December 16, 2010
The eminent thinker, Martha Nussbaum, speaks to Somak Ghoshal on education, emotions and the enduring legacy of Rabindranath Tagore.
Philosophers are supposed to be reclusive souls who prefer to keep themselves busy high up in their ivory towers — not at the ironing board. However, Martha Nussbaum, Ernst Freund Distinguished Service Professor of Law and Ethics at Chicago University, begs to differ. When I called in for her at a city hotel last week, a few minutes early for my appointment, she was ironing her clothes, getting ready for a long day, in the course of which she delivered a keynote address on Rabindranath Tagore at a panel discussion. But she had still found time for a brisk workout at the gym. “I love to exercise,” she confessed, looking strikingly fit for her 63 years. Nussbaum had once said that the American actress, Candice Bergen, should play her in a film on her life. After my first few minutes with her, I was willing to agree.
It would not have been odd for Nussbaum to become a famous actress anyway. At 11, she played Joan of Arc in a school play, wrote another one on Robespierre, in French, where she played the title role. She even started out as a student of theatre at New York University, before choosing to train as a classicist. “I thought as an actress I would be able to have broader emotional experiences,” she says, “but then, I quickly figured out that I wanted to think about tragic dramas, not act in them.” Even in her Robespierre play, she was more interested in the “conflict between high ideals and personal friendship”, in exploring the idea that “universal ideals must be balanced against a love of particulars”.
More
An interesting article that raises various of serious matters, but at the same time –I think- writes about them superficially (i.e., an integrated education, Tagore’s theoretical view and contribution to philosophy, the added-value of different approaching perspectives for teaching subjects at the Institutes/Universities, the benefit for every student to study philosophy, love in Tagore and Mill, Sen’s CA, etc). Although I found mainly two strong points: [a] of course about the article’s headline, that via all these matters, we may understand thinks that philosophy can do for the world. But here I would like to ask, if it is inevitable for someone who, let’s say, finds philosophy something more –a lot more- than a job career, to pass –and maybe from time to time- busy high up in his ivory tower ? and [b] that Nussbaum’s perception for other parts of the world (like India) sets aside pleasantly what Gregory Jusdanis finds out in his article “Baby, we're so Provincial” (23 Nov. 2010) {http://arcade.stanford.edu/baby-were-so-provincial?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter and translated at the latest issue –Dec.2010- of “The Athens Review of Books”, p.5} where he points out for the Anglo-American world’s thinkers: “…a sad proof of our ignorance of what goes on beyond our shores” and that “…insularity is revealed to us whenever we go abroad”.
ReplyDeleteKostas Tsagkaris