SOURCE: McLane, Maureen. Review of Poetic Justice, by Martha Nussbaum. Chicago Review 42, no. 2 (spring 1996): 95-100.

In the following review of Poetic Justice, McLane expresses admiration for Nussbaum's ideas, but points out various shortcomings in the author's arguments.

The University of Chicago is perhaps better known as the home of Milton Friedman, patron saint and theorist of Reagan's revolution, than the habitus of Martha Nussbaum, philosopher and recently-appointed Professor of Law, Literature and Ethics at the Law and Divinity Schools of the University of Chicago. If we are lucky this reputation will change. Nussbaum's Poetic Justice may be read as a salvo against the hegemony of free-market ideology and utilitarian calculation in public discourse. More precisely, Nussbaum challenges the unphilosophical, pseudo-scientific claims of rational-choice theorists who, as she notes, increasingly dominate economic discourse, public policy disputes, and legal reasoning. In its most extreme forms, rational-choice theory posits persons as...