Work Classification Layer
Compare Works
Pick two or more works to set their attribute fingerprints, dimension-by-dimension passages, and shared school embodiments side by side. Especially useful for author-stage comparisons (Wittgenstein early vs late) and for setting a single tradition's foundational texts against each other.
The Fragility of Goodness
A human life worth living is constitutively vulnerable to luck — what tragedy shows, philosophy must accept
Attribute Fingerprint
Rows where works disagree are highlighted in gold. The full ontology grid is shown.
| Attribute | The Fragility of Goodness (Mature (the book that established Nussbaum as a major figure)) |
|---|---|
| Time · Extent | Infinite |
| Time · Ontological Status | Substantival |
| Time · Grain | Continuous |
| Time · Freedom | Non-Deterministic |
| Time · Traversability | Linear |
| Time · Dimensionality | One |
| Time · Direction | Uni-directional |
| Space · Extent | Infinite |
| Space · Ontological Status | Substantival |
| Space · Curvature | Flat |
| Space · Dimensionality | Three |
| Space · Locality | Local |
| Matter · Extent | Infinite |
| Matter · Ontological Status | Substantival |
| Matter · Conservation | Conserved |
| Matter · Dimensionality | Three |
| Matter · Locality | Local |
| Observer · Time Instance | Single |
| Observer · Space Instance | Single |
| Observer · Knowledge Extent | Partial |
| Observer · Knowledge Retainment | Total |
| Observer · Physicality | Embodied |
| Observer · Agency | Both |
| Observer · Number | Plural |
| Observer · Metaphysical Agency | None |
| Observer · Moral Authority | Reason |
| Observer · Theological Method | — |
| Energy · Extent | Infinite |
| Energy · Ontological Status | Substantival |
| Energy · Conservation | Conserved |
| Energy · Dispersibility | Irreversible |
| Information · Ontological Status | Substantival |
| Information · Cosmic Conservation | Conserved |
| Information · Personal Conservation | Conserved |
| Information · Granularity | Continuous |
Dimension-by-Dimension Evidence
What each work's passages reveal about its stance on each of the six dimensions.
Time
The Fragility of Goodness
The temporal trajectory of a human life as the site of vulnerable goods — what flourishing requires takes time to build and can be destroyed in a moment.
Space
The Fragility of Goodness
The polis as the spatial setting in which the goods of friendship, political life, and cultural participation can be cultivated.
Matter
The Fragility of Goodness
The embodied, vulnerable human animal — biological and cultural features of the species ground the account of flourishing.
Observer
The Fragility of Goodness
The morally serious agent whose flourishing is the topic; the philosopher-spectator engaging the tragic poets.
Energy
The Fragility of Goodness
The energies of moral commitment — what one risks by loving particular persons and pursuing particular projects.
Information
The Fragility of Goodness
Tragic insight as cognitive content; the plays teach what abstract theorising can miss.
Internal Tensions
Where each work's argument pulls against itself.
Nussbaum revisited the book in her 2001 preface and partially recanted: her early position, she said, underweighted the agent's active responsibilities and overweighted vulnerability. Critics on the Platonist side (notably John Cooper) defended a more sympathetic reading of Plato than Nussbaum gives; critics on the Kantian side (Korsgaard) defended the legitimacy of trying to make moral worth depend only on what the agent controls. The book's place in establishing philosophy-and-literature as a sub-field is uncontested.