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
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.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Anger can be a response to feelings of helplessness, giving us a sense of control.
In this quote, Martha Nussbaum highlights the common human experience of feeling powerless in various situations and how anger can serve as a coping mechanism. By expressing anger, individuals may feel a renewed sense of agency, as it allows them to confront and challenge their helplessness, albeit in a potentially destructive way.
Themes
AngerHelplessnessControlEmotionsHuman Experience
In practice
Example use cases
During a mental health awareness talk, discussing how we can constructively manage anger.
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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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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There is no reason why an American scholar cannot by himself or herself develop an adequate understanding of another culture. And I don't find any reason to suppose that the birth within a culture automatically confers understanding.
Martha NussbaumRead
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