Envy, propelled by fear, can be even more toxic than anger, because it involves the thought that other people enjoy the good things of life which the envier can't hope to attain through hard work and emulation.
Martha NussbaumRead
I have spent a lot of my career working on normative political philosophy, developing the 'capabilities approach' to social justice. I have also spent a lot of my career working on the structure of the emotions, and their role in human life.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Martha Nussbaum emphasizes the importance of combining political philosophy with the understanding of human emotions for achieving social justice.
In this quote, Martha Nussbaum reflects on her dual focus in her career: one on political philosophy, specifically the capabilities approach to social justice, and the other on the exploration of emotions and their significance in human existence. She suggests that an understanding of human emotions is crucial for the implementation of philosophical principles in social justice, highlighting the interplay between reason and emotion in our ethical considerations.
Themes
Political PhilosophyCapabilities ApproachEmotionsSocial JusticeHuman Life
In practice
Example use cases
In a lecture on social justice, one could use this quote to illustrate the necessity of including emotional intelligence in political philosophy discussions.
More from Martha Nussbaum
All quotes →This is true across every single society; we project grossness onto a racial or gender subgroup or caste. A big part of social subordination and discrimination is to ascribe hyper-animality to other groups and use that as an excuse for subordinating them further.
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Often, we feel helpless in lots of situations in our lives. The way anger gets a grip on us is it seems to be a way to extricate ourselves from helplessness.
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Courses in the humanities, in particular, often seem impractical, but they are vital, because they stretch your imagination and challenge your mind to become more responsive, more critical, bigger.
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I find so often, you know, just on a very mundane level; you've got a meeting and your child's acting in a school play. You can't do both things. And it's not simply that you can't do both, but whatever you do, you're going to be neglecting something that's really important.
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Look at the great tradition of Western political philosophy. Those people were all immersed in revolutionary movements. Most weren't career academics - often, they were too radical to be accepted in the academy. Rousseau's books were banned. Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill couldn't hold academic positions because they were atheists.
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