Martha Nussbaum on the Humanities

In her new book, the contemporary philosopher writes that a person who follows “argument rather than numbers is a good person for a democracy to have,” opposing the primacy of short term economic gain. “Nussbaum is a philosopher who has sought to foreground questions of human value over the drier, more quantifiable obsessions of many of her colleagues,” says the New Statesman. Reflecting on her book, the NS writes that, “Aesthetic value mirrors the way we value each other – which is to say, the kind of value on which the ideas of democracy and moral responsibility are founded – and that is why, when we turn away from it, we turn away from ourselves.”