Martha Craven Nussbaum (New York, USA, 1947) studied at her hometown university and earned a PhD in Law and Ethics at Harvard in 1975. Founder and coordinator of the Center for Comparative Constitutionalism, she is currently the Ernst Freund Distinguished Service Professor of Law and Ethics at the Department of Philosophy, the Law School, and the Divinity School at the University of Chicago, after having taught at Harvard, Brown, and Oxford.
Considered one of the most innovative and influential philosophical voices in the current landscape and a defender of the role of the humanities in education, Nussbaum advocates in her work a universal conception of women's rights that can overcome the limits of cultural relativism. Her theories start from the conviction that people who understand the good differently can agree on some universal ethical principles that are applicable wherever there is a situation of inequality and injustice. She has also proposed a constitutional and political framework respectful of local traditions and institutions that can be translated into political objectives in specific contexts, laying the groundwork for ethically justifying development aid.
Between 1986 and 1993, she was a research advisor at the World Institute for Development Economics Research (Helsinki, Finland), which is part of the United Nations University. She has chaired the Committee for International Cooperation and the Committee on the Status of Women, both of the American Philosophical Association. She has been a member of the Council of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and of the American Council of Learned Societies Union.
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