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Review Essay: Monotheism and the Capabilities Approach: On the Writings of Lenn E. Goodman

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 April 2015

Martin Kavka
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Type
Review Essays and Book Reviews
Information
Journal of Law and Religion , Volume 17 , 2002 , pp. 143 - 153
Copyright
Copyright © Center for the Study of Law and Religion at Emory University 2002

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References

1. For Goodman on Rawls, , cf. On Justice 17–23Google Scholar; Judaism viii-ix, 10-11. For Rawls's distinction between political and comprehensive liberalism, cf. Rawls, , Political Liberalism 35–40 (Columbia U. Press 1993)Google Scholar. Martha Nussbaum lucidly summarizes the distinction (and applies her notion of political liberalism to situations where law and religion collide) in A Plea for Difficulty, in Is Multiculturalism Bad for Women? 108–111 (Cohen, Joshuaet al. eds., Princeton U. Press 1999)Google Scholar.

2. For Goodman's, critiques on Kant: On Justice 81–93Google Scholar, God of Abraham 98 (Oxford U. Press 1996)Google Scholar, and Judaism 18-19. For his critiques of Mill, : On Justice 54Google Scholar, Judaism 98-136.

3. Menachem Kellner, in his review of this book, has charged that Goodman is reading Genesis 22 against its surface sense. Nevertheless, such a holistic reading as Goodman's would sit well with readings of the rabbis in antiquity who also tried to smooth over the difficulties of this passage. Cf. Genesis Midrash Rabbah 56:8 and Kellner's untitled review in Textual Reasoning 5:4 (1996) <http://www.bu.edu/mzank/TextualReasoning/tr-archive/tr5-4.html>>Google Scholar.

4. Isaiah 40:25.

5. (Scholars Press 1995). Zank, Michael, The God of Sinai, the God of Creation, and the God of Abraham: Three Recent Books in Jewish Philosophy, 16 Modern Judaism 291 (1996)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

6. Cf. the three volumes of Novak's theological trilogy: The Election of Israel (Cambridge U. Press 1995)Google Scholar, Natural Law in Judaism (Cambridge U. Press 1998)Google Scholar, and Covenantal Rights: A Study in Jewish Political Theory (Princeton U. Press 2000)Google Scholar.

7. Cf. Sen, Amartya, Choice, Welfare, and Measurement (Blackwell 1982)Google Scholar and Capability and Well-Being, in The Quality of Life 30–53 (Nussbaum, Martha & Sen, Amartya eds., Clarendon Press 1993)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Nussbaum, Martha C., Woman and Cultural Universals in Sex and Social Justice 29 (Oxford U. Press 1999)Google Scholar and Nussbaum, Martha C., Women and Human Development: The Capabilities Approach (Cambridge U. Press 2000)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

8. Nussbaum, Woman and Human Development supra n. 7, at 59-77; Crocker, David A., Functioning and Capability: The Foundations of Sen's and Nussbaum's Development Ethic, Part 2, in Women, Culture, and Developments Study of Human Capabilities 153 (Nussbaum, & Glover, Jonathan eds., Clarendon Press 1995)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

9. Cornell, Drucilla, The Imaginary Domain: Abortion, Pornography & Sexual Harassment 5 (Routledge 1995)Google Scholar.

10. For critiques of the Supreme Court's decision, see Nussbaum, Woman and Human Development supra n. 8, at 198-206; McConnell, Michael W., Institutions and Interpretation: A Critique of City of Boeme v. Flores, 111 Harv. L. Rev. 153 (1997)Google Scholar. For an argument supporting the decision, see Currie, David P., RFRA, 39 Wm. & Mary L. Rev. 637 (1998)Google Scholar.

11. Consider as against Sunstein, Cass R., Democracy and the Problem of Free Speech (Free Press 1993)Google Scholar.

12. Novak, David, Jewish Social Ethics 97 (Oxford U. Press 1992)Google Scholar.

13. Under no circumstances should it be understood that I am automatically opposed to Goodman's conclusion. I am simply opposed to the argument. As a narrative support for his conclusion (which would still not obviate him from empirical analysis of a wide range of pornographic forms and media), Goodman might turn to Alice Elliott Dark's short story In the Gloaming, in which the protagonist claims,

I don't think sex can ever be accurately portrayed. The sensations and the emotions are-beyond language. If you only describe the mechanics, the effect is either clinical or pornographic, and if you try to describe intimacy instead, you wind up with abstractions. The only sex you could describe fairly well is bad sex—and who wants to read about that, for God's sake, when everyone is having bad sex of their own?

Dark, , In the Gloaming: A Collection of Stories 24 (Simon & Schuster 2000)Google Scholar.

14. These cases are taken from Okin, Is Multiculturalism Bad for Women? and Cass Sunstein, Should Sex Equality Law Apply to Religious Institutions? in Cohen et al., supra n. 2, at 9, 86.

15. Nussbaum agrees that governments have a compelling interest to outlaw polygamy, as India did in the 1950s; cf. Cohen et al., supra n. 1, at 112.

16. Biale, Rachel, Women and Jewish Law (Schocken 1984)Google Scholar; Hauptman, Judith, Rereading the Rabbis: A Woman's Voice (Westview 1997)Google Scholar.