Poetic Justice: Literary Imagination and Public Life
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
|
Related e |
|
Featured: |
Poetic Justice (1995) is a book by Martha Nussbaum.
She argues that social sympathy is a necessary condition for equitable treatment in courts of law. Judges, Nussbaum has observed, are short of imaginative data about the persons they must judge, and novels are one place they can look for guidance.
Blurb:
Public discourse has become increasingly vitriolic and punitive toward those who don't seem to fit America's "mainstream." Relying excessively on stereotypes and models of human behavior based on economic self-interest, we too often fail - in public policy-making, legislation, and judicial reasoning - to see one another as fully human. In Poetic Justice, one of our most prominent philosophers and public intellectuals explores how literature can contribute to a more just society. As readers of literature, Nussbaum argues, we may glimpse the interior experiences of other people. Above all, reading asks us to imagine the value of their lives
See also
