Philosophical Interventions: Reviews 1986–2011 by Martha C Nussbaum (review)

What accounts for my reviewing Martha Nussbaum’s Philosophical Interventions: Reviews 1986–2011? One answer is simply that it is, by any measure, a superb book that amply deserves an enthusiastic review and subsequent wide readership. But the hard truth is that many (perhaps, depressingly, even most) such books languish unreviewed, especially if, as in this case, they consist entirely of previously published review essays concerning other books. So more need be said, especially if one adds the fact that Nussbaum, though a true polymath, is primarily a philosopher, which I am definitely not. Even if the reason for its being reviewed lies in its sheer quality, that still does not explain why I was asked (and agreed) to review it.

The primary explanation, I suspect, lies in an article I wrote for the Texas Law Review in 2009¹ decrying the increasing absence of book reviews from student-edited law reviews. For example, of the so-called ‘top 20’ American law reviews, the modal number of book reviews the previous years was actually zero! Readers must look elsewhere, often unavailingly, to find discussion of the ever-increasing plethora of books written by both legal academics and outsiders that are of relevance to anyone thinking about law. But it is important not to define ‘law’ narrowly. As any first-year student rapidly discovers, law, as Justice Cardozo once wrote, echoing the book of John, must necessarily encompass ‘life in all of its fullness.’²

So I was happily receptive to the invitation to read Professor Nussbaum’s new book, not because I am remotely expert in the many fields that she covers in this book but because I am interested in the genre of book reviews as such. What does Philosophical Interventions tell us not only about the specific books under review, but also, and in this context just as importantly, about how to write book reviews?

Philosophical Interventions instantiates the major criteria of book reviewing, which are to inform the reader what a book is about, what the central arguments are relative to the ‘conventional wisdom’ within a given field, and whether the arguments are successful. Almost all of these thirty-five reviews were written for ‘general’ publications, primarily the New York Review of Books and the New Republic; indeed, the book is dedicated to Leon Weiselthier, a polymath in his own right, who has made the New Republic an indispensable source of serious commentary about books over what is now several decades (as has Robert Silvers for the New York Review). By definition, they are not written for fellow professional philosophers, but presumably, for persons like me: well-educated but (therefore) well aware of what I do not know as well as what I do. Remarkably devoid of jargon, each essay educates the reader. Sometimes one is satisfied with Nussbaum’s own summary and analysis of a book, even if one might, in a world without limits as to the time we have for reading, go on to read the book itself. With some frequency, though, a particular essay will do what a book’s author presumably hopes it will, which is to encourage movement from the review to the book itself (or, at the very least, to cause real regret that time is lacking to do so). On occasion, the education works in the opposite direction, as the reader is reassured that it will not, in fact, be necessary to read further because Nussbaum’s criticisms seem all too telling. But all three of these functions of a book review point to why it is so important to support the genre.

What is it that makes this book so rich and well worth reading? It helps, of course, that Nussbaum is, indeed, polymathic in her own areas of interest and, therefore, range of references to philosophy, literature, history, and the social sciences. But that is not enough. What most truly comes across in this book is her devotion to a conception of philosophy that views it as ‘a...