The article reports on the issues of marriage which include the laws that govern the same-sex marriage in California. It mentions two distinct questions expressing the dimensions of marriage including the assumption that granting a marriage license expresses public approval with equal protection of law. Also explained is the arguments behind the opposition of same-sex couples to marital status.

The article presents the author's reflections on the human development approach to social work, the creation of the Human Development and Capability Association, and its central concepts regarding human dignity and empowerment. Discussion is given noting the challenges of implementing a new theoretical framework within the logistics of international charity and economic development efforts. The progress and accomplishments of the association are also mentioned.

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 political and civil rights on a basis of genuine equality.

"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."
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An essay is presented exploring the possibilities for a cosmopolitan patriotism. The author argues that a nation-state needs moral sentiments attached to its institutions, and these sentiments must be focused on the nation as a whole. Other topics include U.S. slavery and the rhetoric of freedom, the U.S. Pledge of Allegiance, the founding of India, and the dangers of exclusionary patriotism.

The Gujarat pogrom of 2002 is evidence of a profound crisis in India's democracy. Samuel P. Huntington's influential thesis of the 'clash of civilizations,' according to which the world is torn between democratic western values and threatening Islamic values, gives no help in explaining the situation, since the threatening values of the Hindu Right derive largely from European origins and are being used to threaten innocent Muslim civilians. I argue that the real 'clash of civilization' is the clash within every modern society between those who are prepared to live with people who differ, on terms of equal respect, and those who seek the comfort of a single 'pure' ethno-religious ideology. At a deeper level, the 'clash' is internal to each human being, as fear and aggression contend against compassion and respect. Policy-makers eager to promote the victory of respect over violence can learn from the case of India, where a wise institutional structure and a genuinely free press are major assets in resisting the call to hate. On the other hand, India's current lack of emphasis on critical thinking in the schools, and its lack after Gandhi's death of a public culture of compassion to counter the Hindu Right's culture of humiliated, warlike masculinity, sound warning notes for the future.

All modem liberal democracies have strong reasons to support an idea of toleration, understood as involving respect, not only grudging acceptance, and to extend it to all religious and secular doctrines, limiting only conduct that violates the rights of other citizens. There is no modern democracy, however, in which toleration of this sort is a stable achievement. Why is toleration, attractive in principle, so difficult to achieve? The normative case for toleration was well articulated by John Locke in his influential A Letter Concerning Toleration, although his attractive proposal thus rests on a fragile foundation. Kant did much more, combining a Lockean account of the state with a profound diagnosis of 'radical evil', the tendencies in all human beings to militate against stable toleration and respect. But Kant proposed no mechanism through which the state might mitigate the harmful influence of 'radical evil', thus rendering toleration stable, One solution to this problem was proposed by Rousseau, but it has deep problems. How, then, can a respectful pluralistic society shore up the fragile human basis of toleration, especially in a world in which we need to cultivate toleration not only within each state, but also among peoples and states, in this interlocking world?

The author elaborates the development and refinement of a more human centered approach that she has considered to root out global inequality. Critically analyzing the dominant economic-growth approach taken by many developing countries, the author defends her model of ten central capabilities of a person and analyzes them in terms of political goals. The author also responds individually to several papers including a papers by Des Gasper, Jan Nederveen Pieterse, and others.

Theories of social justice are necessarily abstract, reaching beyond the particular and the immediate to the general and the timeless. Yet such theories, addressing the world and its problems, must respond to the real and changing dilemmas of the day. A brilliant work of practical philosophy, Frontiers of Justice is dedicated to this proposition. Taking up three urgent problems of social justice neglected by current theories and thus harder to tackle in practical terms and everyday life, Martha Nussbaum seeks a theory of social justice that can guide us to a richer, more responsive approach to social cooperation.
The idea of the social contract--especially as developed in the work of John Rawls--is one of the most powerful approaches to social justice in the Western tradition. But as Nussbaum demonstrates, even Rawls's theory, suggesting a contract for mutual advantage among approximate equals, cannot address questions of social justice posed by unequal parties. How, for instance, can we extend the equal rights of citizenship--education, health care, political rights and liberties--to those with physical and mental disabilities? How can we extend justice and dignified life conditions to all citizens of the world? And how, finally, can we bring our treatment of nonhuman animals into our notions of social justice? Exploring the limitations of the social contract in these three areas, Nussbaum devises an alternative theory based on the idea of "capabilities." She helps us to think more clearly about the purposes of political cooperation and the nature of political principles--and to look to a future of greater justice for all.
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Violence against women is a global problem of great magnitude. After laying out some sample data on violence against women, I argue that this violence, and its ongoing threat, interferes with every major capability in a woman's life. Next, I argue that it is the capabilities approach we need, if we are to describe the damage done by such violence in the most perspicuous way and make the most helpful recommendations for dealing with it. But the capabilities approach will be helpful in this area only if it develops effective arguments against cultural relativism and in favor of a context-sensitive universalism, and only if it is willing to make some claims, albeit humble and revisable, about which capabilities are most deserving of state protection, as fundamental entitlements of all citizens. Finally, I sketch some possible implications of the capability approach for public policy in this area.

