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What does it mean to respect the dignity of a human being? 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? … More >>
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In her excruciating effort to outlaw the slightest discrimination, Nussbaum neglects the worst discrimination of all: that based on age. The child in the womb, the disabled infant, the elderly patient threatened by Kevorkian find no safe harbor here. And in her pleas for tolerance, the intolerance toward the religious person, especially the Roman Catholic and the Muslim, finds no censure. For all the metaphysical wallpaper, this is nothing but a tract for the politically correct dowager in Westchester.
Rating: 1 / 5
Nussbaum’s book is billed as “growing out of years of work with an international development agency.” There is little evidence of this. While well-argued and intelligent, the book rests solidly in the Western, male, intellectual tradition. Although Nussbuam attempts to develop a feminist perspective, she is unsuccessful. Obviously Nussbaum has a superb education and is a good thinker, but she is trapped in the shackles of rationalism. Her intellectual vision rests solidly on a male-developed foundation and through that prism, she analyzes contemporary female thinkers. Because of the contradiction, her analysis is dry and off-base. Her technique of using literary and philosophical references to illustrate reality is annoying. I finished the book wondering how old Nussbaum is (the writing seems young) and how much of her life has been spent inside the ivory tower or the pallid conference room. She seems to live in a dying world. The jacket references to an internationalist perspective are extremely misleading and the essays are disjointed.
Rating: 2 / 5
Martha Nussbaum used to be a philosopher. Unfortunately, she has decided in recent years that her true calling is spreading an updated version of marxism, namely, arguing that the world needs an intelligenstia to demystify those suffering from false consciousness — only not about capitalism exclusively but about peoples’ terrbile, oppressive cultures that lack for a Rawlsian understanding of liberal democracy. Ms. Nussbaum’s latest agitprop piece for UN inspired globalism, assumes a form of political liberalism as its basis. Assuming that a thin conception of the good is not really a thick conception of the good, she runs the familar arguments typical of political liberalism that claim true justice demands that agents make free, rational, decisions based on optimal knowledge about themselves and human nature to determine what justice demands. Never mind questions about ontology, metaphysics and the like — Ms. Nussbaum’s political liberalism does not need to worry about such matters. If a member of a ‘traditional’ culture understands the world in terms of a particular ontology first before it moves on to questions of ethics and the like, no matter — because Ms. Nussbaum’s marxist political liberalism will demystify these poor people of their mistaken understanding of themselves! And what justifies this bold claim? Her 6 months in India! Yes, she has ‘extensive’ knowledge of other, non-western cultures that empirically verify her normative claims. What is most disappointing in the light of her excellent ‘Fragility of Goodness’ is the fact that she and other academic philosophers are turning more and more to policy issues and current events for their subject matter. As in 19th century Russia, more often than not, this results in nihilism parading as social justice and a call to ‘rethink’ things. This raises another issue: why does Ms. Nussbaum think good and evil are determined by ethical algorithms and decision procedures ala Rawlsian constructivism? Here, she just assumes a certain ontological and metaphysical view of things without even defending the idea that ethics are ‘epistemologically’ and not ‘ontologically’ based and/or discovered. If you think Harvard inspired global socialism is good for everyone, and if you aren’t interested in philosophy, then you might like this book. For those interested in real ethics or political philosophy, you probably won’t find this volume of any help or interest.
Rating: 2 / 5
Nussbaum is a brilliant classicist, startlingly well-read, and superbly educated. But her status as an academic and her lack of wide-ranging experience make this attempt rather ineffective and at times self-contradictory. A reviewer below says that Nussbaum rightly doesn’t talk specifically speak about the rights of children and the elderly — but the precedent she sets in the situations she does discuss leaves both parties high and dry.
Most laughable is her bizarre comparison of the economic life of a prostitute and that of a factory worker. It is shockingly evident that she is basing the portraits she analyzes on the images she has of such people in her head — in her attempts to be specific she is ridiculously general. This particular comparison puts Heidi Fleiss against a character from Les Miserable. Her tendency (noted by another reviewer) to use examples from literature and classical texts ad nauseum is extremely annoying. Most importantly, however, her insistent and hopeless rationalism damns the entire work.
Rating: 3 / 5
If you ever hear “Social Justice,” reach for your wallets, because they are trying to tax you to pay for some big government program. In practice, it’s a cynical phrase like “The Audacity of Hope,” that is mainly geared towards a political elite whose salaries are about double the private sector. So much for “social justice.” I was amazed to hear a bureaucrat say that the high salaries are necessary to attract the best talent – wow! The level of mediocrity goes along with the high opinions these academic elites share about themselves. Beware the academic-government complex!
In parting, I have a serious word of advice to the readers of books like this: don’t be concerned about a smarmy vision of fairness, instead explore the vastness of life through bold and controversial thoughts. Yes, it’s a good impulse, but the road to hell is paved with good intentions.
Rating: 1 / 5