Martha Nussbaum

Martha Nussbaum is an American philosopher at the University of Chicago, trained in classics, whose work spans ancient philosophy, ethics, political philosophy and literature. Drawing on the Stoics, she argues in Upheavals of Thought that emotions are judgements of value about things important to our flourishing. She also defends the moral significance of literature and, with Amartya Sen, developed the capabilities approach to justice and human development.

Key ideas

• Emotions are evaluative judgements that ascribe great importance to things outside our control.
• Because emotions contain thought, they can be rational or irrational and are open to education.
• Some moral understanding is best conveyed by literary form, especially the novel's attention to particulars.
• Justice requires securing for each person a threshold of central human capabilities.

Major works

• The Fragility of Goodness (1986)
• Love's Knowledge (1990)
• Upheavals of Thought: The Intelligence of Emotions (2001)
• Creating Capabilities (2011)

In the conversation

• Question Capabilities or the social model: which better tells a city what it owes disabled residents? Deepa Kartha · 0 replies
• Question I know the spider is harmless and I’m still terrified. Is my fear wrong, or just irrational? Hsieh Wei-ting · 5 replies
• Question Do capabilities measure a good life better than happiness surveys do? Dima Nasser · 5 replies
• Discussion Four ventilators, seven patients: is triage consequentialism with a human face, or something else? Tsion Bekele · 6 replies
• Reading group Reading group: Nussbaum’s Upheavals of Thought, Part One, over four weeks Femke Bosman · 5 replies
• Discussion Two people with the same income and different lives: a wheelchair user’s case for capabilities Dima Nasser · 4 replies
• Debate Novels give us moral knowledge that no argument can deliver Keisha Monroe · 5 replies

In the Journal

• Journal The step or the leg? What the social model of disability really claims Dima Nasser · 0 replies