Does Nussbaum's critique of Butler have any relation to her apparent hero Aristotle's condemnation of the Sophists for abusing philosophy by turning it into money making? Doesn't Nussbaum accuse Butler of a kind of moral entrepreneurship, of winning over an audience of impressionable graduate students through sophistry? And what are we to make of the claim that Aristotle's Politics (1, 8-10) expresses the contempt of an aristocracy in possession of landed wealth against a rising merchant class? Didn't thinkers as different as Schumpeter and Finley make this claim? Scott Meikle contests it. How does Nussbaum deal with it?
Yours, Rakesh