It's not as though there aren't many, many art works and many other cultures, but there was something special about the civic nature of the Greek theater. All the citizens stopped working. They came into these theaters. It wasn't like a Broadway theater where you sit in the dark and you expect to be passively entertained. You're in this theater, amphitheater, in bright sunlight looking at your fellow citizens, recognizing their faces, and thinking with them about the future of your city. I think very few cultures have had a theatrical tradition that is quite so civic.
Martha C. NussbaumWe really have to think about aging because women are living longer than men. More of the people who need care are women. A lot of them are living alone, with no one to care for them, or they're shunted into institutions. I would like to see a sensible aging policy more like what the Nordic countries have. They're cutting back those programs, but there you can still have in-home nursing care. You don't have to rely on your children. I personally don't want to be a burden on my daughter.
Martha C. NussbaumAs human beings, we ought to be vulnerable. We shouldn't try to say that we can be self-sufficient or do everything that's necessary for a good life on our own, because we need other people.
Martha C. NussbaumI am a very big fan of the nation, actually. In Cicero's time, there was this idea that although we were members of the whole world of human beings, we also needed to connect our imaginations to a smaller unit. The smaller unit was something we knew we could live or die for, as Cicero died for the Roman republic.
Martha C. NussbaumThe thing that I find so bad about anger is the desire for payback. Of course, it is very human to wish for revenge. Your mother has died in the hospital, and the first thought a lot of people have is, I'll sue the doctor. You feel helpless, and you think, I'm less helpless if I'm doing something active that makes someone else pay. And social media make it easy to inflict all kinds of pain on other people. But what good does it do?
Martha C. NussbaumIt's a good thing that we're protected by tenure and academic freedom, but we should realize that it creates a risk of getting cut off. Scholars should write, at least sometimes, for the general public.
Martha C. NussbaumThe great philosophers of the past who wrote so beautifully - Rousseau, John Stuart Mill - had to write beautifully because they had to sell their work to journals. They had to sell books to the general public because they could not hold positions in universities. Mill was an atheist, and, therefore, could not hold a position in a university.
Martha C. Nussbaum