Spring 2015 Stories

Radical changes are occurring in what democratic societies teach the young, and these changes have not been well thought through. Thirsty for national profit, nations, and their systems of education, are heedlessly discarding skills that are needed to keep democracies alive. We seem to be forgetting about the soul, about what it is for thought to open out of the soul and connect person to world in a rich, subtle, and complicated manner; about what it is to approach another person as a soul, rather than as a mere useful instrument or an obstacle to one’s own plans; about what it is to talk as someone who has a soul to someone else whom one sees as similarity deep and complex.

The word “soul” has religious connotations for many people, and I neither insist on these nor reject them .... What I do insist on, however, is what ... [is] meant by this word: faculties of thought and imagination that make us human and make our relationships rich human relationships, rather than relationships of mere use and manipulation. When we meet in society, if we have not learned to see both self and other in that way, imagining in one another faculties of thought and emotion, democracy is bound to fail, because democracy is built upon respect and concern, and these in turn are built upon the ability to see other people as human beings, not simply as objects.

Given that economic growth is so eagerly sought by all nations, especially at this time of crisis, too few questions have been posed about the direction of education, and, with it, of the world’s democratic societies. With the rush to profitability in the global market, values precious for the future of democracy, especially in an era of religious and economic anxiety, are in danger of getting lost. The profit motive suggests to many concerned leaders that science and technology are of crucial importance for the future health of their nations. We should have no objection to good scientific and technical education, and I shall not suggest that nations should stop trying to improve in this regard. My concern is that other abilities, equally crucial, are at risk of getting lost in the competitive flurry, abilities crucial to the health of any democracy internally, and to the creation of a decent world culture capable of constructively addressing the world’s most pressing problems.

These abilities are associated with the humanities and the arts: the ability to think critically; the ability to transcend local loyalties and to approach world problems as a “citizen of the world”; and, finally, the ability to imagine sympathetically the predicament of another person.

The Importance of Argument 

Socrates proclaimed that “the unexamined life is not worth living for a human being.” In a democracy fond of impassioned rhetoric and skeptical of argument, he lost his life for his allegiance to this ideal of critical questioning. Today his example is central to the theory and practice of liberal education in the western tradition, and related ideas have been central to ideas of liberal education in India and other non-Western cultures. One of the reasons people have insisted on giving all undergraduates a set of courses in philosophy and other subjects in the humanities is that they believe such courses, through both content and pedagogy, will stimulate students to think and argue for themselves ... and they believe that the ability to argue in this Socratic way is, as Socrates proclaimed, valuable for democracy.

Socratic thinking is important in any democracy. But it is particularly important in societies that need to come to grips with the presence of people who differ by ethnicity, caste, and religion. The idea that one will take responsibility for one’s own reasoning, and exchange ideas with others in an atmosphere of mutual respect for reason, is essential to the peaceful resolution of differences, both within a nation and in a world increasingly polarized by ethnic and religious conflicts.

Socratic thinking is a social practice. Ideally it ought to shape the functioning of a wide range of social and political institutions. Since our topic is formal education, however, we can see that it is also a discipline. It can be taught as part of a school or college curriculum. It will not be well taught, however, unless it informs the spirit of classroom pedagogy and the school’s entire ethos. Each student must be treated as an individual whose powers of mind are unfolding and who is expected to make an active and creative contribution to classroom discussion ....

But how, more specifically, can a liberal education teach Socratic values? At the college and university level, the answer to this question is reasonably well understood. As a starting point, critical thinking should be infused into the pedagogy of classes of many types, as students learn to probe, to evaluate evidence, to write papers with well-structured arguments, and to analyze the arguments presented to them in other texts. It seems likely, however, that a more focused attention to the structure of argument is essential if these relatively mature students are to get the full immersion in active Socratic thinking that a liberal arts education makes possible. For this reason, I have argued that all colleges and universities should follow the lead of America’s Catholic colleges and universities, which require at least two semesters of philosophy, in addition to the theology or religious studies courses that are required .... There is no doubt that even wellprepared college undergraduates need this type of class in order to develop more fully their capacities for citizenship and respectful political interaction.

Citizens of the World
We live in a world in which people face one another across gulfs of geography, language, nationality. More than at any time in the past, we all depend on people we have never seen, and they depend on people we have never seen, and they depend on us. The problems we need to solve—economic, environmental, religious, and political—are global in their scope. They have no hope of being solved unless people once distant come together and cooperate in ways they have not before. Think of global warming; decent trade regulations; the protection of the environment and animal species; the future of nuclear energy and the dangers of nuclear weapons; the movement of labor and the establishment of decent labor standards; the protection of children from trafficking, sexual abuse, and forced labor. All these can only truly be addressed by multinational discussions. Such a list could be extended almost indefinitely.

