Martha Nussbaum

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170 appearances 1 recordings 1 series first heard Oct 2009 last heard Oct 2009

Martha Nussbaum’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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Elucidations · Episode 4: Martha Nussbaum discusses sexuality and the law · 1 Oct 2009 podcast

uses of some moral principles.

But I think the reason that it's valuable here is that first of all, people we have to assume that most people are not sadistic.

They really have fairly decent instincts about how we would treat a young person who's trying to grow up and live well.

So if they can be got to the point of seeing that person as sort of like a child that they might have or like a person who might be their friend

then the other good moral responses will kick in and complement that and make them use that then uh for for good ends.

Now, as you say, you could try to vividly picture something and see it still as loathsome and and sinful and so on.

But I think that there's a particular kind of error that happens in sex, as also with religion.

Now, in religion

It used to be just really common for people to just think, oh, this is an agent of Satan in our midst, and but when they could actually imagine somebody as seeking for meaning, trying to make sense of the mysteries of life, well they come out in the wrong place, I think, but still they're trying to do something, and they're not just trying to destroy the community.

Okay, so that I think is the parallel.

to the sexual orientation case.

That what you want is for people to get to the point of saying, these are not

uh weird debauchees and degenerates who are somehow sex addicts who just want to undermine the community.

This is what Devlin thought and wrote.

Uh but but instead they're people trying to live well and and even if we think that they've made the wrong choice or they made a sinful choice, w we could still see that that they're pursuing human purposes that we too can be pursuing.

Well, marriage has three aspects.

There's, of course, the religious aspect, and there it seems wrong for the state to be very involved in that because we have an establishment clause.

Then there's the material aspect.

The state gives a package of benefits to certain relationships, but that is of course taken care of by civil unions.

And it's the middle part that we're arguing about, what I call the expressive aspect.

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