Andrea Dworkin Critical Essay | Critical Review by Martha C. Nussbaum

SOURCE: "Rage and Reason," in The New Republic, August 11, 1997, pp. 36-42.

In the following review, Nussbaum comments on Life and Death and provides sustained analysis of the philosophical, legal, and moral dimensions of Dworkin's case against pornography.

I.

Prophets don't write like philosophers. Why not, since they seem to have a common goal? Since Socrates, philosophers, like prophets, have been dedicated foes of ethical complacency, and of the many forms of moral disease complacency conceals. Socrates's call to the examined life was inspired by a concern for the health of souls. He once described the insides of his interlocutor as filled with tumorous growths, and his arguments as purgative drugs that would carry away the diseased material. This vivid sense of the ugliness of evil and the urgency of ethical change makes itself felt in the arguments of many of the greatest moral philosophers. Even when philosophers write calmly,...
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