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 More Quotes by Martha C. Nussbaum More Quotes From Martha C. Nussbaum Radio was, in a way, a very philosophical medium. You could make an argument on the radio, and people listened to it. Television is already harder because people's attention span becomes shorter with television. Cut to a commercial and all that. Martha C. Nussbaum philosophical cutting people The great philosophers of the past who wrote so beautifully - Rousseau, John Stuart Mill - had to write beautifully because they had to sell their work to journals. They had to sell books to the general public because they could not hold positions in universities. Mill was an atheist, and, therefore, could not hold a position in a university. Martha C. Nussbaum atheist writing book When a profession is protected by academic freedom and tenure, it tends to turn inward. To a large extent that's good. Martha C. Nussbaum academic-freedom inward turns We really have to think about aging because women are living longer than men. More of the people who need care are women. A lot of them are living alone, with no one to care for them, or they're shunted into institutions. I would like to see a sensible aging policy more like what the Nordic countries have. They're cutting back those programs, but there you can still have in-home nursing care. You don't have to rely on your children. I personally don't want to be a burden on my daughter. Martha C. Nussbaum daughter country children We have to change men's expectations, as they grow up, regarding their share of domestic work, of child care, but also of elder care, which is less pleasant and which men don't want to do. Martha C. Nussbaum growing-up men children There's a gap in perceptions between women and men. Women feel much freer than they did, but still, when alcohol is involved, especially, there's a lot of sexual assault, and a lot of confusion about that. So, we need to focus a lot more on what consent is and on the importance of affirmative consent. Martha C. Nussbaum focus confusion men We are lucky in the United States to have our liberal arts system. In most countries, if you go to university, you have to decide for all English literature or no literature, all philosophy or no philosophy. But we have a system that is one part general education and one part specialization. If your parents say you've got to major in computer science, you can do that. But you can also take general education courses in the humanities, and usually you have to. Martha C. Nussbaum philosophy country art Singapore and China, which don't want to encourage democratic citizenship, are expanding their humanities curricula. These reforms are all about developing a culture of innovation and entrepreneurship. Martha C. Nussbaum innovation reform humanity There was a time, before I was in graduate school, when political philosophy pretty much ceased to exist. The positivists thought there were only two things you could do: conceptual analysis or empirical investigation. Any kind of political theory or even ethical theory was nonsense. Martha C. Nussbaum philosophy two school The humanities teach us the value, even for business, of criticism and dissent. When there's a culture of going along to get along, where whistleblowers are discouraged, bad things happen and businesses implode. Martha C. Nussbaum criticism humanity culture Economists get impatient with philosophy. They are often trained as skilled mathematicians. They don't like going back to ordinary language and first principles. Martha C. Nussbaum principles philosophy firsts I do think there's a lot of bad writing, and I worry about that in philosophy. I worry about it even more in literary studies, but I wouldn't blame it on any one methodology. Martha C. Nussbaum writing philosophy thinking
