The uses of lexica.(Letter to the Editor)

To the Editors:

I am grateful for Roger Kimball's attention to nay book, but I write to correct the misleading account he gives of nay testimony in the Colorado trial of Evans v. Romer. He is not the first to circulate this inaccurate report. My argument about the disputed Plato passage was not based on the lexicon (although I did mention the lexicon as one example of scholarly interpretation). No decent scholar's argument would be based on the lexicon, since lexica are simply records of scholars' interpretations of text, and the best scholars are not likely to be the ones who write lexica.

My actual argument was based on a study of all the uses of the disputed terms in Plato's writings and other related texts of the period. It is a good argument. It has convinced leading scholars, including Sir Kenneth Dover and Anthony Price, who have published statements to that effect. My argument, their statements, and a co-authored statement by me and Dover about the text and the issues can all be found in the Virginia Law Review 80 (1994), 1515-1651. When Kimball has studied nay actual argument, I welcome a substantive discussion.

Martha Nussbaum

Chicago, Illinois

Roger Kimball replies:

I did read Professor Nussbaum's 137-page Virginia Law Review article. I also read her sworn affidavit for the case of Evans v. Romer and a great deal of the other ...