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Notes on show: Original Airdate 07/26/2005 		 
Topic: The Indispensible Emotions
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Guest: martha nussbaum
Martha Nussbaum, Ernst Freund Distinguished Service Professor of Law and Ethics, University of Chicago
What is it?

Where would we be without emotions?  Many philosophers throughout history have thought the emotions serve only to cloud our judgments and actions.  Phrases like "He's just acting emotionally" or "Her judgment is clouded by emotion" are phrases of condemnation, not of praise.  Still, some philosophers have argued the emotions have an intelligence of their own and that the emotions are indispensable for our ethical lives.  Join John and Ken and their guest Martha Nussbaum as they explore the role of emotions in well lived lives and well-order societies.



About the Guest

Martha Nussbaum received her B.A. from NYU and her M.A. and Ph.D. from Harvard. She has taught at Harvard, Brown, and Oxford Universities. From 1986 to 1993, Ms. Nussbaum was a research advisor at the World Institute for Development Economics Research, Helsinki, a part of the United Nations University. She has chaired the Committee on International Cooperation and the Committee on the Status of Women of the American Philosophical Association, and currently chairs its new Committee for Public Philosophy.  She has been a member of the Association's National Board. In 1999-2000 she was one of the three Presidents of the Association, delivering the Presidential Address in the Central Division. Ms. Nussbaum has been a member of the Council of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and a member of the Board of the American Council of Learned Societies. She received the Brandeis Creative Arts Award in Non-Fiction for 1990, and the PEN Spielvogel-Diamondstein Award for the best collection of essays in 1991; Cultivating Humanity won the Ness Book Award of the Association of American Colleges and Universities in 1998, and the Grawemeyer Award in Education in 2002.Sex and Social Justice won the book award of the North American Society for Social Philosophy in 2000.  Hiding From Humanity won the Association of American University Publishers Professional and Scholarly Book Award for Law in 2004.  She has received honorary degrees from twenty-five colleges and universities in the U. S., Canada, Asia, and Europe, including Grinnell College, Williams College, Bard College, Knox College, The University of St. Andrews (Scotland),the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven (Belgium), the University of Toronto, The University for Humanist Studies (Utrecht, the Netherlands), the New School University, the University of Haifa, Ohio State University, and Georgetown University. She received the NYU Distinguished Alumni Award in 2000, the Grawemeyer Award in Education in 2002, and the Barnard College Medal of Distinction in 2003. She is an Academician in the Academy of Finland.

Professor Nussbaum is the Ernst Freund Distinguished Service Professor of Law and Ethics, appointed in the Philosophy Department, Law School and Divinity School. She is an Associate in the Classics Department and the Political Science Department, an Affiliate of the Committee on Southern Asian Studies, and a Board Member of the Human Rights Program. She is the founder and Coordinator of the new Center for Comparative Constitutionalism.

Her publications include Aristotle's De Motu Animalium (1978), The Fragility of Goodness: Luck and Ethics in Greek Tragedy and Philosophy (1986, updated edition 2000), Love's Knowledge (1990), The Therapy of Desire (1994), Poetic Justice (1996), For Love of Country (1996), Cultivating Humanity: A Classical Defense of Reform in Liberal Education (1997), Sex and Social Justice (1998), Women and Human Development (2000), Upheavals of Thought: The Intelligence of Emotions (2001), and Hiding From Humanity: Disgust, Shame, and the Law (2004).   She has also edited thirteen books. Her new book, Frontiers of Justice: Disability, Nationality, Species Membership, will be published by Harvard University Press in fall 2005.  Her current work in progress includes The Cosmopolitan Tradition (the Castle Lectures delivered at Yale University in 2000 and under contract to Yale University Press), Democracy in the Balance: Violence, Hope, and India's Future (under contract to Harvard University Press), The Fixed Star: Religion and Equality in American Public Life (under contract to Basic Books), and Compassion and Capabilities (under contract to Cambridge University Press).

 

Listening Notes

 

Usually when we think about the mind, we divide it into thoughts and feelings. Where do emotions fit in? What are the emotions good for? Hume thought morality was based on them while Kant wanted to banish them from moral thought. Ken introduces Martha Nussbaum, professor at the University of Chicago. What is special about the emotions? Nussbaum thinks emotions involve an appraisal about what is good for your own wellbeing. Ken says that emotions have intentional content, that is, they are about something.

 

Nussbaum says that our emotions play a big part in figuring out how to live a well-lived life. The Stoics thought that anger damaged society, so they denied emotions as much as possible. Ken thinks that emotions display our vulnerabilities. Nussbaum says that there are many kinds of non-verbalizable thought, such as pictures. How does anger cloud our thought? Ken says that beliefs can be true or false, but emotions, like anger, seem to be appropriate or inappropriate rather than true or false.

 

How do we decide whether an emotion is appropriate? Nussbuam says that it is a part of growing up and deciding how we should live. How do we decide what to care about? Should intuitions serve as our primary guide in decision making about right and wrong? Are emotions rooted in the older part of the human brain? Nussbaum thinks that certain emotions, such as compassion, requires higher brain functions.

  • Amy Standen the Roving Philosophical Reporter (Seek to 04:27): Amy Standen interviews Linda Wetzel, professor at Georgetown University, about emotions and the android Data from Star Trek: The Next Generation.

 

  • Ian Shoales the Sixty Second Philosopher (Seek to 49:54): Ian Shoales quickly discusses Baruch Spinoza's views, from emotions and ethics to ideas about God.

 

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