The dominant theory of justice in the western tradition of political philosophy is the social contract theory, which sees principles of justice as the outcome of a contract people make, for mutual advantage, to leave the state of nature and govern themselves by law. Such theories have recently been influential in thinking about global justice. I examine that tradition, focusing on Rawls, its greatest modern exponent; I shall find it wanting. Despite their great strengths in thinking about justice, contractarian theories have some structural defects that make them yield very imperfect results when we apply them to the world stage. More promising results are given by a version of the capabilities approach, which suggests a set of basic human entitlements, similar to human rights, as a minimum of what justice requires for all.

he article discusses the dangers of religious intolerance. Intolerance breeds intolerance, as expressions of hatred fuel existing insecurities and permit people to see their own aggression as legitimate self-defense. Two ideas typically foster religious intolerance and disrespect. The first is that one's own religion is the only true religion and that other religions are false or morally incorrect. But people possessed of this view can also believe that others deserve respect for their committed beliefs, so long as they do no harm. Much more dangerous is the second idea, that the state and private citizens should coerce people into adhering to the "correct" religious approach. The resurgence of this kind of thinking poses a profound threat to liberal societies, which are based on ideas of liberty and equality. Modern liberal societies have long understood the importance of legal and constitutional norms expressing a commitment to religious liberty and to the equality of citizens of different religions. We need to think harder about how rhetoric (as well as poetry, music, and art) can support pluralism and toleration.

Focuses on the issue of homosexuality in ancient Greece. Discussion of the interplay between history and the understanding of same gender sexual desire; Description of the relationship between the older and younger male citizen; Analysis of the relationship between Plato and Dion of Syracuse.

In the aftermath of September 11, 2001, Americans have all experienced strong emotions for their country: fear, outrage, grief; astonishment. The U.S. media portray the disaster, as a tragedy that has happened to the nation, and that is how Americans very naturally see it. So too the ensuing war: It is called "America's New War," and most news reports focus on the meaning of events for Americans and their nation. Americans think these events are important because they concern not just human lives, but American lives. People find themselves feeling sympathy for many people who did not even cross their minds before. Seeing how vulnerable the great country U.S. is, Americans can learn something about the vulnerability that all human beings share, about what it is like for distant others to lose those they love to a disaster not of their own making, whether it is hunger or flood or war.

This book is a study of ancient views about 'moral luck'. It examines the fundamental ethical problem that many of the valued constituents of a well-lived life are vulnerable to factors outside a person's control, and asks how this affects our appraisal of persons and their lives. The Greeks made a profound contribution to these questions, yet neither the problems nor the Greek views of them have received the attention they deserve. This book thus recovers a central dimension of Greek thought and addresses major issues in contemporary ethical theory. One of its most original aspects is its interrelated treatment of both literary and philosophical texts. The Fragility of Goodness has proven to be important reading for philosophers and classicists, and its non-technical style makes it accessible to any educated person interested in the difficult problems it tackles. This new edition features an entirely new preface by Martha Nussbaum.
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Discusses the four paradigms of philosophical politics. Philosophy as an art everyone can practice; Role of expert philosophical teacher or writer; Contribution of philosophy to politics; Options of philosophers in a political climate where they are not allowed to fulfill their desired role.

Focuses on political philosopher John Rawls and the history of ethics. Details on Rawls' teaching and writing; Information on his book `Reclaiming the History of Ethics.'

