charges of 'Western imperialism' frequently made against such accounts. The contributors confront the issue of cultural relativism, criticizing the relativist approach which, in its desire to respect different cultural traditions, can result in indifference to injustice. An account of gender justice and women's equality is then proposed in various areas in which quality of life is measured. These issues are related throughout to the specific contexts of India, Bangladesh, China, Mexico, and Nigeria through a series of case studies. Disciplines represented include philosophy, economics, political science, anthropology, law, and sociology. Like its predecessor, The Quality of Life, this volume encourages the reader to think critically about the central fundamental concepts used in development economics and suggests major criticisms of current economic approaches from that fundamental viewpoint.Contributors: Martha Nussbaum, Marty Chen, Susan Wolf, Jonathan Glover, Onora O'Neill, David Crocker, Hilary Putnam, Linda Alcoff, Amartya Sen, Susan Moller Okin, Ruth Anna Putnam, Cass R.Sunstein, Christine M.Korsgaard, Catherine Lutz, Xiaorong Li, Margarita M.Valdes, Nkiru Nzegwu

American Guy examines American norms of masculinity and their role in the law, bringing a range of methodological and disciplinary perspectives to the intersection of American gender, legal, and literary issues. The collection opens with a set of papers investigating "American Guys" -- the heroic nonconformists and rugged individualists that populate much of American fiction. Diverse essays examine the manly men of Hemingway, Dreiser, and others, in their relation to the law, while also highlighting the underlying tensions that complicate this version of masculinity. A second set of papers examines "Outsiders" -- men on the periphery of the American Guys who proclaim a different way of being male. These essays take up counter-traditions of masculinity ranging from gay male culture to Philip Roth's portrait of the Jewish lawyer. American Guy, a follow-up to Subversion and Sympathy, edited by Alison L. LaCroix and Martha Nussbaum, aims at reinvigorating the law-and-literature movement through original, cross-disciplinary insights. It embraces a variety of voices from both within and outside the academy, including several contributions from prominent judges. These contributions are particularly significant, not only as features unique to the field, but also for the light they throw on the federal bench. In the face of a large body of work studying judicial conduct as a function of rigid commitment to ideology, American Guy shows a side of the judiciary that is imaginatively engaged, aware of cultural trends, and reflective about the wider world and the role of the of law in it.

We live in a culture of apology and forgiveness. But while there are a few thinkers who are critical of forgiveness as being too supine, and extol the virtues of retribution and 'getting even,' philosopher and intellectual Martha C. Nussbaum criticizes forgiveness from the other side: that in the realm of personal relations, forgiveness is at its heart inquisitorial and disciplinary. In this volume based on her 2014 Locke Lectures, Nussbaum paints a startling new portrait that strips the notion of forgiveness down to its Judeo-Christian roots, where it was structured by the moral relationship between a score-keeping God and penitent, self-abasing, and erring mortals. The relationship between a wronged human and another is, she says, based on this primary God-human relationship. Nussbaum agrees with Nietzsche in seeing in forgiveness a displaced vindictiveness and a concealed resentment that are ungenerous and unhelpful in human relations. She says forgiveness can give aid and comfort to a certain narcissism of resentment that a loving and generous person should eschew-in favor of a generosity that gets ahead of forgiveness and prevents its procedural thoughts from taking place. With a wide range of literary and classical references as background, Nussbaum pursues her penetrating and wide-ranging exploration of anger and forgiveness from the personal realm into the political, as well as into a so-called middle realm where we interact with people and groups who are not our close friends or family. A great deal of resentment toward others is in this middle realm, and she argues that the Stoics were right-we should try and understand how petty most slights are, and avoid anger to begin with.

All known societies exclude and stigmatize one or more minority groups. Frequently, these exclusions are underwritten with a rhetoric of disgust. People of certain groups, it is alleged, are filthy, hyper-animal, or not fit to share such facilities as drinking water, food, and public swimming pools with the 'clean' and 'fully human' majority. But exclusions vary in their scope and also in the specific disgust-ideologies underlying them. In this volume, interdisciplinary scholars from India and the United States present a detailed comparative study of the varieties of prejudice and stigma that pervade contemporary social and political life. These include prejudice along the axes of caste, race, gender identity, age, sexual orientation, disability, ethnicity, religion, and economic class. In examining these forms of stigma and their intersections, the authors present theoretically pluralistic and empirically sensitive accounts that both explain group-based stigma and suggest ways forward. These forward-looking remedies, including group resistance to subordination as well as institutional and legal change, point the way towards a public culture that is informed by our diverse histories of discrimination and therefore equipped to eliminate stigma in all of its multifaceted forms.

This volume collects the notable published book reviews of Martha C. Nussbaum, a philosopher and high profile public intellectual who comments often on issues in philosophy, politics, gender equality, economics, and the law. Many of her engagements have been through the medium of the book review, which she has published prolifically in academic journals and in high profile venues like The New Republic and The New York Times for over 20 years. This volume collects 25 of what she considers to be her key reviews. The reviews date from 1986 and range to the present, and engage with authors like Roger Scruton, Allan Bloom, Charles Taylor, Judith Butler, Richard Posner, Catherine MacKinnon, and other prominent intellectuals of our time. Throughout, her views defy ideological predictability, heralding interesting work from unlikely sources, deftly critiquing where it is deserved, and generally providing a compelling picture of how intellectuals might engage with broad social concerns. Nussbaum will provide a new introduction that explains her selection, and provides her view of the role of public intellectuals.

This interdisciplinary volume of contributed essays focuses on issues of gender in the British novel of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, particularly Hardy and Trollope. Approaching the topic from a variety of backgrounds, the contributors reinvigorate the law-and-literature movement by displaying a range of ways in which literature and law can illuminate one another and in which the conversation between them can illuminate deeper human issues with which both disciplines are concerned. Their chapters shed light on a range of gender-related issues, from inheritance to money-lending to illegitimacy, but also make an important methodological contribution by displaying (and discussing) a range of methodological perspectives that exemplify the breadth and range of this discipline, which links history, gender studies, philosophy, literary studies, and law.

William Shakespeare is inextricably linked with the law. Legal documents make up most of the records we have of his life, and trials, lawsuits, and legal terms permeate his plays. Gathering an extraordinary team of literary and legal scholars, philosophers, and even sitting judges, Shakespeare and the Law demonstrates that Shakespeare’s thinking about legal concepts and legal practice points to a deep and sometimes vexed engagement with the law’s technical workings, its underlying premises, and its social effects.The book’s opening essays offer perspectives on law and literature that emphasize both the continuities and contrasts between the two fields. The second section considers Shakespeare’s awareness of common law thinking and common law practice, while the third inquires into Shakespeare’s general attitudes toward legal systems. The fourth part of the book looks at how law enters into conversation with issues of politics and community, whether in the plays, in Shakespeare’s world, or in our own world. Finally, a colloquy among Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer, Judge Richard Posner, Martha C. Nussbaum, and Richard Strier covers everything from the ghost in Hamlet to the nature of judicial discretion.