Nussbaum - Not for profit : why democracy needs the humanities : with a new afterword by the author

NOT FOR PROFIT

The Public Square Book Series

PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS

MARTHA C . NUSSBAUM

With a new afterword by the author

WHY DEMOCRACY

Needs

THE HUMANITIES

Copyright 2010 by Princeton University Press

Published by Princeton University Press,
41 William Street, Princeton, New Jersey 08540

In the United Kingdom: Princeton University Press, 6 Oxford Street,
Woodstock, Oxfordshire OX20 1TW

press.princeton.edu

All Rights Reserved

Fourteenth printing, and first paperback printing,
with a new afterword, 2012

Paperback ISBN 978-0-691-15448-0

The Library of Congress has cataloged the cloth edition of this book as follows

Nussbaum, Martha Craven, 1947

Not for profit : why democracy needs the humanities / Martha C. Nussbaum.

p. cm. (The public square book series)

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-0-691-14064-3 (hardcover : alk. paper)

1. Education, HumanisticPhilosophy.
2. Democracy and education. I. Title.

LC1011.N88 2010

370.11'5dc22 2009053897

British Library Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available

This book has been composed in Adobe Garamond Pro
with Bodoni and Futura display

Printed on acid-free paper.

Printed in the United States of America

15 17 19 20 18 16 14

[H]istory has come to a stage when the moral man, the complete man, is more and more giving way, almost without knowing it, to make room for the... commercial man, the man of limited purpose. This process, aided by the wonderful progress in science, is assuming gigantic proportion and power, causing the upset of mans moral balance, obscuring his human side under the shadow of soul-less organization.

Rabindranath Tagore, Nationalism, 1917

Achievement comes to denote the sort of thing that a well-planned machine can do better than a human being can, and the main effect of education, the achieving of a life of rich significance, drops by the wayside.

John Dewey, Democracy and Education, 1915

To Lois Goutman, Marthe Melchior, Marion Stearns,
and all my teachers at the Baldwin School

I
The Silent Crisis

II
Education for Profit, Education for Democracy

III
Educating Citizens:
The Moral (and Anti-Moral) Emotions

IV
Socratic Pedagogy:
The Importance of Argument

V
Citizens of the World

VI
Cultivating Imagination:
Literature and the Arts

VII
Democratic Education on the Ropes

Afterword to the Paperback Edition:
Reflections on the Future of the Humanities
at Home and Abroad

Ruth OBrien

The humanities and arts play a central role in the history of democracy, and yet today many parents are ashamed of children who study literature or art. Literature and philosophy have changed the world, but parents all over the world are more likely to fret if their children are financially illiterate than if their training in the humanities is deficient. Even at the University of Chicagos Laboratory Schoolthe school that gave birth to philosopher John Deweys path-breaking experiments in democratic education reformmany parents worry that their children are not being schooled enough for financial success.

In Not for Profit, Nussbaum alerts us to a silent crisis in which nations discard skills as they thirst for national profit. As the arts and humanities are everywhere downsized, there is a serious erosion of the very qualities that are essential to democracy itself. Nussbaum reminds us that great educators and nation-builders understood how the arts and humanities teach children the critical thinking that is necessary for independent action and for intelligent resistance to the power of blind tradition and authority. Students of art and literature also learn to imagine the situations of others, a capacity that is essential for a successful democracy, a necessary cultivation of our inner eyes.

Nussbaums particular strength in Not for Profit lies in the manner in which she uses her capacious knowledge of philosophy and educational theory, both Western and non-Western. Drawing on Rabin-dranath Tagore (the Indian Nobel Prize laureate in literature, and founder of an experimental school and university) and John Dewey, as well as on Jean Jacques Rousseau, Donald Winnicott, and Ralph Ellison, she creates a human development model of education, arguing that it is indispensable for democracy and for cultivating a globally minded citizenry.

The humanities and arts contribute to the development of young children at play as well as that of university students. Nussbaum argues that even the play of young children is educational, showing children how they can get along with others without maintaining total control. It connects experiences of vulnerability and surprise to curiosity and wonder, rather than anxiety. These experiences are then extended and deepened by a wise humanities curriculum.

[D]eficiencies in compassion, Nussbaum elaborates, can hook up with the pernicious dynamic of disgust and shame... [and] shame is a universal response to human helplessness. Societies that inculcate the myth of total control rather than mutual need and interdependency only magnify this dynamic. She suggests that we think like Rousseau, who knew that his Emile must learn to identify with common human predicaments. He must see the world through the lens of many types of vulnerability, cultivating a rich imagination. Only then will he truly see people as real and equal. Only then can he be an equal among equals, understanding interdependency, as democracy and global citizenship both require. A democracy filled with citizens who lack empathy will inevitably breed more types of marginalization and stigmatization, thus exacerbating rather than solving its problems.

In Not for Profit Nussbaum undercuts the idea that education is primarily a tool of economic growth. She argues that economic growth does not invariably generate better quality of life. Neglect and scorn for the arts and humanities puts the quality of all our lives, and the health of our democracies, at risk.

Not for Profit is especially appropriate for this series, The Public Square. It offers readers a call to action in the form of a plan that replaces an educational model that undercuts democracy with one that promotes it. It builds a convincing, if at first counterintuitive, case that the very foundation of citizenshipnot to mention national successrests on the humanities and arts. We neglect them at our peril.

Nussbaum enters The Public Square with this far-reaching and expansive book, which shows us the importance of learning to play well with othersand then how to think for ourselves.