Frontiers of Justice: Disability, Nationality, Species Membership(Tanner lectures on human values)

Taking up three urgent problems of social justice—those with physical and mental disabilities, all citizens of the world, and nonhuman animals—neglected by current theories and thus harder to tackle in practical terms, Martha Nussbaum seeks a theory of social justice that can guide us to a richer, more responsive approach to social cooperation.

Table of Contents:
CONTENTS Abbreviations Introduction i. The State of Nature ii. Three Unsolved Problems iii. Rawls and the Unsolved Problems iv. Free, Equal, and Independent v. Grotius, Hobbes, Locke, Hume, Kant vi. Three Forms of Contemporary Contractarianism vii. The Capabilities Approach viii. Capabilities and Contractarianism ix. In Search of Global Justice i. Needs for Care, Problems of Justice ii. Prudential and Moral Versions of the Contract; Public and Private iii. Rawls’s Kantian Contractarianism: Primary Goods, Kantian Personhood, Rough Equality, Mutual Advantage iv. Postponing the Question of Disability v. Kantian Personhood and Mental Impairment vi. Care and Disability: Kittay and Sen vii. Reconstructing Contractarianism? i. The Capabilities Approach: A Noncontractarian Account of Care ii. The Bases of Social Cooperation iii. Dignity: Aristotelian, not Kantian iv. The Priority of the Good, the Role of Agreement v. Why Capabilities? vi. Care and the Capabilities List vii. Capability or Functioning? viii. The Charge of Intuitionism ix. The Capabilities Approach and Rawls’s Principles of Justice x. Types and Levels of Dignity: The Species Norm xi. Public Policy: The Question of Guardianship xii. Public Policy: Education and Inclusion xiii. Public Policy: The Work of Care xiv. Liberalism and Human Capabilities i. A World of Inequalities ii. A Theory of Justice: The Two-Stage Contract Introduced iii. The Law of Peoples: The Two-Stage Contract Reaffirmed and Modified iv. Justification and Implementation v. Assessing the Two-Stage Contract vi. The Global Contract: Beitz and Pogge vii. Prospects for an International Contractrarianism i. Social Cooperation: The Priority of Entitlements ii. Why Capabilities? iii. Capabilities and Rights iv. Equality and Adequacy v. Pluralism and Toleration vi. An International “Overlapping Consensus”? vii. Globalizing the Capabilities Approach: The Roleof Institutions viii. Globalizing the Capabilities Approach: WhatInstitutions? ix. Ten Principles for the Global Structure i. “Beings Entitled to Dignified Existence” ii. Kantian Social Contract Views: Indirect Duties,Duties of Compassion iii. Utilitarianism and Animal Flourishing iv. Types of Dignity, Types of Flourishing: Extending the Capabilities Approach v. Methodology: Theory and Imagination vi. Species and Individual vii. Evaluating Animal Capabilities: No NatureWorship viii. Positive and Negative, Capability and Functioning ix. Equality and Adequacy x. Death and Harm xi. An Overlapping Consensus? xii. Toward Basic Political Principles: The Capabilities List xiii. The Ineliminability of Conflict xiv. Toward a Truly Global Justice 7. The Moral Sentiments and the Capabilities Approach Notes References Index

About the Author :
Martha C. Nussbaum is Ernst Freund Distinguished Service Professor of Law and Ethics at the University of Chicago.

Review :
Martha C. Nussbaum's impressive new book Frontiers of Justice can be easily summarized as Rawls meets Aristotle...Well-argued and beautifully written, Frontiers of Justice is an important, provocative and thoroughly admirable book, and will be essential reading for anyone interested in the concepts of justice and moral entitlement. -- Mark Rowlands Times Literary Supplement 20060203 [Nussbaum] aims to widen the reach of Rawlsian theory by addressing questions it has thus far largely neglected, such as the role of distributive justice in international relations, the claims of disabled people and the moral status of nonhuman animals. Nussbaum's resourceful and imaginative exploration of Rawls's work displays a command of the longer tradition of political philosophy that matches and even surpasses that of Rawls, along with a notably richer sensitivity to the history and variety of constitutional arrangements. The result is a notable contribution to philosophical inquiry that merits the most careful study by all who try to think seriously about public policy. -- John Gray The Nation 20060605 Professor Nussbaum calls her work a "picture of who we are" in a world "more complicated, and interdependent, than philosophical theory has often acknowledged." But it may also be a map for navigating that complicated world in the pursuit of justice. Harvard Law Review 20060501 Martha Nussbaum has written a substantial philosophical treatise on the difficulties that recent fashions in political theory have put in the way of understanding the nature of justice for the mentally and physically disabled, foreigners, and animals...She is philosophically deft...One real achievement of Frontiers of Justice is to stir up the reader's imagination. Some books beat the reader into submission; Martha Nussbaum has never done that, and here she invites the reader into an open-ended discussion in just the way one wishes that all other philosophers did. -- Alan Ryan New York Review of Books 20060622 The task of the public intellectual is to ensure that important areas of common life (public policy, cultural activities, moral understandings, and so on) live up to the standards thoughtful reflection reveals. The United States has not proved the most fertile ground for this sort of person, but now and then contenders arise, and Martha Nussbaum is surely one of the more formidable candidates of our time, discharging the responsibilities of that role with a dizzying industriousness...In Frontiers of Justice she brings her considerable talents and energy to a set of questions which, she persuasively argues, public discourse and philosophical reflection have too long ignored: namely, what are our obligations to the disabled in our midst, the poor around the globe, and nonhuman animals everywhere? -- David McCabe Commonweal 20060519 Nussbaum's explication of the human and animal capabilities essential for lives of dignity sets a demanding, detailed, moral and political standard to strive for. -- Ernest Dempsey Philosophy Now 20070301