1001Philosophers

Martha Nussbaum Quotes

Martha Nussbaum is an American philosopher whose work spans ancient Greek ethics, political philosophy, the philosophy of emotion, and feminist theory. The Fragility of Goodness recovered an Aristotelian and tragic conception of the good life as exposed to luck, while Upheavals of Thought offered a comprehensive cognitive theory of the emotions. The quotes below are attributed to Martha Nussbaum, organized by topic.

Martha Nussbaum on Justice

  • Attributed to Martha Nussbaum:

    “The capabilities approach asks not what people have, but what they are actually able to do and to be.”

Martha Nussbaum on Knowledge

  • “Martha C. Nussbaum (1 October 1998). Cultivating Humanity . Harvard University Press. pp. 6–7. ISBN 978-0-674-73546-0 .”

    When I arrived at Harvard in 1969, my fellow first-year graduate students and I were taken up to the roof of the Widener Library by a well-known professor of classics. He told us how many Episcopal churches could be seen from that vantage point. As a Jew (in fact a convert from Episcopalian Christianity ), I knew that my husband and I would have been forbidden to marry in Harvard's church, which h

  • “Nussbaum, as quoted from Malhotra, R. , Nīlakantan, A. (2011). Breaking India: Western interventions in Dravidian and Dalit faultlines”

    In India the perpetrators of violence are not Muslims (who are usually poor and downtrodden, but not involved in perpetrating violence, except in the special instance of Kashmir ), but Hindus who sought their ideology in Fascist Europe and who model their stance on European anti-semitism of the 1930s. ... [Hindu political ideology was derived from] "European romantic nationalism and its darker asp

Martha Nussbaum on Life

  • Attributed to Martha Nussbaum:

    “Tragic predicaments cannot be reasoned away; they can only be faced.”

Martha Nussbaum on Love

  • Attributed to Martha Nussbaum:

    “Compassion is a bridge between the self and the suffering of others.”

Martha Nussbaum on Politics

  • Attributed to Martha Nussbaum:

    “A good political order owes each of its citizens the chance to lead a fully human life.”

Martha Nussbaum on Virtue

  • Attributed to Martha Nussbaum:

    “To live a good human life is, among other things, to be vulnerable to the world.”