prof. dr. Martha Nussbaum
Biografie van prof. dr. Martha Nussbaum
World leading philosopher in the field of law and ethics
Martha Nussbaum received her B.A. from NYU and her M.A. and Ph.D. from Harvard. She has taught at Harvard, Brown, and Oxford Universities. From 1986 to 1993, Ms. Nussbaum was a research advisor at the World Institute for Development Economics Research, Helsinki, a part of the United Nations University. She has chaired the Committee on International Cooperation and the Committee on the Status of Women of the American Philosophical Association, and currently chairs its new Committee for Public Philosophy. She has been a member of the Association's National Board. In 1999-2000 she was one of the three Presidents of the Association, delivering the Presidential Address in the Central Division. Ms. Nussbaum has been a member of the Council of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and a member of the Board of the American Council of Learned Societies.
She received the Brandeis Creative Arts Award in Non-Fiction for 1990, and the PEN Spielvogel-Diamondstein Award for the best collection of essays in 1991; Cultivating Humanity won the Ness Book Award of the Association of American Colleges and Universities in 1998, and the Grawemeyer Award in Education in 2002. Sex and Social Justice won the book award of the North American Society for Social Philosophy in 2000. Hiding From Humanity won the Association of American University Publishers Professional and Scholarly Book Award for Law in 2004.
She has received honorary degrees from thirty-three colleges and universities in the U. S., Canada, Asia, and Europe, including Grinnell College, Williams College, Bard College, Knox College, The University of St. Andrews (Scotland), the University of Edinburgh (Scotland), Katholieke Universiteit Leuven (Belgium), the University of Toronto, The University for Humanist Studies (Utrecht, the Netherlands), the New School University, the University of Haifa, Ohio State University, and Georgetown University. She received the NYU Distinguished Alumni Award in 2000, the Grawemeyer Award in Education in 2002, the Barnard College Medal of Distinction in 2003, and the Radcliffe Alumnae Recognition Award in 2007. She is an Academician in the Academy of Finland. In 2009 she won the A.SK award from the German Social Science Research Council for (WZB) for her contributions to “social system reform,” and the American Philosophical Society’s Henry M. Phillips Prize in Jurisprudence.
Professor Nussbaum is the Ernst Freund Distinguished Service Professor of Law and Ethics, appointed in the Philosophy Department, Law School and Divinity School. She is an Associate in the Classics Department and the Political Science Department, a Member of the Committee on Southern Asian Studies, and a Board Member of the Human Rights Program. She is the founder and Coordinator of the Centre for Comparative Constitutionalism.
Her publications include:
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Aristotle's De Motu Animalium (1978)
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The Fragility of Goodness: Luck and Ethics in Greek Tragedy and Philosophy (1986, updated edition 2000)
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Love's Knowledge (1990) - The Therapy of Desire (1994)
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Poetic Justice (1996)
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For Love of Country (1996)
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Cultivating Humanity: A Classical Defense of Reform in Liberal Education (1997)
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Sex and Social Justice (1998)
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Women and Human Development (2000)
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Upheavals of Thought: The Intelligence of Emotions (2001)
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Hiding From Humanity: Disgust, Shame, and the Law (2004)
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Frontiers of Justice: Disability, Nationality, Species Membership (2006)
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The Clash Within: Democracy, Religious Violence, and India’s Future (2007)
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Liberty of Conscience: In Defense of America’s Tradition of Religious Equality (2008)
From Disgust to Humanity: Sexual Orientation and Constitutional Law will be published in February 2010. She has also edited thirteen books. Her Supreme Court Foreword, “Constitutions and Capabilities,” appeared in 2007 and will ultimately become a book to be published by Harvard.
Her current work in progress includes: Not For Profit: Liberal Education and Democratic Citizenship (Princeton); The Cosmopolitan Tradition (Harvard); Creating Capabilities: The Human Development Approach (Harvard); and Compassion and Capabilities (Cambridge).
