Martha C. Nussbaum: The humanities prepare students to be good citizen...

Knowledge is no guarantee of good behavior, but ignorance is a virtual guarantee of bad behavior.

Martha C. Nussbaum

ignorance guarantees knowledge

To be a good human being is to have a kind of openness to the world, an ability to trust uncertain things beyond your own control.

Martha C. Nussbaum

fragility kind world

To be a good human being is to have a kind of openness to the world, an ability to trust uncertain things beyond your own control, that can lead you to be shattered in very extreme circumstances for which you were not to blame. That says something very important about the condition of the ethical life: that it is based on a trust in the uncertain and on a willingness to be exposed; it’s based on being more like a plant than like a jewel, something rather fragile, but whose very particular beauty is inseparable from that fragility.

Martha C. Nussbaum

risk important jewels

Our emotional life maps our incompleteness: A creature without any needs would never have reasons for fear, or grief, or hope, or anger.

Martha C. Nussbaum

emotional grief needs

As human beings, we ought to be vulnerable. We shouldn't try to say that we can be self-sufficient or do everything that's necessary for a good life on our own, because we need other people.

Martha C. Nussbaum

good-life self people

Life is about more than earning a living, and if you're not in the habit of thinking about it, you can end up middle-aged or even older and shocked to realize that your life seems empty.

Martha C. Nussbaum

realizing earning thinking

Disgust relies on moral obtuseness. It is possible to view another human being as a slimy slug or a piece of revolting trash only if one has never made a serious good-faith attempt to see the world through that person’s eyes or to experience that person’s feelings. Disgust imputes to the other a subhuman nature. How, by contrast, do we ever become able to see one another as human? Only through the exercise of imagination.

Martha C. Nussbaum

eye views exercise

As we tell stories about the lives of others, we learn how to imagine what another creature might feel in response to various events. At the same time, we identify with the other creature and learn something about ourselves.

Martha C. Nussbaum

empathy events stories

But the life that no longer trust another human being and no longer forms ties to the political community is not a human life any longer.

Martha C. Nussbaum

political community ties

You can’t really change the heart without telling a story.

Martha C. Nussbaum

stories heart

Business leaders love the humanities because they know that to innovate you need more than rote knowledge. You need a trained imagination.

Martha C. Nussbaum

leader imagination humanity

Philosophers should be, as Seneca put it, 'lawyers for humanity'. Make what you think and feel count; the examined life has global dimensions.

Martha C. Nussbaum

humanity philosophy thinking

Property rights can improve a woman's ability to stand up to violence in the home. You might think education and employment are important because they give women exit options, but property is as well. Give women equal property rights to inherited land, then they have an asset they can take out of the marriage. This gives husbands strong incentives to not beat them.

Martha C. Nussbaum

husband strong home

I think the obstacle for women is that their lives are intertwined with the lives of men. Change at the very deepest level of one's daily life and one's being is required if women are to be really equal.

Martha C. Nussbaum

levels men thinking

Choice matters. You might have the opportunity to eat a nutritious diet, though you might choose to eat a lousy diet. What matters is the opportunity.

Martha C. Nussbaum

what-matters choices opportunity

Nudity quickly becomes unremarkable when generally practiced.

Martha C. Nussbaum

nudity

A person in torment is not going to give you anything.

Martha C. Nussbaum

torment persons giving

The Greek tragedies and comedies are like a roadmap to all the ways in which trying to live this rich, full life can go wrong. You could get into a war. You could find that you have members of your family on the wrong side of a political crisis. You could be raped. You could find that your child has gone crazy because of some horrible experience she's had.

Martha C. Nussbaum

crazy war children

The great tragedy in the new feminist theory in America is the loss of a sense of public commitment.... Hungry women are not fed by this, battered women are not sheltered by it, raped women do not find justice in it, gays and lesbians do not achieve legal protections through it.

Martha C. Nussbaum

gay loss commitment

When I came to Harvard, there were no tenured women except one, who was in a chair reserved for a woman. It's still an uphill battle, and I encountered great sexism in parts of my career, but I have to say that things are a lot better than they used to be. There are many women today doing wonderful work all over the academy.

Martha C. Nussbaum

battle careers today

The humanities prepare students to be good citizens and help them understand a complicated, interlocking world. The humanities teach us critical thinking, how to analyze arguments, and how to imagine life from the point of view of someone unlike yourself.