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? 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.
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One group of modern virtue-theorists, I argue, are primarily anti-Utilitarians, concerned with the plurality of value and the susceptibility of passions to social cultivation. These theorists want to enlarge the place of reason in ethics. They hold that reason can deliberate about ends as well as means, and that reason can modify the passions themselves. Another group of virtue theorists are primarily anti-Kantians. They believe that reason plays too dominant a role in most philosophical accounts of ethics, and that a larger place should be given to sentiments and passions--which they typically construe in a less reason-based way than does the first group. The paper investigates these differences, concluding that it is not helpful to speak of 'virtue ethics'.

Discusses philosophy as it relates to what it has to offer to humanity on a community basis. Perception that practical guidance is offered; Information on humanity on a community basis; Reference to a case study which deals with philosophy and humanity.

Human beings are both needy and dignified. How should we think about the relationship between our neediness and our worth? Card argues well that our vulnerability to luck is intertwined in the very conditions of moral agency. We can see the merit of her approach even more clearly by turning to some difficulties the Stoics have in preserving dignity while removing vulnerability. Stoicism does, however, help us to sort through the difficulties involved as we try to combine love of particular people with respect for all human life. Richardson is correct to suggest that love itself can animate the concern for all humanity; I also agree with him that institutions must play a major role in any solution to problems of inequality between nations. Although the "capabilities approach" offers an attractive account of one part of the goal of just political institutions, combining, as Moody-Adams suggests, respect for difference with a commitment to universal norms, I now believe that the capabilities account should be combined with a form of Rawlsian political liberalism that protects spaces within which citizens may pursue the good as they understand it.

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; liberty and its worth; racial, ethnic and religious difference; gender and family; justice between nations; and moral psychology. I shall argue polemically that on the first six issues Nietzsche has nothing to offer, but that on the seventh, moral psychology, he makes a profound contribution. Serious political theory, however, needs to forget about Nietzsche and turn to those thinkers he found so boring--the liberal Enlightenment thinkers.

For Love of Country is a rare forum: a real conversation among some of our most prominent intellectuals about an issue of urgent public importance. At the center of this lively and utterly readable debate book is Martha Nussbaumís passionate argument against patriotism. At a time when our connections and obligations to the rest of the world grow only stronger, we should reject patriotism as a parochial ideal, she says, and instead see ourselves first of all as "citizens of the world."

Fifteen writers and thinkers respond to Nussbaum's piece in short, hard-hitting, often brilliant essays, acknowledging the power of her argument, but often defending patriotisms and other local commitments with an eloquence equal to Nussbaum's. We hear from an astonishing range of writers from Robert Pinsky to Cornel West to Gertrude Himmelfarb to Sissela Bok.

This is contemporary American philosophy at its most relevant and readable. At a time when debates about crises in Bosnia or Somalia are dominated by politicians and military leaders, here are the voices of philosophers and poets, literary scholars and historians. A book of surprising insights and diversity, For Love of Country is especially written for a wide audience and is sure to spark debate.
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Sexual objectification is a familiar concept. Once a relatively technical term in feminist theory, associated in particular with the work of Catharine MacKinnon and Andrea Dworkin, the word “objectification” has by now passed into many people’s daily lives. It is common to hear it used to criticize advertisements, films, and other representations, and also to express skepticism about the attitudes and intentions of one person to another, or of oneself to someone else. Generally it is used as a pejorative term, connoting a way of speaking, thinking, and acting that the speaker finds morally or socially objectionable, usually, though not always, in the sexual realm, Thu8s, Catharine MacKinnon writes of pornography, “Admiration of natural physical beauty becomes objectification. Harmlessness becomes harm.” The portrayal of women “dehumanized as sexual objects, things, or commodities” is, in fact, the first category of pornographic material made actionable under MacKinnon and Dworkin’s proposed Minneapolis ordinance. The same sort of pejorative use is very common in ordinary social discussions of people and events.
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Epicurius writes:”The correct recognition that death is nothing to us makes the mortality of life enjoyable, not by adding on an infinite time, but by removing the longing for immortality” (LM 132).

But Nikidion might think incorrectly. For she might, as often happens, take a walk at dawn in the early spring. She might feel the knifelike beauty of the morning. Watch the light rise behind white blossoms, until they flash like brief stars. See leaves half unrolled, translucent, their sharp green still untouched by life; the sun striking sparkles on the moving surface of a stream. And she would listen, then, in the silence to the sweet and deadly music of time...
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