Education: BA, 1969, New York University; MA, 1971, PhD, 1975, Harvard University
Onderwerpen
- Ethics
- Law
- Emotions
- The Fragility of Goodness: Luck and Ethics in Greek Tragedy and Philosophy
- Aristotle
- Love's Knowledge
- The Therapy of Desire
- Poetic Justice
- Cultivating Humanity: A Classical Defense of Reform in Liberal Education
- Women and Human Development
- The Intelligence of Emotions
- Hiding From Humanity: Disgust, Shame and the Law
- Frontiers of Justice: Disability, Nationality, Species Membership
- The Clash Within: Democracy, Religious Violence and India’s Future
- Liberty of Conscience: In Defence of America’s Tradition of Religious Equality
- From Disgust to Humanity: Sexual Orientation and Constitutional Law
Foto's van prof. dr. Martha Nussbaum
Boeken van prof. dr. Martha Nussbaum
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Title:From Disgust to HumanitySubtitle:Sexual Orientation and Constitutional LawAuthor:prof. dr. Martha NussbaumPublisher:Oxford University PressBook:Hardcover, 208 pagesISBN:978-01-953-0531-9This book will be published in February 2010A 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. -
Title:Liberty of ConscienceSubtitle:In Defense of America's Tradition of Religious EqualityAuthor:prof. dr. Martha NussbaumPublisher:Basic BooksBook:Hardcover, 416 pagesISBN:978-04-650-5164-9Starred Review. In this engrossing history of the religion clauses of the First Amendment, Nussbaum (Cultivating Humanity) makes a strong, thoroughgoing case for America as a haven of religious liberty for believers of all stripes. Beginning with an illuminating rehabilitation of Rhode Island founder Roger Williams as America's earliest defender of religious equality, Nussbaum continues by examining how Williams's ideals have been both upheld and abandoned throughout the nation's history. After detailing the adoption of the establishment and free exercise clauses, Nussbaum comments at length on how these fairly general, vague clauses have been fleshed out by more than two centuries of case law. Refreshingly, Nussbaum does not add to the acrimonious cacophony around the idea of separation of church and state. Rather than pushing for strict separation, she argues for what philosopher John Rawls calls overlapping consensus, which echoes Williams's belief that citizens who differ greatly on matters of ultimate meaning can still agree to respect each other's liberty of conscience. Nussbaum writes engagingly and with generosity; her critiques, particularly those of opinions written by Justices Scalia and Thomas, are pointed but respectful, and she demonstrates warm regard for Supreme Court plaintiffs who have braved persecution as they have followed the dictates of conscience.
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Title:The Clash Within Subtitle:Democracy, Religious Violence, and India's Future
Author:prof. dr. Martha NussbaumPublisher:New titleBook:Hardcover, 403 pagesISBN:978-06-740-2482-3Order this book? Click here!While America is focused on religious militancy and terrorism in the Middle East, democracy has been under siege from religious extremism in another critical part of the world. As Martha Nussbaum reveals in this penetrating look at India today, the forces of the Hindu right pose a disturbing threat to its democratic traditions and secular state. Since long before the 2002 Gujarat riots - in which nearly two thousand Muslims were killed by Hindu extremists - the power of the Hindu right has been growing, threatening India's hard-won constitutional practices of democracy, tolerance, and religious pluralism. Led politically by the Bharatiya Janata Party, the Hindu right has sought the subordination of other religious groups and has directed particular vitriol against Muslims, who are cast as devils in need of purging. The Hindu right seeks to return to a pure India, unsullied by alien polluters of other faiths, yet the BJP's defeat in recent elections demonstrates the power that India's pluralism continues to wield. The future, however, is far from secure, and Hindu extremism and exclusivity remain a troubling obstacle to harmony in South Asia. Nussbaum's long-standing professional relationship with India makes her an excellent guide to its recent history. Ultimately, she argues that the greatest threat comes not from a clash between civilizations, as some believe, but from a clash within each of us, as we oscillate between self-protective aggression and the ability to live in the world with others. India's story is a cautionary political tale for all democratic states striving to act responsibly in an increasingly dangerous world.
