Thinker · TH-0282
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.…
Also known as Martha C. Nussbaum
b. 1947 · New York; Harvard; Brown; University of Chicago
Traditions: Analytic
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?
- Question I know the spider is harmless and I’m still terrified. Is my fear wrong, or just irrational?
- Question Do capabilities measure a good life better than happiness surveys do?
- Discussion Four ventilators, seven patients: is triage consequentialism with a human face, or something else?
- Reading group Reading group: Nussbaum’s Upheavals of Thought, Part One, over four weeks
- Discussion Two people with the same income and different lives: a wheelchair user’s case for capabilities
- Debate Novels give us moral knowledge that no argument can deliver