Tag Archives: Martha Nussbaum

Euripides on the Loss of a Child

Euripides helped philosopher Nussbaum handle the death of her daughter. This is one of literature’s great gifts.

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Liberal Arts vs. Authoritarians: Who Wins?

Can the liberal arts counter authoritarianism? I consider an optimistic argument that they can.

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Getting to Know Henry James

I’m on a Henry James kick and am enthralled with “Daisy Miller” and “Washington Square.”

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Greek Tragedy & the Fragility of Goodness

Martha Nussbaum contents that Aristotle’s use of Greek tragedy gave him a particularly rich vision of how to lead a good life.

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Hope for a Great Sea-Change

The Seamus Heaney poem that Biden quotes in a new ad is itself taken from Heaney’s verse translation of Sophocles’s “Philoctetes.” It’s perfect for the current moment.

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Robinson: Love, Sympathy, Identification

Marilynne Robinson’s fiction is, as she puts it, “an exercise in the capacity for imaginative love, or sympathy, or identification.”

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Theories about Lit’s Impact

A transcript of a talk given at the University of Ljubljana on “how literature changes lives.”

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Lit Encourages World Citizenship

Political identity arguments that demographic groups should stay in their own lanes fail to acknowledge the power of literature to “cross group boundaries,” according to philosopher Martha Nussbaum.

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The Blue Guitar vs. Facebook

Wallace Stevens asserts that art changes “things as they are.” So does Facebook. We need the first to counteract the second when it is taken over by hostile forces.

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