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Title:Frontiers of Justice Subtitle:Disability, Nationality, Species Membership
Author:prof. dr. Martha NussbaumPublisher:New editionBook:Paperback, 487 pagesISBN:978-06-740-2410-6Order this book? Click here!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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Title:Hiding From Humanity Subtitle:Disgust, Shame, and the Law
Author:prof. dr. Martha NussbaumPublisher:University Presses of California, Columbia and Princeton | New editionBook:Paperback, 432 pagesISBN:978-06-911-2625-8Order this book? Click here!Should laws about sex and pornography be based on social conventions about what is disgusting? Should felons be required to display bumper stickers or wear T-shirts that announce their crimes? This powerful and elegantly written book, by one of America's most influential philosophers, presents a critique of the role that shame and disgust play in our individual and social lives and, in particular, in the law. Martha Nussbaum argues that we should be wary of these emotions because they are associated in troubling ways with a desire to hide from our humanity, embodying an unrealistic and sometimes pathological wish to be invulnerable. Nussbaum argues that the thought-content of disgust embodies 'magical ideas of contamination, and impossible aspirations to purity that are just not in line with human life as we know it.'She argues that disgust should never be the basis for criminalizing an act, or play either the aggravating or the mitigating role in criminal law it currently does. She writes that we should be similarly suspicious of what she calls 'primitive shame,' a shame 'at the very fact of human imperfection,' and she is harshly critical of the role that such shame plays in certain punishments. Drawing on an extraordinarily rich variety of philosophical, psychological, and historical references - from Aristotle and Freud to Nazi ideas about purity - and on legal examples as diverse as the trials of Oscar Wilde and the Martha Stewart insider trading case, this is a major work of legal and moral philosophy.
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Title:Upheavals of Thought Subtitle:The Intelligence of Emotions
Author:prof. dr. Martha NussbaumPublisher:Cambridge University Press | New editionBook:Paperback, 766 pagesISBN:978-05-215-3182-5Order this book? Click here!Emotions shape the landscape of our mental and social lives. Like geological upheavals in a landscape, they mark our lives as uneven, uncertain and prone to reversal. Are they simply, as some have claimed, animal energies or impulses with no connection to our thoughts? Or are they rather suffused with intelligence and discernment, and thus a source of deep awareness and understanding? In this compelling book, Martha C. Nussbaum presents a powerful argument for treating emotions not as alien forces but as highly discriminating responses to what is of value and importance. She explores and illuminates the structure of a wide range of emotions, in particular compassion and love, showing that there can be no adequate ethical theory without an adequate theory of the emotions. This involves understanding their cultural sources, their history in infancy and childhood, and their sometimes unpredictable and disorderly operations in our daily lives.
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Title:Women and Human Development Subtitle:The Capabilities Approach
Author:prof. dr. Martha NussbaumPublisher:Cambridge University Press | New editionBook:Paperback, 334 pagesISBN:978-05-210-0385-8Order this book? Click here!In this major book Martha Nussbaum, one of the most innovative and influential philosophical voices of our time, proposes a new kind of feminism that is genuinely international, argues for an ethical underpinning to all thought about development planning and public policy, and dramatically moves beyond the abstractions of economists and philosophers to embed thought about justice in the concrete reality of the struggles of poor women. Nussbaum argues that international political and economic thought must be sensitive to gender difference as a problem of justice, and that feminist thought must begin to focus on the problems of women in the third world. Taking as her point of departure the predicament of poor women in India, she shows how philosophy should undergird basic constitutional principles that should be respected and implemented by all governments, and used as a comparative measure of quality of life across nations.
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Title:Sex and Social Justice Author:prof. dr. Martha NussbaumPublisher:Oxford University Press | New editionBook:Paperback, 486 pagesISBN:978-01-951-1210-8Order this book? Click here!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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Title:Cultivating Humanity Subtitle:A Classical Defense of Reform in Liberal Education
Author:prof. dr. Martha NussbaumPublisher:Harvard University Press | New editionBook:Paperback, 352 pagesISBN:978-06-741-7949-3Order this book? Click here!How can higher education today create a community of critical thinkers and searchers for the truth that transcends the boundaries of class, gender and nation? In this book the author argues that contemporary curricular reform is already producing such citizens of the world in its advocacy of diverse forms of cross-cultural studies. Nussbaum's defence of the new education is rooted in Seneca's ideal of the citizen who scrutinizes tradition critically and who respects the ability to reason wherever it is found, in rich or poor, native or foreigner, female or male. Drawing on Socrates and the Stoics, the author establishes three core values of liberal education: critical self-examination, the ideal of the world citizen and the development of the narrative imagination. Then taking the reader to a variety of classrooms and campuses, Nussbaum aims to show how these values are being embodied in particular courses. She defends such courses as gender, minority and gay studies against charges of moral relativism and low standards, and underscores their dynamic and fundamental contribution to critical reasoning and world citizenship. Nussbaum aims to show that liberal education is alive and well on American campuses and is not only viable and constructive, but essential to a democratic society.
