21
" Here, I believe, was mercy; and, lying very close to it, the root of the novelist’s art. The novel’s structure is a structure of suggnômê—of the penetration of the life of another into one’s own imagination and heart. It is a form of imaginative and emotional receptivity, in which the reader, following the author’s lead, comes to be inhabited by the tangled complexities and struggles of other concrete lives.54 Novels do not withhold all moral judgment, and they contain villains as well as heroes. But for any character with whom the form invites our participatory identification, the motives for mercy are engendered in the structure of literary perception itself. VII. "
― Martha C. Nussbaum , Sex and Social Justice
24
" But it is to the school that Tagore devotes central emphasis in The Religion of Man.14 He begins by expressing his lifelong dissatisfaction with the schools he attended: “The inexpensive power to be happy, which, along with other children, I brought to this world, was being constantly worn away by friction with the brick-and-mortar arrangement of life, by monotonously mechanical habits and the customary code of respectability” (144). In effect, children begin as madcap Bauls, full of love, longing, and joy in the presence of nature. Their love of play and their questioning spirit need to be strengthened, not crushed. But schools usually crush all that is disorderly, "
― Martha C. Nussbaum , Political Emotions: Why Love Matters for Justice
25
" The presence of the other, which can be very threatening, becomes, in play, a delightful source of curiosity, and this curiosity contributes toward the development of healthy attitudes in friendship, love, and, later, political life. Winnicott "
― Martha C. Nussbaum , Not for Profit: Why Democracy Needs the Humanities
28
" The problems that globalization and automation create for working-class Americans are real, deep, and seemingly intractable. Rather than face those difficulties and uncertainties, people who sense their living standard declining can instead grasp after villains, and a fantasy takes shape: if “we” can somehow keep “them” out (build a wall) or keep them in “their place” (in subservient positions), “we” can regain our pride and, for men, their masculinity. Fear leads, then, to aggressive “othering” strategies rather than to useful analysis. "
― Martha C. Nussbaum , The Monarchy of Fear: A Philosopher Looks at Our Political Crisis