Nor do any of us stand outside this global interdependency. The global economy has tied all of us to distant lives. Our simplest decisions as consumers affect the living standard of people in distant nations who are involved in the production of products we use. Our daily lives put pressure on the global environment. It is irresponsible to bury our heads in the sand, ignoring the many ways in which we influence, every day, the lives of distant people. Education, then, should equip us all to function effectively in such discussions, seeing ourselves as “citizens of the world,” to use a timehonored phrase, rather than merely as Americans or Indians or Europeans.

Human beings need meaning, understanding, and perspective as well as jobs. The question should not be whether we can afford to believe in such purposes, but whether we can afford not to.
Drew Fa

In the absence of a good grounding for international cooperation in the schools and universities of the world, however, our human interactions are likely to be mediated by the thin norms of market exchange in which human lives are seen primarily as instruments for gain. The world’s schools, colleges, and universities therefore have an important and urgent task: to cultivate in students the ability to see themselves as members of a heterogeneous nation (for all modern nations are heterogeneous), and a still more heterogeneous world, and to understand something of the history and character of the diverse groups that inhibit it.

Does global citizenship really require the humanities? It requires a lot of factual knowledge, and students might get this without a humanistic education—for example, from absorbing the facts in standardized textbooks ... and by learning the basic techniques of economics. Responsible citizenship requires, however, a lot more: the ability to assess historical evidence, to use and think critically about economic principles, to assess accounts of social justice, to speak a foreign language, to appreciate the complexities of the major world religions. The factual part alone could be purveyed without the skills and techniques we have come to associate with the humanities. But a catalogue of facts, without the ability to assess them, or to understand how a narrative is assembled from evidence, is almost as bad as ignorance, since the pupil will not be able to distinguish ignorant stereotypes purveyed by politicians and cultural leaders from the truth, or bogus claims from valid ones. World history and economic understanding, then, must be humanistic and critical if they are to be at all useful in forming intelligent global citizens, and they must be taught alongside the study of religion and of philosophical theories of justice. Only then will they supply a useful foundation for the public debates that we must have if we are to cooperate in solving major human problems.

Cultivating Imagination
Citizens cannot relate well to the complex world around them by factual knowledge and logic alone. The third ability of the citizen, closely related to the first two, is what we can call the narrative imagination. This means the ability to think what it might be like to be in the shoes of a person different from oneself, to be an intelligent reader of that person’s story, and to understand the emotions and wishes and desires that someone so placed might have.

Innovation requires minds that are flexible, open, creative; literature and the arts cultivate these capacities. When they are lacking, a business culture quickly loses stream. Again and again, liberal arts graduates are hired in preference of students who have had a narrower professional education, precisely because they are believed to have the flexibility and the creativity to succeed in a dynamic business environment. If our only concern were national economic growth, then we should still protect humanistic liberal arts education.

“Human beings need meaning, understanding, and perspective as well as jobs. The question should not be whether we can afford to believe in such purposes in these times, but whether we can afford not to.”

Martha Nussbaum is the Ernst Freund Distinguished Service Professor of Law and Ethics at the University of Chicago, and she received her B.A. from NYU and her M.A. and Ph.D. from Harvard. Nussbaum has taught at Harvard, Brown, and Oxford Universities and currently serves as an Associate Professor in the Classics Department, the Divinity School, and the Political Science Department, a member of the Committee on Southern Asian Studies, and a Board Member of the Human Rights Program, all at the University of Chicago.  She has published and edited many books, including Not For Profit: Why Democracy Needs the Humanities (2010). From 1986 to 1993, Dr. 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 American Philosophical Association’s Committee on International Cooperation, the Committee on the Status of Women, and the Committee for Public Philosophy, among many others. She has received a number of awards, including the 2009 A.SK award from the German Social Science Research Council (WZB) for her contributions to “social systems reform,” the American Philosophical Society’s Henry M. Phillips Prize in Jurisprudence, and the 2012 Prince of Asturias Prize in the Social Sciences.

Endnotes

1. Martha Nussbaum, “Citizens and Leaders: The Public Role of the Humanities,” lecture, 2014–2015 Bannan Institute: Ignatian Leadership series, May 8, 2015, Santa Clara University. A video of the full lecture is available online at: scu.edu/ic/publications/videos.cfm. This lecture draws largely upon Nussbaum’s 2010 book excerpted here, Not for Profit: Why Democracy Needs the Humanities.
2. Martha Nussbaum, Not for Profit: Why Democracy Needs the Humanities (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2010), 2. All excerpts reprinted with permission.
3. Nussbaum, 6-7.
4. Nussbaum, 47-48.
5. Nussbaum, 54-56.
6. Nussbaum, 79-80.
7. Nussbaum, 93-94.
8. Nussbaum, 96.
9. Nussbaum, 112.
10. Drew Faust, “The Universities Crisis of Purpose,” New York Times Book Review (6 September 2009), 19. Cited in Nussbaum, 124.