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Title:For Love of Country Author:prof. dr. Martha NussbaumPublisher:Beacon PressBook:Paperback, 155 pagesISBN:978-08-070-4329-5Brown University philosophy professor Nussbaum's lead essay, "Patriotism and Cosmopolitanism", which originally appeared in the Boston Review, ignites an energetic response from 15 other essayists. Tracing ideas to the Stoics, Nussbaum argues for cosmopolitanism over patriotism, asserting that the world citizen regards all human beings as fellow citizens and neighbors and that it is better to be a citizen of the world than merely a citizen of a state. While a few respondents agree with Nussbaum, most take steamy umbrage at her premise. Hilary Putnam says Nussbaum may be a prophet but world citizenship isn't for today. Robert Pinsky says she "spectacularly fails" and then eulogizes the sight of an American flag flapping over his neighborhood market. Elaine Scarry cautions against replacing nationalism with internationalism at the risk of bypassing constitutionalism. Richard Falk warns against replacing national patriotism with cosmopolitanism without "addressing the market-driven globalism". Others challenge Nussbaum on the basis that there is no larger world government to become citizens of, belittling her suggestion that people can have many allegiances and criticizing her for putting forth an abstract, rather than a specific, sense of humanity. In her reply to the respondents, Nussbaum maintains that we share a fundamental humanity by virtue of the fact that, although each person is born by chance into a particular country, "we are all subject to disease and misery of all kinds;...we are all condemned to death". Unlike the fourth century B.C. of the Stoics, practical opportunities for moral world citizenship without a world state are many. To say, as Nussbaum writes, "I cannot act as a world citizen, since there is no world state" is a cowardly way of avoiding thinking about how high a price one will pay to help others in need. Readers will wonder whether some of the respondents have a clue about what Nussbaum proposes in this exciting compendium.
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Title:Poetic Justice Subtitle:The Literary Imagination and Public Life
Author:prof. dr. Martha NussbaumPublisher:Beacon PressBook:Paperback, 168 pagesISBN:978-08-070-4109-3Order this book? Click here!In this text the author explores how literature can contribute to a more just society, and how current models of human behaviour draw too exclusively on economic self interest, with the result that in areas of public discourse - in policy-making, legislation, and judicial reasoning - we too often fail to see each other as human. Literature however, can bring home to us the value of other people whose lives are distant from our own. This book aims to show how the literary imagination is an essential part of public discourse and rational argument, and how private reading extends into the public sphere.
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Title:The Therapy of Desire Subtitle:Theory and Practice in Hellenistic Ethics
Author:prof. dr. Martha NussbaumPublisher:Princeton University Press | New editionBook:Paperback, 572 pagesISBN:978-06-910-0052-7Order this book? Click here!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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Title:Love's Knowledge Subtitle:Essays On Philosophy And Literature
Author:prof. dr. Martha NussbaumPublisher:Oxford University Press | New editionBook:Paperback, 422 pagesISBN:978-01-950-7485-7Order this book? Click here!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.
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Title:The Fragility of Goodness Subtitle:Luck and Ethics in Greek Tragedy and Philosophy
Author:prof. dr. Martha NussbaumPublisher:Cambridge University Press | 2nd Revised editionBook:Paperback, 592 pagesISBN:978-05-217-9126-7Order this book? Click here!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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Title:Aristotle's De Motu Animalium Author:prof. dr. Martha Nussbaum and AristotlePublisher:Princeton University PressBook:Paperback, 464 pagesISBN:978-06-910-2035-8Order this book? Click here!The aim of this book is to ask through a study of one of his most complicated treatises on explanation, how far, and in what sense, the demands of the 'scientific person' are Aristotle's.
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