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Law Without Disgust: A Fetid Freedom, Matthew Jordan Cochran

Matthew Jordan Cochran

Martha Nussbaum has attacked disgust as an emotion incompatible with political liberal values; a primitive shrinking from animality that is used to subjugate vulnerable groups. Dr. Leon Kass has described disgust as a profound wisdom that teaches us the boundaries beyond which our given human nature becomes compromised. Kass's view of human dignity recognizes the hierarchical nature of being human, while Nussbaum's rather scatological account reduces mankind to a mere species of animal—an animal which is somehow an oppressor for shunning the accouterments of its own mortality. This article compares these two competing views on the interplay between disgust and …