Cultivating Humanity: A Classical Defense of Reform in Liberal Education by Martha C. Nussbaum

From the Publisher

How can higher education today create a community of critical thinkers and searchers for truth that transcends the boundaries of class, gender, and nation? Martha C. Nussbaum, philosopher and classicist, argues that contemporary curricular reform is already producing such "citizens of the world" in its advocacy of diverse forms of cross-cultural studies. Her vigorous defense of "the new education" is rooted in Seneca's ideal of the citizen who scrutinizes tradition critically and who respects the ability to reason wherever it is found--in rich or poor, native or foreigner, female or male.

Drawing on Socrates and the Stoics, Nussbaum establishes three core values of liberal education--critical self-examination, the ideal of the world citizen, and the development of the narrative imagination. Then, taking us into classrooms and campuses across the nation, including prominent research universities, small independent colleges, and religious institutions, she shows how these values are (and in some instances are not) being embodied in particular courses. She defends such burgeoning subject areas as gender, minority, and gay studies against charges of moral relativism and low standards, and underscores their dynamic and fundamental contribution to critical reasoning and world citizenship.

For Nussbaum, liberal education is alive and well on American campuses in the late twentieth century. It is not only viable, promising, and constructive, but it is essential to a democratic society. Taking up the challenge of conservative critics of academe, she argues persuasively that sustained reform in the aim and content of liberal education is the most vital and invigorating force inhigher education today.

New York Times Book Review - James Shapiro

The best answer to attachs on multiculturalism can be found in Cultivating Humanity. The book is a passionate, closely argued and classical defense of multiculturalism, drawing on the ideas of Socrates, the Stoics and Seneca. [Nussbaum] steers a narrow course between cranky traditionalists and the anti-Western radicals who could reject her Socratic method out of hand. . .[The] book is a formidable, perhaps definitive defense of diversity on American campuses.

Publishers Weekly

Just when you thought the culture wars were over, the next combatants step in to take up their swords and shields. Nussbaum earned her stripes defending universities from charges of caving in to the demands of politically correct multi-culturalists. In this vigorous response to critics, Nussbaum adopts an unusual approach in her defense of the college-level multicultural curriculum. Instead of casting multi-cultural instruction as a type of payback for the sins of Western racism and sexism, she artfully argues how the Western philosophical tradition itself leads directly to a multi-cultural agenda. The Socratic demand to examine ourselves, as Nussbaum sees it, requires that we study those unlike us. To understand our culture's influence on our economic, sexual, racial and social views, we must explore the influence the cultures of others have had on theirs. In short, we learn best by contrasting what we believe with what others believe, especially if the goal is to make us world-citizens, a view that, according to Nussbaum is as old as the Greco-Roman philosophy itself. Though at times flatly written, Nussbaum's arguments are convincing. She is careful to avoid the pitfalls of cultural relativism, and there is no debating the cosmopolitan effects of the educational process that she supports. Her work is a welcome addition to the ongoing debate about culture and curriculum.

William E. Cain

Nussbaum has succeeded in saying something fresh, forceful, and interesting about curricular reform and the culture wars. Cultivating Humanity is persuasively argued, philosophically well grounded, and firmly based on Nussbaum's own experiences as a visitor, lecturer, and teacher at a wide range of colleges and universities. -- Boston Sunday Globe

James Shapiro

The best answer to attachs on multiculturalism can be found in Cultivating Humanity. The book is a passionate, closely argued and classical defense of multiculturalism, drawing on the ideas of Socrates, the Stoics and Seneca. [Nussbaum] steers a narrow course between cranky traditionalists and the anti-Western radicals who could reject her Socratic method out of hand. . .[The] book is a formidable, perhaps definitive defense of diversity on American campuses. -- The New York Times Book Review

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Table of Contents