Martha Nussbaum facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Martha Nussbaum
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Nussbaum in 2010
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Martha Craven
May 6, 1947 New York City, New York, U.S.
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| Education | New York University (BA) Harvard University (MA, PhD) |
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Notable work
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Alan Nussbaum
(m. 1969; div. 1987) |
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| Doctoral advisor | G. E. L. Owen |
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Main interests
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Notable ideas
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Capability approach |
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Influences
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Influenced
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Martha Nussbaum (born May 6, 1947) is an American philosopher and a professor at the University of Chicago. She teaches in both the law school and the philosophy department.
Nussbaum's work focuses on ancient Greek and Roman ideas, along with political philosophy, feminism, and ethics. This includes important topics like animal rights. She has also taught at Harvard University and Brown University.
She has written over two dozen books, including The Fragility of Goodness (1986). She has received many important awards, such as the Kyoto Prize in Arts and Philosophy in 2016 and the Berggruen Prize in 2018.
Contents
Early Life and Education
Martha Craven was born on May 6, 1947, in New York City. Her father, George Craven, was a lawyer, and her mother, Betty Warren, was an interior designer. As a teenager, Nussbaum went to The Baldwin School in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania.
She started her college studies at Wellesley College. After two years, she left to explore theatre in New York. She then studied theatre and classics at New York University, earning her first degree in 1969. Later, at Harvard University, she shifted her focus to philosophy. She received her master's degree in 1972 and her PhD in 1975.
Martha Nussbaum's Career and Ideas
In the 1970s and early 1980s, Martha Nussbaum taught philosophy and classics at Harvard. She later moved to Brown University, where she taught until 1995. After that, she joined the University of Chicago Law School.
Her 1986 book, The Fragility of Goodness, made her well-known. This book explores ancient Greek ethics and tragedies. Nussbaum's work often looks at the unequal freedoms and opportunities for women. She has developed a unique type of feminism. It draws from liberal ideas but suggests that liberalism should lead to big changes in how genders and families relate.
Another main area of her work is about emotions. She believes that emotions are our judgments about how important things and people outside our control are to our well-being. Based on this, she has studied feelings like grief, compassion, love, and later, disgust and shame.
Nussbaum has also taken part in many public discussions. She has written articles and even testified in court. For example, she spoke in the Romer v. Evans case in Colorado. She argued against the idea that history supported a law that would overturn local anti-discrimination rules.
She has also shared her views on other thinkers. In 2019, Nussbaum used some of her Berggruen Prize money to start discussions at the University of Chicago Law School. These are called the Martha C. Nussbaum Student Roundtables. They focus on controversial topics.
Understanding the Capabilities Approach
Martha Nussbaum is famous for helping to create the Capability approach to well-being, along with Amartya Sen. This approach asks a key question: "What is each person able to do and to be?" It looks at a person's abilities, freedom, and opportunities all together.
"Freedom" means a person's ability to choose the life they want. "Opportunity" refers to the social, political, or economic conditions that help or stop a person's growth.
Nussbaum believes that all humans have a basic right to dignity. To support this, she says governments should provide a certain level of important capabilities. These include:
- Life
- Bodily health
- Bodily integrity (being safe from harm)
- Senses, imagination, and thought
- Emotions
- Practical reason (being able to think and plan)
- Affiliation (being able to connect with others)
- Other species (being able to live with and care for animals and nature)
- Play
- Control over one's environment (including political and material surroundings)
Personal Life
Martha Nussbaum was married to Alan Nussbaum from 1969 until 1987. During this time, she converted to Judaism and had her daughter, Rachel. Her interest in Judaism has continued. In 2008, she became a bat mitzvah in Chicago. She spoke about how true comfort is linked to working for global justice.
Nussbaum's daughter, Rachel, passed away in 2019 due to an illness after surgery. Rachel was a lawyer who worked for animal welfare. Martha and Rachel had written four articles together about wild animals.
Key Books by Martha Nussbaum
The Fragility of Goodness
The Fragility of Goodness: Luck and Ethics in Greek Tragedy and Philosophy explores a challenge: people who deeply care about justice can still be affected by outside events. These events might even stop them from living a good life. Nussbaum looks at ancient Greek stories and philosophy. She tries to figure out how much reason can help us be self-sufficient.
She concludes that human goodness cannot fully protect us from danger. Instead, she agrees with ancient Greek playwrights and Aristotle. They believed that understanding our weaknesses is key to living a good human life.
This book brought Nussbaum a lot of attention. It was praised by academics and in popular media.
Cultivating Humanity
Cultivating Humanity: A Classical Defense of Reform in Liberal Education uses ancient Greek texts to support and improve liberal education. Nussbaum talks about the Greek philosopher Diogenes of Sinope. He wanted to go beyond his local background and become a "citizen of the world." Nussbaum traces this idea through history, including the ideas of Adam Smith and Immanuel Kant.
Nussbaum supports multiculturalism within the idea of ethical universalism. This means respecting different cultures while believing in shared moral values. She also defends studying race and gender. She shows how literature can help us imagine and understand ethical questions.
The New York Times called Cultivating Humanity "a passionate, closely argued defense of multiculturalism." Nussbaum received the 2002 University of Louisville Grawemeyer Award in Education for this book.
Hiding from Humanity
Hiding from Humanity continues Nussbaum's work on moral psychology. It looks at whether two emotions—shame and disgust—should be used as reasons for legal judgments. Nussbaum argues that people often try to avoid thinking about their own physical imperfections or animal-like qualities. They do this by projecting fears onto others. She says this way of thinking is not logical because we cannot escape our own physical nature.
She points out how disgust has wrongly led to the unfair treatment of groups, like women, Jewish people, and homosexuals. Because of this, Nussbaum believes disgust is not a reliable basis for making judgments.
In an interview, Nussbaum explained:
Disgust and shame are naturally about ranking people. They also limit freedom in areas where no one is being harmed. For these reasons, I believe anyone who values the democratic ideas of equality and liberty should be very careful about using these emotions in law and public policy.
This book was widely praised. The Boston Globe called her argument "clear" and named her "America's most prominent philosopher of public life."
Creating Capabilities
The book Creating Capabilities, published in 2011, explains a unique theory about the Capability approach or Human development. Nussbaum builds on ideas from other thinkers like Amartya Sen, but she has her own distinct view. She suggests a list of capabilities based on John Rawls' idea of "central human capabilities."
Nussbaum's book combines ideas from the Capability approach, development economics, and distributive justice. She criticizes economic measures like GDP. She says they don't fully show the quality of life or if basic needs are met. This is because GDP can grow even if wealth is very unevenly shared. The book also introduces the Capability approach to students and new readers.
Awards and Honors
Martha Nussbaum is a member of important academic groups like the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. She has received 66 honorary degrees from universities around the world.
Selected Awards
- 1990: Brandeis Creative Arts Award in Non-Fiction
- 1991: PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay
- 2002: University of Louisville Grawemeyer Award in Education
- 2009: American Philosophical Society's Henry M. Phillips Prize in Jurisprudence
- 2012: Prince of Asturias Awards for Social Sciences
- 2016: Kyoto Prize in Philosophy, Japan
- 2018: Berggruen Prize
- 2021: Holberg Prize "for her groundbreaking contribution to research in philosophy, law and related fields"
- 2022: The Balzan Prize for "her transformative reconception of the goals of social justice, both globally and locally"
Images for kids
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Nussbaum at The School of Life, 2016
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Nussbaum in 2004
See also
- American philosophy
- List of female philosophers
- List of animal rights advocates
