SOURCE: Young, Iris Marion. Review of Sex and Social Justice, by Martha Nussbaum. Ethics 111, no. 4 (July 2001): 819-23.

In the following review, Young calls Nussbaum's Sex and Social Justice a significant achievement that addresses pressing contemporary and moral problems.

This collection of fifteen essays [Sex and Social Justice], all previously published in some form, ranges over issues of contemporary politics, policy, and law concerning gender and sexuality, as well as reflects on themes of knowledge and emotion in ancient and modern philosophy and literature. Certain of the essays recalled for me the pleasure and admiration I felt for Nussbaum's earlier work interpreting ancient thought. “Equity and Mercy,” for example, develops ideas of Aristotle and Seneca to argue against strongly retributive impulses in both criminal law and the politics of oppressed people. In “Constructing Love, Desire, and Care,” Nussbaum endorses claims that the meanings of love and sexuality are socially...