Making Democracy Work: Why Democracy Needs the Humanities - Martha Nussbaum

Why Democracy Needs the Humanities with Martha Nussbaum (audio only)

[@phoenixway1979]

Why Democracy Needs the Humanities - Martha Nussbaum 32

[@joebazirake2787]

Very interesting indeed. I would rather that Nussbaum talks about 'empathy' in place of 'sympathy' that she constantly refers to. Her inclination is more towards an expression and adoptation of empathy than it would translate into the rather innate aspect of sympathy.

[@calvinsaxon5822]

None of this, absolutely none, has anything to do with reality. Nussbaum's whole project is to produce a fantasy in which humanities teachers have a use. It would be like taking a useless object (a broken rake) lying in the yard and asking it how it saw the world. First, if it were sentient and could respond, it would be flattered that anyone is even listening to it and then it would start spewing forth a fantastic picture in which it was at the center holding the entire fragile ecosystem of the estate together. Democracy doesn't need the humanities and it certainly doesn't need humanities teachers. Where is there a shred of evidence that the humanities even teach anything at all, whether substantive knowledge or even procedural method. I love how humanities teachers, when they justify their existence, start claiming all of these skills and knowledge (logic, reasoning, feeling sympathy with others, and on and on and on) that exist and have existed for a long time (before the 20th century--see Eagleton's "Rise of English" essay) quite apart from what we know call the practice of the humanities.